Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
  • 400
  • 500
  • 600
  • 700
  • 800
  • 900

The Nezak Shahs are known from silver drachms, the third group in the Coinage of the Huna Peoples, struck in the region of Kabul, Kapisa and Ghazni.[1] The king wears a crown with the head of a bull, and the Pahlavi legend reads nyčky MLK’.[2] Beyond the coins little is known of them.[3] Accounts based on the coins and the written sources make them Huns, local rulers or a Western Turkic dynasty.[4][5]

The coins

The Nezak drachms follow Sasanian models.[2] The obverse shows the king with the crown of the bull’s head, which runs through the whole series.[2] The reverse shows the Sasanian fire altar with attendants.[2] Above their heads stand two small wheels or sun rosettes, a mark of the Nezak coinage.[2]

The legend is Pahlavi.[2] It was first read Napki, then Nspk, and the reading Nezak is now accepted.[2] The word probably stands for the title of a ruler and not for a personal name.[2][6] The series bears no king’s name.[6]

The classification dates the series from about 460.[7] It divides the coins by style into two groups.[2] Group I begins in the middle of the fifth century, and the floral motif under its bust has a close parallel among Alchon issues.[2] Group II belongs to the later phase of Group I.[2] Its sun wheels on the reverse are much larger.[8] The two groups were probably struck at two mints, Group I at Ghazni and Group II at Kabul.[3] The Gardez hoard, which came onto the Kabul market in 1962, holds only coins of Group II.[3] The attribution to the two mints is not proven.[9] It needs new hoards or the mints themselves.[9]

On the classification, the Nezak kings, like the other Huns, first met money in the form of Sasanian coin, which they received as pay for military service to Persia.[2] They struck their own coins when these payments stopped.[2] The purity of the drachms changed over time, and the coins finally became pure copper.[3] This inflation runs partly parallel to that of the Alchon coinage under Mihirakula.[3] A coin of the Nezak type from the settlement of Kafyr-qala in southern Tajikistan gave the middle of the seventh century as the date of the layer in which it lay.[10]

The identity of the Nezaks

The attribution of the coins to the Huns comes from the standard classification.[11] It sets the Nezaks as the third wave of the Iranian Huns after 450, between the Alchons and the Hephthalites.[12] A second theory makes the Nezak kings local rulers of the region of Kapisa, Kabul and Zabul and not Huns.[3] It holds that the bull’s-head crown is the dynastic crown of the Khingal kings of Kapisa and not that of the Hephthalites.[13] On this theory the Hephthalites never took Kapisa or Zabul.[14] The dynasty was a local warrior house that freed itself from the Hephthalites in the middle or late sixth century.[13]

A third theory makes the series the coinage of a Western Turkic dynasty of Kapisa and Gandhara.[5] It dates the coin type with the legend nyčky MLK’ from about 630 to about 720.[6] The type was kept for almost a century, and the first ruler of the dynasty bore the name Qarγïlacï, so the legend cannot be a personal name.[6] The reading of the legend is supported by a notice in the Cefu Yuangui of an envoy from Na-sai, the king of Ko-p’i-shih, a Chinese form of Kapisa.[6] It ties the name to a tribe of the Western Turks, the Äskil Nizük Jigin, whose heads bore the name Nizük.[6]

These dates differ by about 170 years. One survey adds that the Nezaks are known only from their coins and from a Chinese notice that they held sway around Ghazni and Kabul-Kapisa in the second half of the fifth century.[3] A fourth theory holds that the kings of Kapisa may come from a branch of the Hephthalites who escaped from the north when their empire broke up.[13] It also separates them from the Nezak Tarkhans of southern Tokharistan, whom modern writers have sometimes confused with them and with whom they may in the end be related.[13]

Kapisa in the written sources

Xuanzang visited Kapisa in 630.[15] The country has a circuit of more than 4,000 li, and the Snowy Mountains lie behind it to the north.[16] Its writing is much the same as that of Tokharistan.[16] Gold coins, silver coins and small copper coins serve as money.[16] The king is a Kshatriya, shrewd and brave.[16] His authority overawes the neighbouring borders, and he rules more than ten countries.[16] He honours the Three Jewels, and every year he has a silver Buddha image of eighteen feet made.[16] The land has more than a hundred monasteries with six thousand monks, mostly followers of the Great Vehicle.[16] It also has dozens of temples of the gods and over a thousand followers of other teachings.[16]

The oldest manuscripts of Xuanzang give the king’s people as Suli, Sogdians, where the printed text has Chali, Kshatriyas.[13] The Sui Shu names a king of Cao with the surname Zhaowu, of the family of the king of Kang.[17] The surname is the one that all Sogdian rulers carry.[13] Two accounts identify this king of Cao as a king of Kapisa.[18] The Sui Shu says that he wore a crown with a gold fish head and sat on a gold horse throne.[17] Some scholars find strong support in this crown for tying the Nezak coins to the Khingal line of Kapisa.[19] The text names a fish head.[17] The coins show a bull’s head.[2] The Wei Shu and the Sui Shu place Cao 1,500 li south of the Hephthalite country.[20][17]

The Cefu Yuangui says that the Yabghu Khan of the Western Turks annexed the Tiele in the north, held back Persia in the west, and bordered Jibin in the south.[21] The same book lists Zabul and Jibin, which is Kapisa and Gandhara, among the kingdoms under the yabghu of Tokharistan.[22] The pilgrim Huichao, who travelled between 723 and 729, says that the kings and the troops of Gandhara, Kapisa and Zabul were Turks.[22] The Xin Tangshu says that Turks, people of Jibin and Tokharians lived mixed in Xieyu, which is Zabul.[23][22]

Nezak Tarkhan of Badghis

The name Nezak was not the name of the coin kings alone.[24] In the Arabic accounts of the conquest of Tokharistan the lord of Badghis is called Nezak Tarkhan.[25][26] At the time of the Arab conquest he was a nearly independent prince, formally the vassal of the king of kings.[27] One Arabic source calls him a king of the Hephthalites.[28]

According to al-Balādhurī, the Sasanian king Yazdegerd III, fleeing the Arabs towards Merv, met Nezak Tarkhan, who came with his troops.[29][30] A quarrel broke out over Nezak Tarkhan’s request to marry a daughter of the king, and the king was killed near Merv.[29][31]

The Arabs took his castle in Badghis in 703 or 704.[32] He made terms with Qutayba ibn Muslim in 705 or 706.[33] In 708 or 709 he tried once more to drive the Arabs out and to restore the Hephthalite kingdom, and this ended his career.[33]

The sources name several men Nezak between 651 and 873.[34] One was killed by Qutayba in 709, another sent an envoy to China in 719, another was governor of Shash in 739.[34] Over sixty years separate the first appearance of Nezak Tarkhan from his death, and it is doubtful that one man is meant throughout.[35]

The name itself is explained in several ways.[24] The first takes Nezak for a title of a minor Turkic prince, as Ibn Khurdadhbih has it.[28] The second takes it for a dynastic title.[28] The third holds that the real name of Nezak Tarkhan was Tirek, a Turgesh tarkhan and a vassal of the yabghu of Tokharistan.[24] The fourth rejects this, since Hamza al-Isfahani calls Nezak Tarkhan king of the Hephthalites.[28] Inaba considers a Khalaj origin.[34]

An older view joined the coin legend with Nezak Tarkhan of Badghis.[6] A revision of the letters and of the history has led some scholars to the form Tirek, a name of Turgesh origin, for the lord of Badghis.[6] On this view the two have nothing to do with one another.[6]

The Nezaks and the Turk Shahi

How the Nezak coins relate to the Turk Shahi depends on how the series is interpreted.[1][36] The classification puts the issues of Shahi Tigin and of Phromo Kesoro in the same group with the Nezak coins.[1]

On the view that makes the Nezak type Western Turkic, the line runs unbroken.[5] Xuanzang found the royal house of Gandhara extinct in 630 and the country under Kapisa.[15] Kapisa was then ruled by a prince probably of Western Turkic origin.[15] The Tang Shu names Ho-hsieh-chih as king of Kapisa and Gandhara in 658.[15] The dynasty took the Hephthalite title xingil and regarded itself as heir to the Xingil line.[15] Its coin type remained for almost a century.[6]

The change came with Barhatakin, the founder of the Turk Shahi in Kabul.[37] His first issues kept the meaningless remains of the legend nyčky MLK’, but the royal portrait was new, with a crown of three moon sickles.[38] The crown is understood as a return to Hephthalite tradition and a declaration of independence from the yabghu of Tokharistan.[38] The Jiu Tangshu records that in 739 the king of Jibin, Wusan Tele Sa, old, asked that his son Fulin Jipo succeed him.[39] The two kings are identified with the Tegin Shah and Fromo Kesaro of the coins.[40]

On the view that makes the Nezak kings local rulers of Kapisa, the bull’s-head crown belongs to the Khingal line and is not Hephthalite.[13] The Turks took the throne from this line after 661.[13] The title Khingal was taken in 720 by the governor of Zabul, Qaradachi Eltabar, as Chinese sources show.[13]

References

  1. ^ a b c Kurbanov 2010, p. 102–103
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Kurbanov 2010, p. 103
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Kurbanov 2010, p. 104
  4. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 104, 196–198
  5. ^ a b c Litvinsky 1996, p. 365–366
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Litvinsky 1996, p. 366
  7. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 102
  8. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 103–104
  9. ^ a b Kurbanov 2010, p. 51
  10. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 52
  11. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 93
  12. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 93, 103
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i Kurbanov 2010, p. 196
  14. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 197
  15. ^ a b c d e Litvinsky 1996, p. 365
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  17. ^ a b c d Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  18. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 196, 198
  19. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 198
  20. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102
  21. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 1000
  22. ^ a b c Litvinsky 1996, p. 363
  23. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  24. ^ a b c Kurbanov 2010, p. 200–201
  25. ^ Tabari
  26. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 41–43
  27. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 41–42
  28. ^ a b c d Kurbanov 2010, p. 201
  29. ^ a b al-Balādhurī
  30. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 199
  31. ^ Kurbanov 2010, p. 199–200
  32. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 42–43
  33. ^ a b Markwart 1938, p. 43
  34. ^ a b c Kurbanov 2010, p. 200
  35. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 42
  36. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 366–368
  37. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 367–368
  38. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 368
  39. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  40. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 368–372

Sources

Literature

  • Aydogdy Kurbanov, The Hephthalites: Archaeological and Historical Analysis (2010)
  • B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)
  • Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)
  • Samuel Beal, Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World (1884)

Related

What links here1

Peoples
Alchon Huns

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Nezak Shahs.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/ethnicities/nezak/

Last revised: 8 November 2026