Shaybanid

The Shaybanid dynasty was a 16th-century Uzbek dynasty founded by Muhammad Shaybani. Speaking more generally, the term Shaybanids refers to all patrilineal descendants of Shayban (Shiban), the fifth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. Until the mid-14th century, they acknowledged the authority of the descendants of Batu Khan and Orda Khan, such as Uzbeg Khan. In 1282, the Shaybanid horde was converted to Islam and gradually assumed the name of Uzbeks.

As soon as the lineages of Batu and Orda died out in the course of the great civil wars of the 14th century, the Shaybanids declared themselves the only legitimate successors to Jochi and put forward claims to the whole of his enormous ulus, which included Siberia and Kazakhstan. Their rivals were the Timurids, who claimed descent from Jochi's thirteenth son by a concubine. Several decades of strife left the Timurids in control of the Great Horde and its successor states in Europe, namely, the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Crimea.

Unfazed by setbacks in Europe, one branch of the Shaybanids moved south into Transoxiana, from whence, after a century of conflict, they managed to oust the Timurids. It was Abu'l-Khayr Khan (ruled 1428-68) who began consolidating disparate Uzbek tribes, first in the area around Tyumen and the Tura River and then down into the Syr Darya region. His grandson Muhammad Shaybani (ruled 1500-10) wrested Samarkand, Herat and Bukhara from Babur's control and established the short-lived Shaybanid Empire. He was followed successively by an uncle, a cousin, and a brother, whose Shaybanid descendants would rule Bukhara until 1595 and Khwarezm (centred on Khiva) until 1695.

Another state ruled by the Shaybanids was the Khanate of Sibir, whose last khan, Kuchum, was deposed by the Russians in 1598. His sons and grandsons were taken by the Tsar to Moscow, where they assumed the name of the Tsarevichs Sibirsky. Apart from this famous branch, several other noble families from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (e.g., Princes Valikhanov) petitioned the Russian imperial authorities to recognise their Shaybanid roots, but mostly in vain.

References

* Bartold, Vasily (1964) "The Shaybanids". Collected Works, vol. 2, part 2. Moscow, 1964.
* Grousset, René (1970) "The Empire of the Steppes: a history of central Asia" Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, (translated by Naomi Walford from the French edition, published by Payot in 1970), pp. 478-490 "et passim", ISBN 0-8135-0627-1
* Bosworth, C.E. (1996) "The new Islamic dynasties: a chronological and genealogical manual" Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 288-9, ISBN 0-231-10714-5
* Soucek, Svatopluk (2000) "A History of Inner Asia" Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 149-157, ISBN 0-521-65169-7