Tocharistan

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With the name Tocharistan ( Arabic طخارستان) was used by the medieval Muslim authors to describe an area that geographically corresponds roughly to ancient Bactria or today's northern Afghanistan . The country is named after the ancient Tochars , although it cannot be determined whether there was any memory of the historic Tochars at the time the name was used. Only Al-Baladhuri referred Balch as Madīnat Ṭuḫārā .

The earliest use of the name under the Chinese name To-hu-luo ( Chinese  吐 呼 羅 ) is found in the Wei Shu , the annals of the Northern Wei Dynasty . After the time of the Ghurids and the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the name apparently went out of use.

The borders of Tocharistan are indicated differently. A detailed description of the boundaries of the narrower Tocharistan can be found in al-Istachri . According to this, Tocharistan comprised the country east of Balkh , west of Badachshan , north of the Hindu Kush and south of Amu Darya . With other writers, the boundaries are sometimes drawn considerably wider. According to al-Balādhurī , Tocharistan reached northwest to today's Kerki and he mentions Zabulistan and Kabul in the south as border countries of Tocharistan . According to at-Tabarī , places north of the Amu Darya also belonged to Tocharistan. Furthermore, with some authors Tocharistan is divided into an upper and lower Tocharistan without there being a consensus on the division between the authors.

From a political point of view, Tocharistan is described as splintered into many small principalities, insofar as these small princes were not under the suzerainty of a larger empire such as that of the Hephthalites or the Kok-Turks . At the time of the Islamic conquest, a Karluk prince was the ruler of Tocharistan. After first advances by the Muslim Arabs at the time of the third caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān , the governor of Khorassan , Qutaiba ibn Muslim , succeeded in securing Tocharistan for the caliphate around 709/710 . After the Muslim rule was shaken by the uprising of al-Hārith ibn Suraij (734-737), it was finally secured after the victory of the Muslims over the Chinese empire of the Tang Dynasty in the Battle of the Talas (751). Politically, Tocharistan shared the history of the Muslim dynasties of the Tahirids , Samanids , Ghaznavids, and Ghurids who owned the land.

literature

  • W. Barthold, "Ṭok̲h̲āristān" Encyclopedia of Islām , Volume IV, Leiden-Leipzig, 1934
  • W. Barthold, CE Bosworth, "Ṭuk̲h̲āristān" Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online
  • Joseph Marquart: Ērānšahr according to the geography of Ps. Moses Xorenaci. With historical-critical commentary and historical and topographical excursions. In: Treatises of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen / Philological-Historical Class. 3.2 1901, excursus III Toxāristān, pp. 199–304
  • Vladimir F. Minorskij: Ḥudūd al-ʿālam. A Persian geography 372 AH - 982 AD; illustrated by twelve maps. Luzac, London 1937.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ W. Barthold, CE Bosworth , "Ṭuk̲h̲āristān" Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online
  2. ↑ Joseph Marquart: Ērānšahr after the geography of Ps. Moses Xorenaci. With historical-critical commentary and historical and topographical excursions. In: Treatises of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen / Philological-Historical Class. 3.2 1901, p. 200
  3. ↑ Barthold, W .; Bosworth, CE "Ṭuk̲h̲āristān" Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online