Anushtegin Gharchai

Anushtegin Gharchai was a Turkic ghulam (military slave) who rose to govern Khwarazm under the Great Seljuks and became the forefather of the Anushtegin dynasty of Khwarazmshahs. His birth year is unknown: the sources meet him already as an adult, and the date 1050 found in some reference works rests on nothing. His name joins the Iranian nush (“undying”) with the Turkic tegin (“prince”), and the epithet Gharchai points to Gharchistan, a mountainous region in present-day Afghanistan from which he came.

His tribal origin is disputed: some scholars place him among the Begdili clan of the Oghuz, others see him as a Chigil, Khalaj, Kipchak, Kangly or Uyghur. The sources agree that as a youth he was bought by the Seljuk commander Bilge-Tegin, and so entered Seljuk service.

In 1073 he is mentioned in connection with Sultan Malik-Shah’s campaign against the Ghaznavid ruler Ibrahim in northern Khorasan, in which the Seljuk forces defeated the enemy and razed the frontier stronghold of Sakalkand. Later Anushtegin became a trusted man of the sultan and held the court post of tashtdar, keeper of the sultan’s washing vessels.

The costs of that post were met from the revenues of Khwarazm, so around 1077 Anushtegin was appointed to administer the province as shihna (military governor) and, according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, held the traditional title of Khwarazmshah. He did not hold full power, however: beside him stood the governor Ekinchi ibn Kochkar, a ghulam of Malik-Shah’s son Sanjar.

Anushtegin died in 1097. Sultan Berkyaruq gave Khwarazm to Ekinchi, but he was soon killed by rebellious Seljuk emirs, and power passed to Anushtegin’s son Qutb al-Din Muhammad. With him began the hereditary line of Khwarazmshahs, which ruled until the Mongol conquest in the first third of the 13th century. Details of Anushtegin’s own rule have barely survived in the sources.