The Turk Shahi

666 – 843 CE · Kabul, Zabul, Gandhara

The Turk Shahi dynasty is, despite its name, not a Turkic-language dynasty in the usual sense. The “Turk” is a regional label — the kingdom’s heartland was Tokharistan / Torkhistan, north of the Hindu Kush — and the dynasty’s actual cultural and ritual continuities run back through the Alkhan to the House of Waraz. The misidentification in older European scholarship is one of the threads the book attempts to untangle: the Turk Shahi are the political successors of the Alkhan, not the Western Turkic Khaganate.

Barha Tegin and the founding

The dynasty is founded c. 666 CE by Barha Tegin, who overthrows the last Nezak ruler of Kabul and Zabul and installs the new royal line. The name Barha is the southern variant of Waraz / Varaha, and the dynasty’s coinage retains the boar device alongside the Sassanian-style fire altar. Prof. G. S. L. Devra, in his JSTOR essay “Political Wilderness and Social Dismemberment — Vrahas: A Forgotten Clan of the Northwest India” (2003), explicitly identifies Barha Tegin’s line as Varaha. Janos Harmatta’s reconstruction of the succession from Chinese imperial annals gives:

• Barha Tegin · 666 – 680 CE
• Khorasan Tegin Shah · 680 – 738 CE — recognised by the Tang court
• Wu-san T’ê-chin Shai = Shri Tagino Shaho · 720 – 738 CE
• Fu-lin-chi-so = Phromo Kesaro · 738 – 745 CE
• Po-fu-Chun · 745 – ?
• Ju-lo-li Gandhara · 759 – 764 CE
• Lagaturman · last king, overthrown by his minister Kallar

Holding the Hindu Kush against the Caliphate

The Turk Shahi’s enduring strategic role is the defence of the Hindu Kush passes against the eastward push of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. The Arab raids on Kabul in 665–666 CE — the immediate context for Barha Tegin’s rise — were followed by repeated campaigns under successive caliphs; the Turk Shahi held them off for nearly two centuries. Khorasan Tegin Shah’s brother held Zabul as the Rutbil; the southern Lawik clan controlled the lower Kabul valley. The history is reconstructed from Persian and Arabic chronicles (Tabari, Ibn Khurradadhbih, Al-Masaudi) and the Tang dynastic annals; Shoshin Kuwayama‘s Across the Hindukush of the First Millennium (Kyoto, 2002) is the standard modern synthesis.

The conversion of the Ispahbad — 813 CE

The Ispahbad of Kabul converts to Islam under Caliph Al-Mamun in 813 CE — accepting the new faith on terms that, as the Persian sources record, exempted him from only beef and sodomy. His throne inscription names him Pathi Dharmi / Sapalpatideva. The conversion does not end the dynasty: the last Turk Shahi king, Lagaturman, is overthrown about a generation later by his Brahmin (or, on Abdur Rehman’s reading, Kshatriya) minister Kallar / Kalarapala. Kallar founds the new Hindu Shahi line at Udabhandapura. See the full post on Kallar.

Continuities

Three continuities tie the Turk Shahi to the older lineage. First, the boar device on coinage and royal seals — Pfisterer and Vondrovec have shown its persistence from the Alkhan period through to the Hindu Shahi bull-and-horseman drachms. Second, the consecration of Hindu deities under titles that recall the Verethragna boar — the Gardez Ganesha re-consecrated, the Maha-Vinayaka and the Nrsimha cult patronised. Third, the geographic core: Kabul, Zabul, and the upper Indus, the same territory the Alkhans held three hundred years earlier. The Turk Shahi are the Alkhan-Waraz dynasty in a new political form.

Continue to The Hindu Shahi, or read more on Barha Tegin and Khorasan Tegin Shah.

In this era

• Barha Tegin · Khorasan Tegin Shah · Kallar / Lalliya
• Timeline 666 – 843 CE
• Primary sources — Tang annals, Tabari, Ibn Khurradadhbih, Al-Masaudi, Kuwayama (2002), Rezakhani (2017), Abdur Rehman (1988)