Anush-Tegin Ghartschai

Anusch-Tegin (or Nusch-Tegin ) Ghartscha (i) ( Persian انوشتکین / نوشتکین غرجۀى / غرجه, DMG Anūš-Tegin / Nūš-Tegin Ġarčaʾī / Ġarča ) was a Turkish military slave in the service of the Great Seljuks and from around 1077 governor of the Central Asian province of Khoresmia . His descendants, the Khorezm Shahs from the Anushteginid dynasty (named after him) , later used the decline of the Great Seljuks to make themselves independent and established a short-lived empire in the course of the 12th and early 13th centuries.

Anusch-Tegin came from the mountainous region of Ghartschistan (Ġarčistān) in the north-west of today's Afghanistan and was possibly of Chalaje or Qipchaq origin. Together with the Emir Bilge-Tegin, who had once recruited him as Ghulam (Ġulām), he was commissioned by the Seljuk Sultan Malik-Shah I in 1073 to recapture the areas in northern Khorasan , which had been annexed by the Ghaznavids shortly before . Afterwards the Sultan even named him his tash-dar (Persianطشتدار, ṭašt-dār, "keeper of the (royal) basin") and after it had apparently become customary at the time to finance this office specifically with the income from Khorezmia, Anush -Tegin was finally also installed as the shihna (šiḥna) of that very peripheral province. However, there is no information on whether he actually held this governorship; probably he only wore it nominally throughout his life, i. H. without ever having been to Khoresmia myself.

Basically nothing is known about Anusch-Tegin's end either. According to sources, in 1097 Khorezmia was owned by a ghoulam named Ekintschi b. Qotschqar (Ekinči b. Qočqar) reigns, who revived the traditional title "Khorezm-Shah". Anush-Tegin's son, Qutb ad-Din Muhammad , was able to assert himself in the same year as his father's successor and - establishing the Anushteginid dynasty - take over the rule of Gurganj .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bosworth, 1986

Sources and literature

• ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn ʿAṭāʾ Malik Ǧuvainī : Taʾrīḫ-i ǧahān-gušāh in translation by John Andrew Boyle : The History of the World-Conqueror , Manchester 1958 (p. 277 f.)
• Ibn al-Aṯīr : Al-Kāmil fi ʼt-taʾrīḫ ed. By Carolus Johannes Tornberg : Chronicon quod perfectissimum inscribitur , Lugdunum Batavorum (Leiden) 1867–1874 (Volume X, p. 267)
• Wilhelm Barthold : Turkestan - Down to the Mongol Invasion ( EJW Gibb Memorial Series ), London 1928, p. 323 f., Accessed on November 15, 2019.
• Clifford Edmund Bosworth: Article “ANŪŠTIGIN ḠARČAʾĪ” (December 15, 1986) in: Encyclopaedia Iranica , Online Edition