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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1884.
his footprint in indelible characters there. The quest of Balkh and Herat completed the subempire of Khuârezm, against which Chinghizjection of Khorasan to the Khuârezmian Khan was now to array his men, had been empire. bastily conquered, and had had but a short Shortly after Mazanderan and Kerman were term of greatness. It had succeeded to that reduced to obedience. He then broke off his of the Seljük Turks.
allegiance to the ruler of Kara Khitai, whose This empire, like several others in South dependent in Transoziana, named Osman, beWestern Asia, was founded by a Turk, who had came his man. He also conquered a portion been originally a slave.
of Turkistán as far as Uzkend, where he The sovereigns of Persia were in the habit placed & garrison. Some time after, having of purchasing young Turks, who were captur- quarrelled with Osman, who had meanwhile ed by the various frontier tribes in their become his son-in-law, he attacked and took mutual struggles, and employing them in their him prisoner and afterwards put him to death. service. They generally had a bodyguard He then appropriated his dominions and formed of them, and many of them were en- made Samarkand his capital. franchised and rose to posts of high influence, In 1212-13 be annexed the principality of and in many cases supplanted their masters. The Ghur, and three years later attacked and subfounder of the Khuárezmian empire was such a dued the country of Ghazni. When he capslave, named Nushtikin, in the service of the tured its chief town he discovered proofs that Seljak Sultan Malik Shah. He rose to the the Khalif had been intriguing against him. position of a chamberlain, which carried with He accordingly determined to depose him and it the government of the province of Khuê- marched large army westwards. On his rezm, that is, of the fertile valley of the way he received the submission of the rulers Omns and the wide steppes on either side of it, of Azerbaijan and Fars, and at length entered bounded on the west by the Caspian, and on the dominions of the Khalif, which at this the east by Bukhara. He was succeeded by his time were limited to the provinces of Irakson, ķutbu'd-din Muhammad, whose service to Arab, and Khuzistân. Muhammad occupied the Seljük rulers, Barkiarok and Sanjar, the former province, and proceeded to divide it obtained for him the title of Khuárezm Shah, into various military fiefs, but this was the extent a title which was borne by the rulers of that of his aggression in this direction. A terrible province before the Arab invasion. He was storm overtook his troops on the mountains of succeeded by his son, Atsiz, who several times Asadabad, and after losing many of them, the took up arms against his sovereign Sanjar, and rest were attacked by the Turkish and Kurdish became virtually independent of him. He was tribes and suffered terribly; a fate which ruler of Khuârezm when Yeliu Taishi, the popular superstition naturally assigned as the founder of the empire of Kara Khitai, entered result of so unholy a war. Muhammad deemed his dominions, and having been defeated by him, it wise to retire, and his retreat was probably he was obliged to become his tributary. He bastened by his quarrel with the Mongols. was succeeded in 1156 by his son Il Arslan He gave Irak Ajem as an appanage to his who, on Sanjar's death in 1157, conquered the son Roknu'd-din, the provinces of Kerman, western part of Khorasan. He left two sons, Kesh and Makran, were assigned to Ghiathnamed Takish and Sultan Shah, between whom a'd-din; Ghazni, Bâmian, Ghur, Bost, &c., which a long struggle ensued. Takish was eventually formed the old Ghur empire were assigned to victorious. He also conquered the Seljuk Jelalu'd-din, while to his youngest son, whom ruler Toghrol, and sent his head to the Khalif he had fixed upon as his heir, was assigned at Baghdad. By this conquest Irak Ajem Khuárezm, Khorasan, and Mazanderan. From was added to his dominions. With the deaths this enumeration it may be gathered that Muof Toghrul and Sanjar, the Seljük dynasty in hammad was a very powerful sovereign. He Persis came to an end, and Takish obtained controlled an army of 400,000 men and his the investiture of their States from the Khalif. dominions at the invasion of the Mongols Takish was succeeded in 1200 by his son, stretched from the Jaxartes to the Persian Alaiu'd-dîn Muhammad who, by the con- I Gulf, and from the Indus to Irak Arab and
