Central Asia

I've now considered how the politics played out in the Central Lands of Islam, in the West and in Africa. Now I will turn in the other direction and away from the immediate Western interests of the early Islamic period. This post concerns Central Asia but I'll notice in the next post how Central Asian Turkic peoples both inspired by Islam and otherwise again impinged on immediate East European interests and the interests of eastern Christendom (as indeed they did upon the interests of the 'Abbasid Muslim Caliphate). The posts following will again then move away again from then-Western interests to South and South East Asia.

The ancient inhabitants of this region between West and East Asia to the east of the Caspian Sea who still live there tend to be called Turkic peoples. Today’s Turkish (the most widely spoken Turkic language) is the modern version of one of the many Turkic languages spoken and originating in the area. Central Asia includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and, in fact, Western China for our purposes. I also include in Muslim Central Asia the mostly Muslim East Caucasus (the area south of Russia between the Caspian and Black Seas and including Azerbaijan and Chechnya, for example). Much of the territory of these two regions has been part of the USSR until recently. I will consider Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and, in fact, India as South Asian and Turkey as West Asian/European in the later posts I intend to make on those areas.

‘Uthman was the caliph responsible for the first Arab feelers (in 654) reaching beyond the Oxus River (known therefore as Transoxiana), which is now called the Amu Darya, originates in the Pamir mountains to the south, forms much of the border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and also Afghanistan and Tajikistan and formerly drained into the Aral Sea. Persians had been involved in the area before them. Under al-Walid I, there was a renewed Arab interest and the beginning of Arab settlement in the region from 711 (around the time of the expansion into Spain also). In 712 the Arabs took control of a puppet regime in Khawarazm just to the west of the Oxus. The Turkic peoples fiercely defended their territories and Arab interest in expansion there waned from around 730.

Much later (from around the 11^th Century) a Turkic group called the Seljuqs, who had converted to Islam in the 10^th Century, ruled in Khawarazm for several centuries (dominating the local region until the 14^th). They chose Persian as their official language in a state that was trilingual (Turkic and Arabic was also widely understood). The later Ottomans and Mughals also adopted this kind of trilingualism.

Following the ‘Abbasid Caliphs, the Seljuqs used the Hanafi School legally. The Ottomans also adopted the Hanafi School of jurisprudence as their official school of law.

The Arab regime also made contact with the Caucasus (in 643). In the 7^th to the 10^th Centuries they continued to have contact with the Khazar peoples whose capital was at Baku (now the capital of Azerbaijan). The area is also sometimes called Khazaria for the local inhabitants. Trade and missionary efforts were ongoing although the local king apparently preferred Judaism to the Christianity and Islam often proposed to him. Al-Mas’udi discusses the history of this region.

In the ‘Abbasid period, the Persian Muslim dynasties centred on Khorasan began to interest themselves in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Later, Turkic dynasties such as the Samanids and the Ghaznavids continued the Islamic and political influence. The Ghaznavid capital of Ghazni was in Afghanistan and they also extended their influence South as far as Lahore (today in Pakistan).

Also in the ‘Abbasid period, trade with China via Central Asia provided paper, Chinaware, gun-powder, silk, painting styles and other art techniques to the Arabs for the first time.

The area began to play its part in the grand scheme of Islamic learning, both religious and secular. Bukhara and Samarkhand were major learning centres. Al-Bukhari, the great Hadith expert came from Bukhara, as his name suggests. Al-Khawarismi (780 – 850), the famed mathematician, astronomer and inventor of algebra, hailed from the region (as his name suggests). Al-Biruni (from Birun in the region) was the famed cartographer and geographer. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was also active in the field of medicine here in the 11th Century (so far in advance of Western methods of the time that the West much later continued to use his textbooks). A Kashghari man (Kashghar is now in Western China and is probably where the Arabs learned about paper) wrote, in Arabic, an Encyclopaedia of the Turkish Language.

‘Islamic’ coins with Arabic inscriptions were minted in Samarkhand from at least the 8^th Century. The monumental mausoleum was a Turkic tradition that continued under Islam with Persian architectural influence. The Timurids and an Uzbek state in what is now Ukraine made major contributions to Islamic art and architecture. Trade with China now led as we have seen to the major contribution to culture of the trade route which meandered through Turkic territories.

The idea of soldier-slaves derived from subject peoples such as Turkic peoples (who could also nevertheless rise to high social and political rank) developed under these regimes with ‘Abbasid support. Initially it was the practice of an ‘Abbasid Caliph who made his capital at Samarra. He bought Turkish and Circassian and other Caucasian (meaning from the Caucasus) slaves for the purpose. Famously, a dynasty of such slaves called the Mamluks later ruled Egypt.

There was a general drift, demographically, of eastern Turkic peoples such as the Turkmani Seljuqs in the direction of the western part of the Islamic world. The Mongols began their invasions from the East in the 13^th Century notably sacking Baghdad and later converting to Islam, the religion of their subjects. Their influence as successor dynasties (e.g. Timurids, Chagatays, Tatars, and Uzbeks) continued in Central Asia and the Caucasus opposed to Russian domination from the 16^th to the 20^th Centuries (and now possibly the 21st).

Religiously, Buddhism competed with Islam in the early 8^th Century in Transoxiana as it did further south at Bamiyan in Afghanistan (where the Buddhist statues were blown up recently by the Taliban regime). These regions were on the famous Silk Road (really several roads). Nevertheless, Islam slowly spread to the Transoxiana region as it did to the Caucasus. The Northern Bulghars, a Turkic group living well to the north of the Caucasus around the northern Volga (that may have later colonised Bulgaria far to the south in the Balkans) also began to convert to Islam under the usual influence of persuasive traders and missionaries. Ibn Fadlan was an Islamic missionary among these Northern Bulghars who gave some accounts of his life and the region.

The Seljuqs that originated as rulers in Khawarazm played a role in defending Sunnism against Shiism by establishment of the system of Sunni madrasas to teach the orthodox religion.

Theologically, the Seljuqs were from the Maturidi School (a form of Ashari). The Naqshbandi, Kubrawi and Yasevi Sufi Schools were also prominent among the Seljuqs (among others).