FIFTEEN

Central Asia after the Mongols

153

The Shïbānids (Shaybānids) or Abu ‘l-Khayrids

906–1007/1500–99

Transoxania and northern Afghanistan

When Toqtamïsh and his White Horde moved westwards and united with the Golden Horde in South Russia, Western Siberia fell to the descendants of Jochi’s youngest son Shïban. Later, these descendants came to be known as the Shïbānids (Arabised, perhaps with a hope of suggesting a fictitious connection with the ancient Arab tribe of Shaybān of Bakr, as Shaybānids). One branch of them remained in Siberia as Khāns of Tura or Türnen (Tiumen) until extinguished in the late sixteenth century, but much of the Horde of Shïban moved into Transoxania, where its members acquired the name of Özbegs (presumably after the famous Golden Horde Khan Muhammad Özbeg, 713–42/1313–41, see above, no. 134), becoming the progenitors of the greater part of the indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Uzbek Republic.

Abu ’l-Khayr took over northern Khwārazm and unsuccessfully attacked the Tīmūrids (see above, no. 144) in Transoxania, but his grandson Muhammad conquered Transoxania by 906/1500 from the last Tīmūrids and temporarily occupied Khurasan also. This last was retaken by Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī (see above, no. 148), but for much of the sixteenth century the Sunnī orthodox Shïbānids carried on warfare against the Shī‘ī Ṣafawids of Persia, and their alliance was courted by other Sunnī empires such as those of the Ottomans and the Mughals of India. The Shïbānid khanate in fact formed a loose family confederacy, with powerful appanages granted out by the ruling supreme khān to various junior members. These appanages were centred upon Balkh, Bukhara, Tashkent and Samarkand, and these local centres became the capital of the whole khanate when their holders moved up and became recognised as supreme ruler.

Abu ’1-Khayrid power reached its peak under ‘Abdallāh II b. Iskandar, effective ruler for nearly forty years, under whom Transoxania experienced much cultural and commercial progress. This Shïbānid clan ruled until 1007/1599, when its last member, Pīr Muḥammad II, was killed by his rival for control of Transoxania, Bāqī Muḥammad b. Jāni Muḥammad, a descendant of Jochi’s son Orda and a connection of the Shïbānids in the female line. The family of Bāqī Muḥammad, the Toqay Temürids or Jānids, then assumed power in Bukhara (see below, no. 154).

However, a collateral line of Shïbānids, the ‘Arabshāhids, ruled in Khwārazm during this period. These were the descendants of ‘Arabshāh b. Pūlād, Pūlād being the great-grandfather of Abu ’1-Khayr. One of them, Ilbars b. Büreke, became khān at Ürgench in 917/1511. The ‘Arabshāhids soon controlled the whole of Khwārazm as far south as northern Khurasan. In c. 1008/c. 1600 the khāns moved their capital to Khiva (Khīwa), and thus there began the khanate of that name which was to endure until the early twentieth century; the ‘Arabshāhid line itself seems to have ended around the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Lane-Poole, 238–40, 270–3; Zambaur, 270–1, 274–5; Album, 62–3.

EI¹ ‘Shaibānī Khān’ (W. Barthold), EI² ‘Shïbānids’ (R. D. McChesney); EIr ‘‘Arabšāhf (Y. Bregel), ‘Central Asia. VI. In the 10th–l2th/16th–l8th centuries’ (RobertD. McChesney), with a genealogical table of the Abu ’1-Khayrids.

W. Barthold, Histoire des Tures d’Asie Centrale, Paris 1945, 184–8.

N. M. Lowick, ‘Shaybānid silver coins’, NC, 7th series, 6 (1966), 251–330, with a genealogical table and a list of rulers at pp. 255–6.