Zunbil dynasty

The Zunbils were a line of kings who ruled Zabulistan, the highlands south of the Hindu Kush in what is now southern Afghanistan, from around 680 until the Saffarid conquest of 870. Of Hephthalite origin and linked by kinship to the Turk Shahis of Kabul, they took their title from the god Zun, and for nearly two centuries they blocked the Arab caliphates' advance into eastern Afghanistan.

The title Zunbil is traced to a Middle Persian form meaning "Zun the justice-giver", and the district name Zamindawar, the "land of the justice-giver", echoes it. Zamindawar, in today's Helmand province, and Ghazni served as their capitals, and at their widest their lands ran from near Zaranj in the south-west to Kabulistan in the north-east, at times reaching Bost near Kandahar. Arabic chronicles describe their followers as Turks, though Arab writers used that word loosely for many eastern enemies.

Arab forces first raided Sistan in 643–644. In 653–654 Abd al-Rahman ibn Samura reached the shrine of Zun in Zamindawar, where he is said to have broken a hand off the idol and pried out its ruby eyes to show the local governor that it was powerless. Bost and Zabul accepted a treaty in 656, but the Muslims lost them during the First Civil War of 656–661, and later governors fought long campaigns in the region with mixed results.

According to al-Tabari, the first Zunbil, known in Arabic as Rutbil, was a brother of the Turk Shahi king of Kabul, and around 680–683 he broke away to found his own kingdom. His coins, modelled on Sasanian types, carry inscriptions in Bactrian, Pahlavi and Brahmi scripts. Relations with Kabul were sometimes hostile, but the two kingdoms often fought the Arabs together.

The kingdom inflicted a string of defeats on the Umayyad Caliphate. An expedition in 681 ended with its commander killed and prisoners ransomed for half a million dirhams. In 698 the governor al-Hajjaj sent an army with orders to devastate the Zunbil's land; it was lured into barren country and trapped, and according to the chroniclers only about 5,000 men struggled back to Bost. A second army raised in 699, reportedly 40,000 strong, mutinied against al-Hajjaj under its commander Ibn al-Ash'ath, who later sought refuge with the Zunbil and died in about 704. A truce followed, with the Zunbil paying tribute in kind. In 727–728, according to al-Ya'qubi, another governor's army was wiped out in a winter campaign.

The cult of Zun remains poorly understood; scholars have linked it variously to a sun god, to Hindu religion and to the Zoroastrian Zurvan. Buddhism also flourished. The Korean monk Hyecho, visiting in 726, found a Turkic king and nobles who revered Buddhism, with many monasteries. The Tang dynasty recognised a Zunbil ruler in 720, and Buddhist sculpture at Tepe Sardar near Ghazni shows strong Chinese influence between about 680 and 750.

After the Abbasid Caliphate came to power in 750, its commanders renewed the pressure. In 769 Ma'n ibn Za'ida defeated the Zunbil near Ghazni and restored the tribute, and later caliphs received submissions that were largely nominal and payments that came irregularly. The Zunbils outlasted the Kabul branch of the Turk Shahis, which the caliph al-Ma'mun defeated in 815. Their end came from a new local power: around 870 Ya'qub ibn al-Layth, founder of the Saffarid dynasty of Sistan, marched on Ghazni and conquered their lands. In the view of the historian C. E. Bosworth, this was the first real Muslim expansion into eastern Afghanistan after two centuries of raids and resistance.

Shown on our maps as the Kingdom of Zunbil, it appears on the 700 map in southern Afghanistan, at the height of its wars with the Umayyads, with the Kingdom of Kapisa to the north-east and the Kingdom of Sind to the south-east.