Turk Shahis

The Turk Shahis were a line of kings who held the mountain country of eastern Afghanistan and Gandhara, from Kapisa and Kabul to the Indus, from the 660s until about 822. Of disputed origin, and possibly Khalaj Turks, they patronised Buddhism and Hindu cults, sought recognition from Tang China, and for most of their history held back the eastward advance of the Arab caliphates, before a Brahmin minister replaced them with the Hindu Shahi dynasty.

From the 560s the Western Turkic Khaganate pushed south from Transoxiana into Bactria and the Hindu Kush, and Turks were already powerful near Kapisa when the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang passed through in 643. The region was then ruled by the Nezak, a dynasty of Hunnic origin. Arab armies under Abd al-Rahman ibn Samura took Kabul around 665 after a long siege, gravely weakening the Nezak. According to the Korean pilgrim Hyecho, who visited about 50 years later, a Turkish commander in Nezak service then killed his master and made himself king; the 11th-century scholar al-Biruni calls this founder Barha Tegin. Their exact ethnic identity is uncertain, and the label "Turk" may be loose.

Barha Tegin struck back once the Arab governor was recalled, recovering land as far as Arachosia, and moved the capital from Kapisa to Kabul. His son Tegin Shah, who ruled from about 680, styled himself "Khorasan Tegin Shah". A related branch, the Zunbil dynasty, ruled Zabulistan to the south; the two were sometimes rivals but often fought the Arabs together. Arab attacks in 683 failed, and although Kabul briefly fell in 684–685, campaigns by the Umayyad Caliphate repeatedly ended in costly treaties. The kings sometimes paid tribute but resisted fiercely any attempt at direct rule.

Nominally the Turk Shahis came under the Tang dynasty protectorate system from around 658, and Chinese records describe them as vassals of the Turkic yabghus of Tokharistan. In 719 Kabul sent envoys to the Tang court with an astrological book and medicines, and the emperor confirmed Tegin's title in a way that seems to name him a Khalaj. In 739 Tegin abdicated in favour of his son Fromo Kesaro, whose name appears to echo "Rome Caesar". Coins he overstruck in Bactrian boast that he defeated the Arabs and made them pay tax.

Hyecho described the king, his officials and the people as devoted Buddhists who built many monasteries. The period saw a revival of Buddhist art around Kabul, Ghazni and Bamiyan, at sites such as Fondukistan, Tapa Sardar and Mes Aynak. Hindu works, including a marble Ganesha from Gardez and a sun-god statue from Khair Khaneh, are now also attributed to the Turk Shahis. Their coins mixed Sasanian, Indian and Bactrian elements.

China withdrew from Central Asia around 760, after the Battle of Talas and the An Lushan rebellion, leaving the kingdom more exposed. A ruler of Kabul submitted to the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi between 775 and 785. During the Abbasid civil war the Turk Shahi king invaded Khorasan, but in 814/815 the forces of the Abbasid Caliphate defeated him and pushed as far as Gandhara. He had to convert to Islam, pay heavy tribute and hand over a precious idol of gold, silver and jewels, which was sent to Mecca. According to al-Biruni, the last king, Lagaturman, was overthrown around 822 by his Brahmin minister Kallar, founder of the Hindu Shahis.

Our 700 map shows the Turk Shahi realm as the Kingdom of Kapisa, between the Umayyad Caliphate to the west, the Kingdom of Zunbil to the south, the Kingdom of Kashmir to the east and the Chach dynasty of Sind to the south-east.