- Islamic conquest of Afghanistan
The Islamic conquest of Afghanistan (
656 -870 CE) began after theIslamic conquest of Persia , whenArab Muslims shattered the might of the Persian Sassanians at the battles of Walaja, al-Qādisiyyah and Nahavand. The Arabs then began to move towards the lands east of Persia and in 652 captured the city,Herat .Overview
The invasion of
Persia was completed five years after the death of theIslam ic prophetMuhammad , and all of the Persian territories came under Arab control, though pockets of tribal resistance continued for centuries in the Afghan territories.During the
7th century AD , Arab armies made their way into the region of Afghanistan with the new religion ofIslam . At this point in time the area that is currently Afghanistan had a multi-religious population consisting ofBuddhist s,Zoroastrian s,Hindu s,Jews ,Kafir s, as well as others. The Arabs were unable to succeed in converting the population because of constant revolts from the mountain tribes in the Afghan area, which may have been recognized as Sind. In 870 AD, Yaqub bin Laith as-Saffar, a local ruler from the Saffarid dynasty ofZaranj , conquered most of present-day Afghanistan in the name of Islam. From the eighth century to the ninth century, many inhabitants of what is present-dayAfghanistan ,Pakistan , and areas of northernIndia were converted toSunni Islam . However, pockets of pre-Islamic people such as theHindus as well as theKafirs ofKafiristan (modernNuristan ) managed to remain untouched by Islam. It is surmised from the writings ofAl Biruni that some Pashtuns living inPakhtunkhwa (present-day western Pakistan) had not been completely converted. Al Biruni, writing in Tarikh al Hind, also alludes to the Pashtun tribes of Pakhtunkhwa as being neither Muslim nor Hindu, but simply Afghans which may mean that they practicedPashtunwali .During the end of the ninth century, the Samanids extended its rule from
Bukhara to as far south as theIndus River and west into most of Persia. Although Arab Muslim intellectual life was still centered inBaghdad ,Shi'a Islam , predominated in the Samanid areas at this time. By the mid-tenth century, the Samanid Dynasty had crumbled in the face of attacks from Turkish tribes to the north and from theGhaznavids , a rising Turkic dynasty in Afghanistan.Ghaznavid and Ghorid rule
Out of the
Samanid Dynasty came the first greatIslam ic empire of the region, theGhaznavid Empire , whose warriors forged an empire that spanned much of Iranian plateau and Central Asia and conducted many successful raids intoSouth Asia . Their military incursions assured the domination ofSunni Islam in what is now Afghanistan,Pakistan , and parts of India. The most renowned of the dynasty's rulers was Mahmud, who consolidated control over the areas south of theAmu Darya then carried out devastating raids into India - lootingHindu temples in his wake. With his booty from India, Mahmud built a great capital atGhazni (modern-day Afghanistan), founded universities, and patronized scholars. Mahmud was recognized by the caliph inBaghdad as the temporal heir of the Samanids. By the time of his death, Mahmud ruled a vast empire that stretched fromKurdistan to the entireHindu Kush region as far east as the Punjab as well as territories far north of theAmu Darya . However, as occurred so often in this region, the demise in 1030 of this military genius who had expanded the empire to its farthest reaches was the death knell of the dynasty itself. The rulers of the Ghorid Empire ofGhor in modern-day Afghanistan, captured and burned Ghazni in1149 , just as the Ghaznavids had once conquered Ghor. Not until1186 , however, was the last representative of the Ghaznavids uprooted by the Ghorids from his holdout inLahore , in the Punjab.The Ghorids controlled most of what is now Afghanistan, eastern Iran, Pakistan, and northern India, while parts of central and western Iran were ruled by the
Seljuk Turks . From 1200 to 1205 some of the Ghorid lands were conquered by theShah of theKhwarezmid Empire , whose empire would, in turn, be defeated by the Mongols in1220 .Mongol invasion and Timurid rule
1220 -1506 Followings years of conquest in China and Central Asia, the
Mongol Empire had emerged as a major world power of its day and attempted to co-exist with some of their neighbors including the empire of theKhwarezmia Shah and sent emissaries to establish diplomatic and trading links. As either a bluff to dissuade the Mongols from aggression or as simply a haughty sign of disrespect, the Khwarezmia Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad II had the diplomats executed and sent their heads back to the Mongols and this prompted a military confrontation. In1220 , theIslam ic lands ofCentral Asia were overrun by the armies of theMongol invaderGenghis Khan (ca.1155 -1227 ), who laid waste to many cities and settlements and created an empire that stretched fromChina to theCaucasus . The Mongols underGenghis Khan responded with great severity to the insults they had taken from Muhammad II and took out their revenge against the inhabitants of Khwarezmia including, for example, exterminating every human being in the cities of Herat and Balkh. This devastation had severe consequences for the natives of Afghanistan as the destruction caused by the Mongols depopulated many of the major cities and caused much of the population to revert to an agrarian rural society. Thus, Afghanistan became dominated by cattle breeding tribes who also specialized in horseback riding.Genghis Khan failed to extinguish or even particularly hamper Islam in Central Asia, if that was even his intent, as the religion continued to define many local inhabitants culturally. In fact, by the end of the 13th century, Genghis Khan's descendants had themselves become Muslims (many speculate that the Hazaras of Afghanistan are in fact the descendants of Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes) and even the title of 'khan' became a not so uncommon name adopted by many local inhabitants. From the death of Genghis Khan in 1227 until the rise ofTimur Lenk (Tamerlane) in the1380s , Central Asia went through a period of fragmentation.A product of both Turkish and Mongol descent, Timur claimed Genghis Khan as an ancestor. From his capital of
Samarkand , Timur created an empire that, by the late fourteenth century, extended from northernIndia to easternTurkey . The turn of the sixteenth century brought an end to theTimurid Empire when another Central Asian ruler of Turkic-Mongol extraction,Muhammad Shaybani , overwhelmed the weakened Timurid ruler inHerat . Shaybani (also a descendant of Genghis Khan) and his successors ruled the area around theAmu Darya for about a century, while to the south and west of what is nowAfghanistan two powerful dynasties began to compete for influence.Mughal-Safavid rivalry, ca.
1500 -1747 Early in the sixteenth century,
Babur , who claimed descent fromTimur on his father's side and fromGenghis Khan on his mother's, was driven out of his father's kingdom in theFerghana Valley (which straddles contemporaryUzbekistan ,Tajikistan andKyrgyzstan ) by the Shaybani Uzbeks, who had wrestedSamarkand from the Timurids. After several unsuccessful attempts to regain Ferghana and Samarkand, Babur crossed theAmu Darya and capturedKabul from the last of itsMongol rulers in 1504. In his invasion ofDelhi Sultanate ofIndia in 1526, Babur's army of 12,000 defeated a less mobile force of 100,000 at theFirst Battle of Panipat , about forty-five kilometers northwest ofDelhi . TheDelhi Sultanate was itself ruled by ex-patriot Afghan/Pashtun rulers, theLodhi dynasty . Although theMughal Empire would shift largely to India, Babur's memoirs, as related in the "Baburnameh" stressed his love for Kabul - both as a commercial strategic center as well as a beautiful highland city with an "extremely delightful" climate and was the Mughal Empire's first capital until being moved to Lahore and Delhi by later emperors.Although Mughal rule technically lasted in parts of Afghanistan until the early 18th century, it came under constant challenge from local Pashtun tribesmen. The Mughals originally had come from
Central Asia , but once they had taken India, the area that is now southeasternAfghanistan and western Pakistan was relegated to a mere outpost of the empire as even the name of a prominent Afghan city, Peshawar literally translates from Persian to "City on the Frontier". Indeed, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, much of Afghanistan was hotly contested between the Mughals of India and theSafavids ofIran . The Safavids had held Herat and much of western and northern Afghanistan during the same time period that the Mughals controlled Kabul, Kandahar, and Peshawar. Just as Kabul dominates the high road from Central Asia into India,Kandahar commands the only approach towards India that skirts the Hindu Kush. The strategically important Kabul-Kandahar axis was the primary focus of competition between the Mughals and the Safavids, and Kandahar itself changed hands several times during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Safavids and the Mughals were not the only contenders, however. Less powerful but closer at hand were theUzbeks of Central Asia, who fought for control ofHerat in western Afghanistan and for the northern regions as well where neither the Mughals nor the Safavids were able to effectively challenge them. Many of the Uzbeks of Afghanistan arrived during this phase of northern Afghanistan's history.The Mughals sought not only to block the historical western invasion routes into India but also to control the fiercely independent
Pashtun tribes who accepted only nominal control from Delhi in their mountain strongholds between the Kabul-Kandahar axis and theIndus River - especially in thePashtun area of the Suleiman Range. As the area around Kandahar changed hands back and forth between the two great empires on either side, the local Pashtun tribes exploited the situation to their advantage by extracting concessions from both sides. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Mughals had abandoned the Hindu Kush north of Kabul to the Uzbeks, and in 1622 they lost Kandahar to the Safavids for the third and final time.Toward the end of the seventeenth century, as the power of the Safavids waned, native groups began to assert themselves in Afghanistan. Early in the eighteenth century, a clan of the Ghilzai Pashtuns, later known as the
Hotaki dynasty, overturned Safavid rule in Kandahar by 1708, and subsequently took-over and ruled most of Safavid Persia and Afghanistan from 1722 until 1736. The Ghilzai Pashtuns managed to briefly hold the Safavid capital of Isfahan, and two members of this tribe ascended the throne before the Ghilzai were evicted from Iran by the Turko-Iranian conqueror,Nadir Shah , who became known by some in the West as the "Persian Napoleon."Nadir Shah conquered Kandahar and Kabul in 1738 along with defeating a formidable Mughal army in India, plundering Delhi, and massacring thousands of its people. He returned home with vast treasures, including the
Peacock Throne , which thereafter served as a symbol of Iranian imperial might. Nadir Shah, as a Sunni Muslim, had surrounded himself with other Sunnis most notably those of Turkic and Pashtun background. One notable military officer was Ahmad Shah Durrani, an ethnic Pashtun who would come to shape the modern history of Afghanistan following the end of Nadir Shah's reign in 1747.ee also
*
Afghanistan
*History of Afghanistan
*History of Arabs in Afghanistan
*Shahi
*Jayapala
*Hindu Temples of Kabul
*Muslim conquests
*Greater Khorasan
*Qutaibah bin Muslim
*Spread of Islam References and footnotes
Further reading
*Elliot, Sir H. M., Edited by Dowson, John.
The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Period ; published by London Trubner Company 1867–1877. (Online Copy: [http://persian.packhum.org/persian/index.jsp?serv=pf&file=80201010&ct=0 The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians. The Muhammadan Period; by Sir H. M. Elliot; Edited by John Dowson; London Trubner Company 1867–1877] - This online Copy has been posted by: [http://persian.packhum.org/persian/index.jsp The Packard Humanities Institute; Persian Texts in Translation; Also find other historical books: Author List and Title List] )External links
* "The Guardian": " [http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5217828-103595,00.html Lost Tribe Struggles for Survival] "
* "Press Trust of India :" [http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/20010105/iin05014.html Inscription throws new light to Hindu rule in Afghanistan ] "
* [http://www.apaa.info/ Association for the protection of Afghan Archeology]
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