Ghaznavids and Succession Crisis

  September 23, 2021   Read time 3 min
Ghaznavids and Succession Crisis
When in 416/1025 Ali-Tegin was temporarily driven out of his possessions by the combined operations of Mahmud of Ghazna and Yusuf Qadi'r Khan, Arslan Isra'il was captured by Mahmud and imprisoned in India till he died.

His Turkmen followers, numbering 4,000 tents, then sought permission from Mahmud to settle on the northern edge of Khurasan in the districts of Sarakhs, Ablvard and Farava, where they promised to act as frontier guards. The decision to admit these lawless elements, who as pastoral nomads could not be expected to have any regard for agriculture and settled life, was later recognized by the sultan to have been a mistake.

In 418/1027 Mahmud had to send a punitive expedition against them, the people of Nasa and Ablvard having complained about their spoliations. But his general Arslan Jadhib failed to master them, and in the next year, the sultan himself came and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Tiirkmens, scattering them broadcast. Some fled westwards into the Balkhan Mountains on the eastern shore of the Caspian. Others fled into the interior of Persia, where they successively sought employment as mercenaries: first with the Buyid Qawam al-Daula of Kirman, then with the Kakuyid ruler of Isfahan, 'Ala' al-Daula, and finally with the Rawwadid amir of Tabriz, Vahsudan b. Mamlan, who aimed to use them against his rivals the Shaddadids of Arran and against the Christian Armenian and Georgian princes. It is these Tiirkmens who are called in the sources the " 'Iraqi" ones, because they had entered 'Iraq 'Ajami, i.e. western Persia.

They do not seem to have had any outstanding leaders, and deprived of Arslan Isra'il's leadership, they split into undisciplined bands. Eventually, they joined up with other Oghuz who, if the accounts of an expedition under Chaghri Beg as far as Azarbaijan and Armenia at some time between 407/1016-17 and 412/1021 are to be credited, had entered northern Persia a few years previously.

Thus despite the momentary stability established in Khurasan by the time of Mahmud's death, the position facing Mas'ud was far from reassuring. At all stages of human history before the spread of firearms, people of the sown have been at a disadvantage against invaders from the desert or steppe. These last rarely possess anything more than their herds, so have little to lose; their incursions occur over a wide front, and even if repelled, mean the trampling of crops and disruption of the agricultural cycle. So it was with the Oghuz in Khurasan; and furthermore, Mas'ud for several years persistently underestimated the danger, unable to conceive that half-starved nomads could seriously damage the imposing edifice of Ghaznavid power in Khurasan. The war there was left to subordinate commanders, whilst the sultan concerned himself with other projects, such as the campaigns in India or the expedition to Gurgan and Tabaristan, or else remained in his palaces, engrossed in pleasure and wine-drinking.
In the succession struggle with his .brother Muhammad, Mas'ud had himself recruited some of the "'Iraqi" Tiirkmens under their chiefs Yaghmur, Qizil, Bogha and Goktash, and these were used as auxiliary troops, e.g. for Yusuf b. S'ebiik-Tegin's Makran expedition of 422/1031. But they were never a reliable force, and it proved impossible to hold them in check, so that their depredations spread all over northern Persia. Finally, in 424/1033 Mas'ud sent to Ray his general Tash Farrash, who there seized fifty of the Turkmens leaders, including Yaghmur, and put them to death. The remaining Tiirkmens inevitably became implacable enemies of the Ghaznavids.

  Comments
Write your comment