Khwarazm, or Chorasmia, is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, bordered on the north by the (former) Aral Sea, on the east by the Kyzylkum Desert, on the south by the Karakum Desert, and on the west by the Ustyurt Plateau. It was the center of the Iranian Khwarezmian civilization until the 9th century, when Turkic tribes moved into and ruled the lands. Cities such as Kath, Gurganj (now Konye-Urgench) and Khiva served as capital to a series of dynasties, such as the Afrighids and the Anushtegin. Today, around two-thirds of Khwarazm belongs to Uzbekistan, while around a third belongs to Turkmenistan.
Names and etymology Names Khwarazm has been known also as Chorasmia, Khaurism, Khwarezm, Khwarezmia, Khwarizm, Khwarazm, Khorezm, Khoresm, Khorasam, Kharazm, Harezm, Horezm, and Chorezm.
In Avestan the name is ; in (/hUvārazmī-/); in Later (/Xwārazm/); in New ; in ; in Old Chinese * (); in Modern Chinese ( / Xiao'erjing: خُوَلاذِمُوْ); in , Xorazm, ; in , ; in , ; in , ; in , ; in ; in by Herodotus.
Etymology
The Arab geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi in his Muʿjam al-Buldan wrote that the name was a Persian compound of (), and (), referring to the abundance of cooked fish as a main diet of the peoples of this area.Yaqut al-Hamawi, Mu'jam al-buldān, Volume 2, page 395
C.E. Bosworth, however, thought the Persian name to be made up of ( 'the sun') and ( 'earth, land'), designating 'the land from which the sun rises',C. E. Bosworth, The Encyclopedia of Islam, Volume IV, 1978. page 1061 although a similar etymology is also given for Khurasan. Another view is that the Iranian compound stands for 'lowland' from 'low' and 'land'. Khwarazm is indeed the lowest region in Central Asia (except for the Caspian Sea to the far west), located on the delta of the Amu Darya on the southern shores of the Aral Sea. Various forms of are commonly used in the Persian Gulf to stand for tidal flats, marshland, or tidal bays (e.g., Khor Musa, Khor Abdallah, Hor al-Azim, Hor al-Himar, etc.)
The name also appears in Achaemenid inscriptions as Huvarazmish, which is declared to be part of the Persian Empire.
Some of the early scholars assumed Khwarazm to be what ancient Avestic texts refer to as (; Late ; New ; , 'the Arya Expanse').Bahram Farahvoshi. Iranovich, Tehran University Press. 1991. page 8 These sources claim that Old Urgench, which was the capital of ancient Khwarazm for many years, was actually Ourva, the eighth land of Ahura Mazda mentioned in the Pahlavi text of Vendidad.Musa Javan. Tarikh-i Ijtima'i Iran-i Bastan (The social history of ancient Iran), 1961. page 24 However, Michael Witzel, a researcher in early Indo-European history, claims that Airyanem Vaejah was in what is now Afghanistan, the northern areas of which were a part of ancient Khwarazm and Greater Khorasan.Michael Witzel. "The Home of the Aryans." (.pdf) Others, however, disagree. University of Hawaiʻi historian Elton L. Daniel thinks Khwarazm to be the "most likely locale" corresponding to the original home of the Avestan people, and Dehkhoda calls Khwarazm "the cradle of the Aryan tribe" ().Elton L. Daniel, The History of Iran. 2001. . page 28
History Legendary The Khwarezmian scholar Al-Biruni (973–1048)L. Massignon, "Al-Biruni et la valeur internationale de la science arabe" in Al-Biruni Commemoration Volume (Calcutta, 1951), pages 217–219. Excerpt: In a celebrated preface to the Book of Drugs, Biruni says: "It is through the Arabic language that the sciences have been transmitted by means of translations from all parts of the world. They have been enhanced by the translation into the Arabic language and have as a result insinuated themselves into men's hearts, and the beauty of this language has commingled with these sciences in our veins and arteries. And if it is true that in all nations one likes to adorn oneself by using the language to which one has remained loyal, having become accustomed to using it with friends and companions according to need, I must judge for myself that in my native Chorasmian, science has as much as chance of becoming perpetuated as a camel has of facing Kaaba." says that the land belonging to the mythical king Afrasiab was first colonised 980 years before Alexander the Great (thus E, well before the Seleucid era) when the hero of the Iranian epic Siyavash came to Khwarazm; his son Kay Khusraw came to the throne 92 years later, in 1200 BCE. Al-Biruni starts giving names only with the Afrighid line of Khwarazmshahs, having placed the ascension of Afrighids in 616 of the Seleucid era, i.e. in 305 CE.
Early people
Like Sogdia, Khwarazm was an expansion of the Bactria–Margiana culture during the Bronze Age, which later fused with Indo-Iranians during their migrations around 1000 BCE. Early Iron Age states arose from this cultural exchange. List of successive cultures in Khwarazm region 3000–500 BCE: Kelteminar culture Suyarganovo culture Tazabagyab culture Amirabad Culture Saka
During the final Saka phase, there were about 400 settlements in Khwarazm.MacKenzie, 1996 Ruled by the native Afrighid dynasty, it was at this point that Khwarazm entered the historical record with the Achaemenid expansion.
Khwarezmian language and culture An Eastern Iranian language, Khwarezmian was spoken in Khwarazm proper (i.e., the lower Amu Darya region) until soon after the Mongol invasion, when it was replaced by Turkic languages.Andrew Dalby, Dictionary of Languages: The definitive reference to more than 400 languages, Columbia University Press, 2004, page 278MacKenzie, D. N. "Khwarazmian Language and Literature," in E. Yarshater ed. Cambridge History of Iran, Volume III, Part 2, Cambridge 1983, pp. 1244–1249Encyclopædia Britannica, "Iranian languages" (Retrieved 29 December 2008) It was closely related to Sogdian. Other than the astronomical terms used by the native Iranian Khwarezmian speaker Al-Biruni,Bosworth, C.E. "Ḵh̲ W Ārazm." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. Accessed at 10 November 2007 <http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-4205> Our other sources of Khwarezmian include al-Zamakhshari's Arabic–Persian–Khwarezmian dictionary and several legal texts that use Khwarezmian terms to explain certain legal concepts.
For most of its history, up until the Mongol conquest, the inhabitants of the area were from Iranian stock,Encyclopædia Iranica, "Central Asia: The Islamic period up to the mongols", C. Edmund Bosworth: "In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted to Fereydun's son Tur. The denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam essentially those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, and behind them the Chinese (see Kowalski; Minorsky, "Turan"). Turan thus became both an ethnic and a geographical term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through Islamic times the lands immediately beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians."C.E. Bosworth, "The Appearance of the Arabs in Central Asia under the Umayyads and the establishment of Islam", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV: The Age of Achievement: AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, edited by M. S. Asimov and C. E. Bosworth. Multiple History Series. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1998. Excerpt from page 23: "Central Asia in the early seventh century, as ethnically, still largely an Iranian land whose people used various Middle Iranian languages. and they spoke an Eastern Iranian language called Khwarezmian. The scientist Al-Biruni, a Khwarazm native, in his Athar ul-Baqiyah, (page 47) specifically verifies the Iranian origins of Khwarezmians when he wrote (in Arabic): ("The people of Khwarezm were a branch from the Persian tree.")
The area of Khwarazm was under Afrighid and then Samanid control until the 10th century before it was conquered by the Ghaznavids. The Iranian Khwarezmian language and culture felt the pressure of Turkic infiltration from northern Khwarazm southwards, leading to the disappearance of the original Iranian character of the province and its complete Turkicization today. Khwarezmian speech probably lasted in upper Khwarazm, the region around Hazarasp, till the end of the 8th/14th century.
The Khwarezmian language survived for several centuries after Islam until the Turkification of the region, and so must some at least of the culture and lore of ancient Khwarazm, for it is hard to see the commanding figure of Al-Biruni, a repository of so much knowledge, appearing in a cultural vacuum.
Achaemenid period
The Achaemenid Empire took control of Chorasmia during the time of King Darius I (ruled 522–486 BCE).Huart, Clement. Ancient Persia and Iranian Civilization. 1972. . page 46 And the Persian poet Ferdowsi mentions Persian cities like Afrasiab and Chach in abundance in his epic Shahnama. The contact with the Achaemenid Empire had a great influence on the material culture of Chorasmia, starting a period of rich economic and cultural development.
Chorasmian troops participated in the Second Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes in t80 BCE, under the command of Achaemenid general and later satrap Artabazos I of Phrygia."An Artabazus ( Artabazos ), son of Pharnaces, commanded the Parthian and Chorasmian units in Xerxes' expedition of 480, and led the Persian army back to Asia after Mardonius' death at Plataea." "The Parthians and Chorasmians had for their commander Artabazus son of Pharnaces, the Sogdians Azanes son of Artaeus, the Gandarians and Dadicae Artyphius son of Artabanus." in Herodotus VII 64-66 By the time of the Persian king Darius III, Khwarazm had already become an independent kingdom.
Hellenistic period
Chorasmia was involved in the conquests of Alexander the Great in Central Asia. When the king of Khwarazm offered friendship to Alexander in 328 BCE, Alexander's Greek and Roman biographers imagined the nomad king of a desert waste, but 20th-century Russian archeologists revealed the region as a stable and centralized kingdom, a land of agriculture to the east of the Aral Sea, surrounded by the nomads of Central Asia, protected by its army of mailed horsemen, in the most powerful kingdom northwest of the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of antiquity). The king's emissary offered to lead Alexander's armies against his own enemies, west over the Caspian towards the Black Sea (e.g. Kingdom of Iberia and Colchis).
Khwarazm was largely independent during the Seleucid, Greco-Bactrian and Arsacid dynasties. Numerous fortresses were built, and the Khwarazm oasis has been dubbed the "Fifty fortresses oasis". Chorasmia remained relatively sheltered from the interests of the Seleucid Empire or Greco-Bactria, but various elements of Hellenistic art appear in the ruins of Chorasmian cities, particularly at Akchakhan-Kala, and the influence of the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, reflecting the rise of Kushan Empire, appears at Toprak-Kala. The early rulers of Chorasmia first imitated the coinage of the Greco-Bactrian ruler Eucratides I. Parthian artistic influences have also been described.