Greater Khorasan

Names of territories during the Caliphate in 750 CE. Khorasan was part of Persia (in yellow).

Greater Khorasan (Persian: خراسان باستان یا خراسان بزرگ) (also written Khurasan) is a historical region spanning northeastern Iran, northern Afghanistan, and the southern parts of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The name "Khorasan" is derived from Middle Persian khor "sun" + asa "literally, like or akin to, but usually meaning arising from", hence meaning "land where the sun rises". The Persian word Khāvar-zamīn (Persian: خاور زمین), meaning "the eastern land", has also been used as an equivalent term.

Khorasan in its proper sense comprised principally the cities of Nishapur and Tus (now in Iran), Balkh and Herat (now in Afghanistan), Merv (now in Turkmenistan), and Samarqand and Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan). However, Khorasan has been widely used throughout history to cover a larger region that encompassed all of Transoxiana and Soghdiana in the north, extended westward to the Caspian Sea, southward to include the Sistan desert and eastward to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. Arab geographers even spoke of its extending to the boundaries of India or possibly as far as the Indus valley, in what is now Pakistan. However, sources from the 14th to the 16th century report that Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul in Afghanistan formed the frontier region between Khorasan and Hindustan.

In the Middle Ages, Persian Iraq and Khorasan were the two most important territories of Greater Iran. The boundary between these two was the region surrounding the cities of Gurgan and Damaghan. In particular, the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs and Timurids divided their Empires into Iraqi and Khorasani regions.

These days, the adjective greater is partly used to distinguish the historical region from the Khorasan province in modern-day Iran, which roughly encompasses the western half of the historical region. It is also used to indicate that Greater Khorasan encompass a loose collection of territories individually known by other popular names, such as Bactria, Khwarezmia, Sogdiana, Transoxiana, and Sistan or Arachosia.

Geographical distribution

"Masjid-i Jami" Mosque in Herat, Afghanistan, a city which was known in the past as the Pearl of Khorasan.

First established as a political entity by the Sassanids in the 3rd century AD, the borders of the region have varied considerably during its 1600-year history. Initially the Khorasan province of Sassanid empire included the cities of Nishapur, Herat, Merv, Faryab, Taloqan, Balkh, Bukhara, Badghis, Abiward, Gharjistan, Tus, Sarakhs and Gurgan.

It acquired its greatest extent under the Caliphs, for whom "Khorasan" was the name of one of the three political zones under their dominion (the other two being Eraq-e Arab "Arabic Iraq" and Eraq-e Ajam "Non-Arabic Iraq or Persian Iraq"). Under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, Khorasan was divided into four major sections and each section based on a single major city. The four principal cities were Nishapur, Merv, Herat and Balkh.

In the Middle Ages, the term was loosely applied to all territories of Persia that lay east and north east of Dasht-e Kavir and therefore were subjected to change as the size of empire changed. According to the Afghan historian, Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghobar, Afghanistan's current territories formed the major portion of Khorasan, as two of the four main capitals of Khorasan (Balkh, Merv, Nishapur and Herat) are now located in Afghanistan. Ghobar uses the terms Proper Khorasan and Improper Khorasan to distinguish between the usage of Khorasan in its strict sense and its usage in a loose sense. According to him, Proper Khorasan contained regions lying between Balkh (in the East), Merv (in the North), Sistan (in the South), Nishapur (in the West) and Herat, known as The Pearl of Khorasan, in the center. While Improper Khorasan's boundaries extended to Kabul and Ghazni in the East, Sistan and Zabulistan in the South, Transoxiana and Khwarezm in the North and Damaghan and Gurgan in the West. It is mentioned in Memoirs of Babur that:

The people of Hindustān call every country beyond their own Khorasān, in the same manner as the Arabs term all except Arabia, Ajem. On the road between Hindustān and Khorasān, there are two great marts: the one Kābul, the other Kandahār. Caravans, from Ferghāna, Tūrkestān, Samarkand, Balkh, Bokhāra, Hissār, and Badakhshān, all resort to Kābul; while those from Khorasān repair to Kandahār. This country lies between Hindustān and Khorasān.

— Babur, 1525

Historical overview

An early turquoise mine in the Madan village of Khorasan.

Greater Khorasan is one of the regions of Greater Iran. Before being conquered by Alexander the Great in 330 BC, it was part of the Achaemenid and Median Persian Empire. In 1st century AD, the eastern regions of Greater Khorasan fell into the hands of the Kushan empire. The Kushans introduced a high grade Buddhist culture (though they were also Zoroastrians) to these regions and from there Buddhism began to spread through Khorasanian monks to China and even to Japan. Numerous Kushanian fire temples and Buddhist temples and buried cities with treasures in the northern and central areas of Khurasan (nowadays mainly Afghanistan) have been found. However the western parts of Greater Khorasan remained predominantly Zoroastrian as one of the three great fire-temples of the Sassanids "Azar-burzin Mehr" is situated in the western regions of Khorasan, near Sabzevar in Iran. The boundary was pushed to the west towards the Persian Empire by the emigrating Kushans. The boundary kept changing until the demise of the Kushan Empire where Sassanids took control of the entire region by conquering and merging with the Kushans (Kushano-Sassanian civilization).

In Sassanid era, Persian empire was divided into four quarters, "Xwawaran" meaning west, apAxtar meaning north, Nīmrūz meaning south and Xurasan (Khorasan) meaning east. The Eastern regions saw again some conflict with Hephthalites who became new ruler of entire Khorasan but also for a short time of the entire Iranian plateau, but the borders remained much stable afterwards until the Muslim invasion.

Being the eastern parts of the Sassanid empire and further away from Arabia, Khorasan quarter was conquered in the later stages of Muslim invasions. In fact the last Sassanid king of Persia, Yazdgerd III, moved the throne to Khorasan following the Arab invasion in the western parts of the empire. After the assassination of the king, Khorasan was conquered by Muslim troops in 647. Like other provinces of Persia it became one of the provinces of Umayad dynasty.

The village of Meyamei.

The first movement against the Arab invasions was led by Abu Muslim Khorasani between 747 and 750. He helped the Abbasids come to power but was later killed by Al-Mansur, an Abbasid Caliph. The first independent kingdom from Arab rule was established in Khorasan by Tahir Phoshanji in 821, but it seems that it was more a matter of political and territorial gain. In fact Tahir had helped the Caliph subdue other nationalistic movements in other parts of Persia such as Maziar's movement in Tabaristan.

Other major independent dynasties in Khorasan were the Saffarids (861-1003,) Samanids (875-999), Ghaznavids (963-1167), Seljukids (1037–1194), Khwarezmids (1077–1231), Ghurids (1149–1212) and Timurids (1370–1506). It should be mentioned that some of these dynasties were not Persian by ethnicity, nonetheless they were the advocates of Persian language and were praised by the poets as the kings of Iran.

Among them, the periods of Ghaznavids of Ghazni and Timurids of Herat are considered as one of the most brilliant eras of Khorasan's history. During these periods, there was a great cultural awakening. Many famous Persian poets, scientists and scholars lived in this period. Numerous valuable works in Persian literature were written. Nishapur, Herat, Ghazni and Merv were the centers of all these cultural developments.

In the 16th century and later, some eastern Khorasani regions were parts of the Moghul Empire, while the Safavids conquered the western regions. For Moghuls, Khorasan was always a region with great economic and cultural importance.

In the 18th century, following the assassination of Nader Shah Afshar in 1747, wars over the region caused its division into western and eastern parts, with the western half held by the Qajars in Iran, and the eastern half held by rulers of the Durrani Empire in Afghanistan. The northern areas were left under the Tsardom of Russia or later the Soviet Union.

Cultural importance

Khorasan has had a great cultural importance among other regions in Greater Iran. The literary New Persian language developed in Khorasan and Transoxiana and gradually supplanted the Parthian language. The New Persian literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana where the early Iranian dynasties such as Tahirids, Samanids and Ghaznavids were based.The early Persian poets such as Rudaki, Shahid Balkhi, Abu al-Abbas Marwazi, Abu Hafas Sughdi, and others were from Khorasan. Moreover, Ferdowsi, the author of Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, and Rumi, the famous Sufi poet, were also from Khorasan.

Until the devastating Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, Khorasan remained the cultural capital of Persia. It has produced scientists such as Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Omar Khayyám, Al-Khwarizmi, Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (known as Albumasar or Albuxar in the west), Alfraganus, Abu Wafa, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, and many others who are widely well-known for their significant contributions in various domains such as mathematics, astronomy, medecine, physics, geography, and geology.

In Islamic theology, jurisprudence and philosophy, and in Hadith collection, many of the greatest Islamic scholars came from Khorasan, namely Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Hanifa, Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Abu Dawood, Al-Tirmidhi, Al-Nasa'i, Al-Ghazali, Al-Juwayni, Abu Mansur Maturidi, Fakhruddin al-Razi, and others. Shaykh Tusi, a Shi'a scholar and Al-Zamakhshari, the famous Mutazilite scholar, also lived in Khorasan.

Demographics

Khorasan was originally inhabited by the Eastern Iranian peoples who trace back to the ancient Indo-Iranians, migrated from the north to the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex in around 2000 BC. The BMAC was a Bronze Age culture situated in the upper Amu Darya region of Khorasan. Airyanem Vaejah (Land of Aryans), which is mentioned in the Zoroastrian Avesta, is also believed by some scholars to be situated in the territories of Khorasan.

The Persians appear to have been the first ethnic group to populate the region, but, in time, they mixed with an increasing number of foreign invaders and, as a result, their proportionate number was reduced. Significant immigrants such as Arabs from the west since the 7th century and Turkic peoples after the Turkic migration from the north in the Middle Ages settled in the region.

The present population of Khorasan is mixed. The majority are Persians (including Tajiks and some Lors) and the rest are Uzbeks, Turkmens, Hazaras, Aymāqs, Afghans (Pashtuns), Baluch, Kurds, Arabs, and others.