Zabulistan
Zabulistan ( Persian زابلستان, roughly: Land of Žawul ) is the name of a historical region in Central Asia in today's Afghanistan .
expansion
The name Zabulistan (or Zavulistan ) describes a region that lies between the historical area of Sistan and Kabul in present-day Afghanistan. Especially in the Shāhnāme of Firdausi , the term Zabulistan is usually equated with the neighboring region of Sistan to the west. Today's Zabul province , south of the Hindu Kush, corresponds among other things to the geographical location of the historical region and is accordingly its namesake.
The Chinese long-distance traders in the 6th and 7th centuries knew the kingdom of Zabul under the name Ts'ao, a paraphrase of the self-name Ğawul or Žawul.
history
The Sasanids ruled the Zabulistan region in the 3rd century, as evidenced by the local minting of Sassanid coins. In the following years the Iranian Huns and in the 7th century the Turk Shahi , who also ruled Kabulistan , were able to conquer it .
As part of the Islamic expansion , Zabulistan was conquered several times, but was also lost again. Until the 9th century, the Zunbils ruled in Zabulistan and neighboring Zamindawar ( Arachosia ) and opposed Islam; Little is known about their own religion. The main god Žun is described as a fish and probably a trade deity; the king wore a crown in the shape of a fish's head and a large fish skeleton was exhibited in front of the Žun Temple. At the beginning of the 8th century, Zunbil only had to pay tribute to the caliph for a short time. There was finally a Saffarid campaign against the Zunbil in the 860s , and Zabulistan was captured by Sistan.
The Persian historian Mir Hwand reports that under Ahmad Sandjar , the last Seljuk prince to rule these areas, the provinces of Zabulistan and Sistan were ruled by a confidante of the Sultan. The Zabulistan he described lay almost entirely in what is now Afghanistan. The capital was Ghasna , it bordered on Ghur , India, Sistan and Khorasan .
mythology
The Persian mythology According Zabulistan was the birthplace of Iranian folk hero Rostam . The country appears in various traditional legends and stories.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b H. Miyakawa and A. Kollautz: A document on long-distance trade between Byzantium and China at the time of Theophylact In: Byzantinische Zeitschrift 77, 1984, here p. 14 f., ISSN 1868-9027 .
- ↑ James Howard-Johnston: The Sasanian state: the evidence of coinage and military construction . In: Journal of Ancient History (Special Issue) 2.2, 2014, pp. 144ff.