Khwarizm
Since its earliest days Khwarizm was an agrarian outpost centered on an oasis and in contact with successive waves of nomadic peoples. Khwarizm is a region in central Asia extending south of the Aral Sea along the lower Amu Dar'ya river basin and bounded by the Kara-Kum and Kyzyl-Kum deserts and the trans-Caspian steppe. The region was ancient Chorasmia, which became a satrapy of the Persian empire in the fifth century BCE.
Khwarizm's remoteness meant that local rulers were often independent of regional powers. The Afrighids (305–995) held at bay the Sasanian emperors of Persia (third–seventh centuries) and then the Arabs, until internal strife allowed the Muslim conquerors to gain political control in 712. Within a century the Afrighids had converted to Islam and continued to rule from the city of Kath. The Maʾmu-nids (995–1017) next claimed the crown and moved the capital to their stronghold Gurganj or Urganch, on the caravan route between Siberia and the Volga steppes.
During the early centuries of Islam, Khwarizm was an important center of learning. Among the world- famous scholars who found generous patronage at the Khwarizmian court were the philosopher and physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna; d. 980) and the polyhistor al-Biruni (d. 1051), a native of Khwarizm. The Ghaznavids (977–1186), however, annexed the province and left it in charge of Turkic slave governors, thus ending the rule of local dynasties. The Seljuks (1038–1194) continued the practice of slave governors, and their appointee Anushtigin Garchaʿi (c. 1077–1097) made the office hereditary. Anushtigin's descendants, the Khwarizm-shahs (c. 1077–1231), ruled a domain stretching from Afghanistan to Baghdad and south to the Persian Gulf, but they fell to the Mongols in the early 1220s.
Under the Golden Horde, Urganch became a thriving caravan trade center until Timur (Tamerlane, 1336–1405) destroyed it in 1388. A khanate established in the early sixteenth century by a new wave of Chinggizid nomads, the Uzbeks, was in constant rivalry with the Bukharan khanate and suffered many incursions by nomadic Turkmen raiders. In the nineteenth century a new dynasty of military chiefs of the Qungrat tribe held the nomads in check and vigorously resisted Russia's expansion into the area.
In 1873, however, the khanate became a Russian protectorate. The last khan was forced to abdicate in 1920, after the Bolshevik Revolution. The khanate was replaced by the short-lived Khoresmian People's Soviet Republic, which, four years later, was divided along ethnic lines between the Turkmen and Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republics. Presently the oasis is part of the Khorezm subdivision of Uzbekistan.
Further Reading
Barthold, Wilhelm (Bartol'd, Vasilii Vladimirovich). (1977) Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion. Trans. by T. Minorsky. 4th ed. London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust.
Becker, Seymour. (1968) Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. (1978) "Khwarazm." In Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol 4. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1060–1065.
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