The History of the Turkshāhs of Kabul

Conference in English.

The history of the Turkshāhs of Kabul

Afghanistan is known for being full of archaeological sites and artefacts, irrefutable witnesses to essential cultural activities from the most remote past. As a result, until the outbreak of civil war in 1979, several archaeological missions and expeditions worked in the region. These missions mainly included the French Archaeological Delegation to Afghanistan (DAFA), which is celebrating its centenary this year, the Italian archaeological mission that excavated the Ghazni site, the British expedition that excavated Old Qandahar, and the Japanese missions that excavated and prospected the regions south of the Hindukush and Gandhara.

The civil war in Afghanistan forced the missions to cease their activities. However, it also led to the appearance of a lot of material outside controlled excavations. On the other hand, during the hiatus in fieldwork, researchers were able to devote more time to examining the materials collected during decades of intense excavation and exploration. In the last quarter of the 20th^century, as a result of the integration of these factors, much progress has been made in understanding the history of the local kingdom that stretched along the Kabul River from the ^7th to the 11th^century; Islamic sources refer to its rulers as the Kabulshāhs, as one of their capitals was Kabul.

The Kabulshāh kingdom emerged in the middle of the 7th^century. After the assassination of the last Sassanid king near Merv in 651, Sistān (southwestern Afghanistan) briefly serves as a bridgehead for the Arabs. The army stationed there made several attempts to conquer eastern Afghanistan. An army captured the city of Kabul around 665, but a year later the city was reconquered by the local chief known as "Kabulshāh". This is the first attestation of this title in Muslim historical literature. Subsequently, the rulers of Kabul came to control eastern Afghanistan and the Kabul river valley, clashing with Muslims in southern Afghanistan and north of the Hindukush. We do know, however, that there was a change of royal lineage at some point in the 9th^century. The first lineage is called Turkshāhs, as they are described as Turks in Muslim sources, while the second is called Hindushāhs, as they probably came from the regions east of the Khyber Pass.

As a result of the efforts of archaeologists, numismatists and historians in recent decades, much more has been discovered about the first line of Kabulshāhs, the Turkshāhs, than was known in the 1980s. In this lecture, we propose to outline the history of these Turkish rulers on the basis of new research.