Click Here to View the Main Index
743 AD...."....the supremacy of the Umayyad caliph al-Mahdi and the true conquest of Kabul did not take place until the end of the ninth century. ......An important recent discovery has provided a surprising insight into the events of this epoch. On the coins of some Arab governors, a Bactrian text overstruck on the rim has been discovered...... The reading of the text is as follows: (ppofio Kijaapo fiayo xoaSr/o klSo /So xaz iicavo /opyo o<5o crao /3o oa/3ayo aro i /xo /Jo yaivSo ( Fromo Kesaro, the Majestic Sovereign [is] who defeated the Arabs and laid a tax [on them]. Thus they sent it.)...... These coins formed part of the tax paid by the Arabs to Fromo Kesaro and were over- struck with a legend telling of his victory over them. Obviously, this event occurred during the reign of Fromo Kesaro (739-746) and may have contributed to his transformation in later historical tradition into the Tibetan national hero Phrom Ge-sar, whose figure still survives today in the folklore of the territory of ancient Gandhara."...... History Of Civilizations Of Central Asia
"….Ge-sar was the successor of Sahi Tegin (700-738 AD) "King of Khurasan'.......the Kushan territories of Gandhāra and Udayana..... in 739, Tegin Shah abdicated the throne of Gandhara in favour of his son, Fu-lin-chi-p'o (also known as Fromo Kesaro, the Bactrian form of his name).........this victory occurred during the Reign of Fromo Kesaro (739-746 AD) and may have contributed to his transformation in later historical tradition into the Tibetan national hero Phrom Ge-sar, whose figure still survives today in the folklore of the territory of ancient Gandhara...The ancient coins read in Bactrian script: "The Glory Increased! The Majestic Sovereign!".. The territory was defined by natural boundaries: the Hindu Kush mountain range ... Beyond the foothills north of Gandhara was the ancient region of Udayana...".
Website of His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje………."Legend reports that Vasubandhu came from the "Kingdom of Shambhala' (approximately, modern Begram, otherwise known as the ancient kingdom of Kapisha, north of Kabul) located in the Afghanistan region, north-west of Peshawar."….http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/pramodavajra.htm"….
"Khorasan Tegin Shah" (= Tegin, King of the East), known in Chinese sources as Wusan teqin sa, was the second Turk Shahi on the throne of Kabul, succeeding his father Barha Tegin around or after 680 AD. The "King of the East" whose dominion stretched from Kabulistan to Gandhara and at times also included Zabulistan. Bactria, the land just north of the Hindu Kush, did not belong to his immediate sphere of rule.....TURK SHAHIS, BARHA TEGIN AS "SRIO SHAHO" ….711-719 AD….….. Srio Shaho" (after ca.576 AD), Turko-Hepthalites in Gandhara….Bust right wearing bull headdress; Cursive greek SRIO ShH, tamgha behind bust / Attendants and a fire altar, derived from the Sassanian coins……In 576 Turko-Hepthalites overran the Nezak posessions in Bactrian and Gandhara, and replaced the standard "Nezak Malka" with a new "Napki Malka" type (replacing the Bull crown with this spiky crown)."…..http://www.numismall.com/acc/Nice-billon-obol-of-Srio-Shaho-after-ca.576-AD-Turko-Hepthalites-in-Gandhara-w2724.html
"The first Rutbil of Zabulistan fell already by 683 or 686/87 CE in a battle against the Arabs, after having been previously allied with them. Around 710 CE it appears that the Kabul Shah temporarily gained suzerainty over Zabulistan, and troops were recruited in Zabulistan for the mutual struggle against the Arabs....In 719/20 CE an embassy was sent by the Tegin of Jibin (Kabulistan) and the iltäbär of Zabulistan (Xieyu) to China to obtain confirmation of their thrones from the Tang emperor. The investiture decree signed by the emperor was sent by messenger back to Jibin and Zabulistan. During his journey through the lands south of the Hindu Kush in around 726 CE, the Korean pilgrim Huichao stayed for some time at the court of the Kabul Shah, who may well have been "Khorasan Tegin Shah". Huichao recorded that Kabul and Zabul were then ruled by Turkic kings, who were Buddhists, and that the King of Kabul was supposed to have been the uncle of the ruler of Zabul.".....http://pro.geo.univie.ac.at/projects/khm/showcases/showcase14?language=en
"The success of the Turk Fromo Kesaro in overwhelming an intrusive Arab army, sometime between 739-745, may have formed the historic core behind the Gesar epic in Tibet. In the records of the earliest rulers of Ladakh, Baltistan and Gilgit, whose countries were later overrun by incursive Tibetans, royal ancestry is connected to the Bactrian Gesar."......Harmatta, J.; Litvinsky, B. A. (1999). "Tokharistan and Gandhara under Western Türk rule (650-750)". In Dani, Ahmad Hasan. History of civilizations of Central Asia 3. Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 367–402. ISBN 978-81-208-1540-7. Retrieved 15 July 2011
"Vohra 1996, p. 217 writes that these coins with the title Fromo Kesaro appear to refer to the successor of Sahi Tegin (700-738 CE:Chinese:烏散特勤灑:MC:uo-sân d'ɘk-g'iɘn ṣai=*Horsān tegin šāhi 'Tegin, king of Khurasan'), ruler of the Second Turki Śāhi dynasty at Kapisa-Udyana, whose reign was between 738 and 745 C.E., and who is identified with the 'Frōm Kēsar' (拂菻罽婆: Fúlǐn jìpó:North Western Tang pfvyr-lḭum-kḭe-sâ) of the Tang shu. SeeHarmatta & Litvinsky 1999, pp. 376,380)."....Vohra, Rohit (1996). "Early History of Ladakh: Mythic Lore % Fabulation: A preliminary note on the conjectural history of the 1st millennium A.D.". In Osmaston, Henry; Denwood, Philip. Recent research on Ladakh 4 & 5: proceedings of the fourth and fifth international colloquia on Ladakh. Dehli: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 216–234. ISBN 978-81-208-1404-2. Retrieved 16 July 2011.
"The first Rutbil of Zabulistan had declared his independence from the Kingdom of Jibin (Kabulistan) after 680 CE. According to Arab and Chinese sources, he was an older brother of the king of Kabul "Khorasan Tegin Shah" ; after his ascension to the throne, they had a falling out and the first Rutbil founded his own kingdom in Zabul. Initially he must have secured the support of the Arabs. The title Rutbil corresponds to the Turkic iltäbär and is used in Arab sources to refer to the king of Zabulistan from that point on. The personal names of the various rulers are not known from written sources. The end of the Zabul kingdom, which together with Kabul stood at the fore of the long resistance against the Muslim conquerors, finally fell in 870 CE when the Arab general Yaqub bin Laith al-Saffar (r. 861–879 CE) conquered the entire Iranian East from Sistan and definitively defeated Zabul.".... THE RUTBILS OF ZABULISTAN AND THE "EMPEROR OF ROME".....http://pro.geo.univie.ac.at/projects/khm/showcases/showcase15?language=en
"The center of the Kingdom of Zabul lay in the city Ghazni, one of the three residences of the king. In the northeast it bordered on Kabulistan and in the northwest it reached into the central Hindu Kush.... In the south it included at times the cities of Rakhwad (al-Rukhkhaj) and Bost (near Kandahar, South Afghanistan). In the west the border followed the Helmand River, and the Sulaiman Mountains constituted the eastern border.....The travel diary of the Chinese monk Xuanzang from the first half of the 7th century records that numerous Buddhist stupas supposedly built by the Indian Maurya ruler Asoka (268–232 BCE) existed in Zabul as well as several hundred Buddhist monasteries and several dozen Hindu temples. The temple of the Brahman god Zun was famous far outside the borders of the kingdom and drew thousands of pilgrims annually. When the Arab governor of Sistan, 'Abd al-Rahman bin Samurah, reached Zabul with his troops in 653/54 CE, his path led to the temple of Zun. To demonstrate the impotence of the pagan god against the Muslims, he hacked both arms off the golden statue and tore out its ruby eyes.".....http://pro.geo.univie.ac.at/projects/khm/showcases/showcase15?language=en
"Following "Khorasan Tegin Shah"'s ascension to power, a conflict within the royal family must have broken out that caused the older brother of the Kabul Shah to move to Zabulistan and establish his independence there. From then on, Arab sources refer to the ruler of Zabulistan as Rutbil (Turkic iltäbär). Faced with the threat of the Arabs, the two ruling houses remained in close contact and fought side by side against the Muslim enemy. The first Rutbil of Zabulistan fell already by 683 or 686/87 CE in a battle against the Arabs, after having been previously allied with them. Around 710 CE it appears that the Kabul Shah temporarily gained suzerainty over Zabulistan, and troops were recruited in Zabulistan for the mutual struggle against the Arabs.....In 719/20 CE an embassy was sent by the Tegin of Jibin (Kabulistan) and the iltäbär of Zabulistan (Xieyu) to China to obtain confirmation of their thrones from the Tang emperor. The investiture decree signed by the emperor was sent by messenger back to Jibin and Zabulistan. During his journey through the lands south of the Hindu Kush in around 726 CE, the Korean pilgrim Huichao stayed for some time at the court of the Kabul Shah, who may well have been "Khorasan Tegin Shah". Huichao recorded that Kabul and Zabul were then ruled by Turkic kings, who were Buddhists, and that the King of Kabul was supposed to have been the uncle of the ruler of Za.bul."....http://pro.geo.univie.ac.at/projects/khm/showcases/showcase14?language=en
Teginābād, “the city of Tegin,”…The Tegin Ḵorāsān Šāh was probably the founder of Teginābād, a city on or near the site of present-day Kandahār….In Arachosia coins are known of a seventh-century ruler called in Pahlavi Tkyn ḥwlʾsʾn MLKʾ (Tegin Ḵorāsān Šāh), probably identical with the personage named by Biruni as Varhategin, a founder of what that author calls the “Turkish” dynasty…Svend W. Helms, who excavated the site of Old Kandahar in the 1970s, also surmises that Teginābād was the name for the city in the early Islamic period….… in the seventh century, among opponents of the Arab invaders is included, in north and northwestern Afghanistan, a personage named by Arab historians Tarkhān Nēzak, to whom are now plausibly attributed the many coins read by older numismatists as Npky MLKʾ, better understood as Nyzky MLKʾ (Nēzak Šāh; see NĒZAK)…..http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hephthalites
Za.bul (Persian and Pashto: زابل) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the south of the country. It has a population of about 289,300,[3] which is mostly a rural tribal society. Zabul became an independent province from neighbouring Kandahar in 1963. Historically, it was part of the Zabulistan region. Qalat (Kalata) serves as the capital of the province.
"In the time of Alexander the Great, the Hindu Kush range was referred to as the Caucasus Indicus or the "Indian Caucasus" (as opposed to the Greater Caucasus range between the Caspian and Black Seas), and some past authors have considered this as a possible derivation of the name "Hindu Kush". However, many other theories have been propounded by different scholars and writers for the origins of the modern name Hindu Kush. Hindū Kūh (ھندوکوه) and Kūh-e Hind (کوهِ ھند) are usually applied to the entire range separating the basins of the Kabul and Helmand rivers from that of the Amu River (ancient Oxus), or more specifically, to that part of the range lying northwest of the Afghan capital Kabul. Sanskrit documents refer to the Hindu Kush as Pāriyātra Parvata (पारियात्र पर्वत)……Some sources state that the term Hindu Kush originally applied only to the peak in the area of the Kushan Pass, which had become a center of the Kushan Empire by the 1st century AD. This mountain range was also called Paropamisadae by Hellenic Greeks in the late first millennium BC."……
..."the Four Sons of Heaven, the rulers of the four great countries of the Asiatic world: China, India, Iran, Throm in the north with King Gesar." (Stein:1972, pg280...Stein Aurel M. 1929.
"Gesar of Ling …..Tazig: appears to signify Persia. 13 days horseback ride from Ling, at a place called Memoyu Thang." (David-Neel: Gesar: 1981..pg 239)....
" The ruler of Kabul at that time was the king whose name was inscribed on the coin as “Horāsān Tegin Šāh” and transcribed in Chinese as “Wusan Teqin Sa” (Göbl, I, pp. 142-45; Humbach, 1966, p. 19). "…..http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kandahar-early-islamic-period
"Kandahar and its surroundings have been an important junction connecting Iran and India since ancient times, a point which has been illustrated by Fischer (esp. pp. 170-99) with a thorough examination of the sources. Ḥodud al-ʿālam, a 10th-century Persian geography, calls Bost “the gate to India,” because it was the western entrance of the route from Kandahar to the lower Indus valley. Parvān, north of Kabul, is also called “the gate to India” in the same source, because it is located on another important route, which goes along the Kabul river and connects northwest India with Central Asia."….http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kandahar-early-islamic-period
465-470 Ephthalites conquer Gandhara, set up a Tegin (a viceroy).
470-480 War between Tegin of Gandhara and Gupta Empire of India.
473-479 Ephthalites conquer Sogdiana, driving the Kidarites westwards. Next conquering Khotan and Kashgar (in the Tarim Basin).
480-500 Gupta empire collapses. Tegin is overlord of North & Central India.
History of Civilizations of Central Asia: The crossroads of civilizations….edited by Ahmad Hasan Dani
Nicholas Sims-Williams, Bactrian documents from Northern Afghanistan: the decipherment of Bactrian, London, SOAS, 1997
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico….January 2014
Good informative for us
ReplyDelete