The Socioeconomics of State Formation in Medieval Afghanistan

The Socioeconomics of State Formation in Medieval Afghanistan George Fiske Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 George Fiske All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Socioeconomics of State Formation in Medieval Afghanistan George Fiske This study examines the socioeconomics of state formation in medieval Afghanistan in historical and historiographic terms. It outlines the thousand year history of Ghaznavid historiography by treating primary and secondary sources as a continuum of perspectives, demonstrating the persistent problems of dynastic and political thinking across periods and cultures. It conceptualizes the geography of Ghaznavid origins by framing their rise within specific landscapes and histories of state formation, favoring time over space as much as possible and reintegrating their experience with the general histories of Iran, Central Asia, and India. Once the grand narrative is illustrated, the scope narrows to the dual process of monetization and urbanization in Samanid territory in order to approach Ghaznavid obstacles to state formation. The socioeconomic narrative then shifts to political and military specifics to demythologize the rise of the Ghaznavids in terms of the framing contexts described in the previous chapters. Finally, the study specifies the exact combination of culture and history which the Ghaznavids exemplified to show their particular and universal character and suggest future paths for research. The Socioeconomics of State Formation in Medieval Afghanistan I. General Introduction II. Perspectives on the Ghaznavid Age History of the literature Entrance into western European discourse Reevaluations of the last century Historiographic rethinking Synopsis III. The Geographical and Political Landscape Geography of the territory Regional units Khurasan and Mawarannahr The marsh of Sistan The placement of Afghanistan Ghazni of the Kabul river valley The Shahis and the emergence of the Ghaznavids Medieval state building i IV. Monetization and Urbanization The Sultan and money The medieval silver money crisis Regions and zones of habitation Long-term trends in urbanization and monetization Silver as money in medieval Iran Islamic Central Asia and silver money Fiscal Monetization Urbanization in the Islamic east Property regimes in medieval Central Asia and Iran Monetary flows in state and society V. Authority and Violence Dynastic and military narratives The faction in Ghazni Sebuktegin and his son Mahmud The rise of Mahmud Securing the realm Battles of the orthodoxies Rajas and shahs Crossing the Ganga-Yamuna The last campaigns in Hindustan Maneuvers in the northern tier ii The expedition to Somanatha The last days of Mahmud VI. Conclusions VII. Plates VIII. Bibliography iii 1 I. General Introduction This study provides a socioeconomic approach to state formation in medieval Afghanistan, focusing on the origins and expansion of the Ghaznavid sultanate. At their height, the Ghaznavids controlled territory in Iran, Central Asia, and India, incorporating a tremendous variety of peoples within their realm. By integrating several distinct regions of the greater Hindu Kush, they shaped the movement of peoples, commodities, and ideas and initiated a new phase of medieval history in that pivotal part of the world. Some scholars have overestimated the extent of the change which the Ghaznavids wrought by presenting them as an aberrant interruption, while others have falsely posited a story of continuous and predictable conquest for medieval India. As a result, many previous studies have only offered an imprecise account of the essential social and economic processes which brought about the Ghaznavid historical moment. The history of medieval Afghanistan requires a multi-sided approach. This is illustrated vividly by the Ghaznavid period, in which Central Asian, Iranian, and Indian peoples interacted, in cooperation as well as conflict, for nearly two centuries. Our own era tends to presuppose certain realities which stem from familiar assumptions about political economy and culture, but few of these existed in similar guise a millennium ago. Consequently, the historiography of the greater Hindu Kush demands more than the transmission of empirical fact and the description of historical and cultural objects, such as the dynasty and its paraphernalia; it also necessitates an act of translation from that past world into our own as well as a coherent interpretation of those people and their times into a scientific perspective which resonates with the ideals of our own age. 2 In light of the importance of Afghanistan and the international nature of its study, it has been necessary from the outset to gather evidence and argument from a wide scope before narrowing the aperture to focus on specific topics in Ghaznavid era socioeconomics. A large measure of scholarship from the Cold War created certain epistemological boundaries which continue to mark our understanding of Afghanistan. Area studies specialists have usually emphasized either the Middle East, or Iran, or the Soviet Union, or South Asia, but none of these area studies designations can capture the picture of Afghanistan adequately, since they can misrepresent the region epistemologically in the same manner that the country is often divided in atlases, where it either falls into the dark center margin or splits in half at the edge of the page. In contrast, this study has sought to unify separate fields into a coherent view of the medieval Hindu Kush. Afghanistan is both unknown and overly familiar for most readers. Too often, uninformed members of the global media comment on the purportedly remote, isolated, and obscure character of Afghanistan, but anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the history of the region knows the superficial nature of this charge: Afghanistan has consistently produced more people, artifacts, and events of world historical significance than some of the well-known powers of our day. Indeed, the international significance of Afghanistan is reflected in the multi-lingual breadth of its relevant sources and scholarship. At the same time, certain stories about the Ghaznavids and their famous Sultan Mahmud have been repeated so often that no one has bothered to verify their substance.1 This has resulted in an erroneous sense of understanding the Ghaznavids, 1 B. Flood also laments “the dearth of dedicated studies” of the medieval period, although this period occupies “center stage in colonial and nationalist constructions of a past that has been cast as a perpetual 3 when in fact a great number of narratives about the Ghaznavids have been constructed for purposes other than scientific history. Some readers may be tempted to compare this study to two major works in English by C.E. Bosworth, so it is necessary to review those works briefly at the outset to understand precisely their approach and how this study differs from them. Bosworth’s studies are read more often by scholars of Iranian and Islamic history than by those specializing in South Asia. In The Ghaznavids, Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran, 994-1040, Bosworth states in the preface that the genesis of his book was in his doctoral thesis, The transition from Ghaznavid to Seljuq power in the Islamic East, and this focus on Iran and the Seljuqs was largely retained in the book.2 Bosworth’s book contains three main parts. The first part on “The Ghaznavid empire at its zenith under Mahmud” begins with “The origins of the Ghaznavid empire”, which includes material on the Samanid background, Sebuktegin, and the succession of Mahmud. This short chapter cites primary sources, but does not go into depth and suggests reading elsewhere for a “continuous, chronological account” which the book omits.3 At different points, the Ghaznavid dynasty is characterized as “Turks”, “Turko- confrontation between Muslim invaders and Hindu resisters, a Manichaean dyad that has structured and constrained the history of the region for almost a millennium.” B. Flood, Objects of translation: material culture and medieval "Hindu-Muslim" encounter. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 2. 2 "I have not concerned myself, except in passing, with India or with the role of the Sultans as standard- bearers of Muslim culture and religion there. That the Sultans did in fact fulfil such a role in India is problematical and an examination of Ghaznavid activity in India would necessitate a knowledge not merely of eastern Islamic history but also one of Indian history, and a familiarity with a culture-region very different from the Islamic one." C. E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids: their empire in Afghanistan and eastern Iran 994-1040. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963), 5. 3 Bosworth explains that “I have not aimed at a continuous, chronological account of the events of the period. This has been done for Mahmud's reign by Nazim, and, more briefly, for the whole early Ghaznavid period by Spuler in the historical section of his Iran in früh-islamischer Zeit.” Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 6. This is a debatable assessment. Nazim’s The life and times of Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghazna does include a helpful chronology, but his book is divided by geographical region and often places events within these regions out of sequence, which obviously destroys the chain of causation needed for accurate understanding of processes; additionally, Nazim usually prefers to emphasize

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