The History of Bukhara opens the story of the Bukhara oasis with a tyrant. Settlers came to the marshland of the Zarafshan and made one of themselves their amir. He, Abrui, grew so harsh that the dihqans and the rich fled to Talas. Those who stayed behind called on the Turks. A Turkish lord’s son came with an army, killed Abrui and settled the country.[1] The tale has no year and names no khan.[1]

The tale

The place that is now Bukhara was a swamp, partly a bed of reeds, partly trees and meadow, until the river of Sughd carried down mud from the mountains near Samarkand and filled it.[2] People gathered there from all sides, drawn by the water, the trees and the game. Some came from Turkistan.[3] They set up tents and pavilions and then built houses. They chose one man as their amir. His name was Abrui.[4] The city did not yet exist, only villages. The large settlement where the ruler lived was Baikand, the later Paykent. The town was Qalʿa-i Dabusi.[4]

As Abrui grew powerful he tyrannised the district until the inhabitants could bear it no longer. The dihqans and the rich merchants fled to Turkistan and Taraz, where they built a city.[4] They named it Hamukat, to be read Jamukat, after the chief of the fugitives, a great dihqan called Hamuk. In the language of Bukhara hamuk means a jewel, and the word was also used for a noble.[4] One manuscript of the Persian version has Otrar beside another town name where the printed text has Taraz.[4]

Those who had stayed in Bukhara sent to their nobles for help. The nobles and dihqans went to the ruler of the Turks, Qara Jurin Turk, and asked him for aid. He was nicknamed Biyaghu because of his size.[4] He sent his son, Shir-i Kishvar, with a large army. Shir-i Kishvar seized Abrui at Baikand and had him shut in a large sack filled with red bees until he died.[4]

Shir-i Kishvar liked the country. He wrote to his father for it and received the answer: “I give this district to you.”[4] He sent for the fugitives at Jamukat and had it proclaimed that whoever returned would be counted among the nobility. The rich and the great dihqans had fled, and the beggars and the poor had stayed. The stayers therefore became the servants of the returners.[5] Among the nobles was a great dihqan of an old family, called the Bukhar Khuda. He held more land than the others, and most of the poor were his peasants and servants.[6] Shir-i Kishvar built the city of Bukhara proper and the villages of Mamastin, Saqmatin, Samatin and Farab. He ruled twenty years. A later ruler built Iskijkat, Shargh and Ramitin.[6] When the daughter of the king of Chin came to Bukhara as a bride, a pagoda came with her trousseau and was set up at Ramitin.[6]

The text and its date

Narshakhī did not put this section in his book. The text says so, and says that al-Nishapuri gave it in his Treasury of the Sciences.[2] The abridger of 1178 added matter from that work. The tale therefore reaches the History in the Persian text of 1178 at the latest.[7] The source article sets out how the text came down.

The oasis in the tale

In the tale the ruler lives at Baikand, and Bukhara is built later by Shir-i Kishvar.[5] Another page of the History says that Baikand is older than Bukhara and that every ruler of the district once made it his seat.[8] Some scholars place the rise of the city of Bukhara late. The city did not become the centre of the oasis before the end of the fifth century. Rival towns kept their own rulers beyond that, and Bukhara won its hegemony over the oasis only shortly before the Arab conquest.[9] The tale and this dating agree that Bukhara was not the first seat of the oasis.

The flight to Talas has a setting in the north-east. The Sogdian towns of the Talas plain and the piedmont to Issyk Kul originated with colonists of the fifth and sixth centuries, mostly under noble initiative.[10] Jamukat lay near Taraz, and other Arabic works name it too.[11] A sixth-century site at Maytobe is placed there.[10] One scholar of the Sogdian colonies understands the tale as the political reason for one such foundation: an exile of the nobles of Bukhara.[10] The Suyab article sets out what excavation has made of the settlements.

Identifications of Abrui

There are three theories about Abrui. The first sees in him a legend: the personification of the Zarafshan, as Afrigh was the Oxus in the Khwarazmian tradition.[12] The second understands the tale as history. It identifies Abrui with the Abo Qaghan of the Chinese reports, the title of a son of the Göktürk khan Mukan. This son fled west and was later captured by the khan of the eastern Göktürks.[13] The third derives the form Aberzi from the name of a Hephthalite tribe, Var or Avar. It identifies Abrui as the last king of the Hephthalites and counts the settlers from Turkistan as Hephthalites.[13][14] Accordingly, the name that Tabari gives the last Hephthalite king, Wrz, is not a personal name either. It is the people’s name, War.[14]

Identifications of Qara Jurin and Shir-i Kishvar

The text gives three names. The lord is Qara Jurin Turk, nicknamed Biyaghu, and his son is Shir-i Kishvar.[4] Three theories identify them.

The first theory makes Qara Jurin the founder of the western khaganate, Istemi. It explains Biyaghu as yabghu and joins it to Sinjibu and to the Silziboulos of the Greek reports. Shir-i Kishvar becomes an elder brother of Tardush, one of Istemi’s sons.[15][14] A variant goes further. It identifies this elder brother with Arsilas, the eldest of the eight Göktürk rulers in Menander, set over the Göktürk half of the Hephthalite lands with his seat at Bukhara.[16] The name Shir-i Kishvar is then the Persian rendering of the Turkish Il-arslan.[17] The second offers a khan named Chuluo. He is either the western khan who ruled from 600 to 618 or an eastern khan of the same name who ruled in 619 and 620.[18] The third, by Lev Gumilev, makes Qara Jurin Tardush himself. Shir-i Kishvar is then his younger son, the Šāba who in the Persian tradition is “the greatest king of the Turks” and was beaten by Bahram Chobin at Herat in 589. The identification cannot be established.[19] The war with Persia article covers that campaign. Counted literally from the conquest of the Hephthalites, which fell between 562 and 568, the twenty years of Shir-i Kishvar end before 589. The king whom Bahram killed would then be his successor, not he. The same theory doubts that the figure is exact.[20] Each theory puts the tale into a different generation of the khaganate.

The printed text of the tale does not mention Istemi, Chach, Otrar or a year.[1] The theories rest on the names alone. The first rests on the name Biyaghu, emended to Yabaghu. The name can be the rank yabghu, and it can be the name of a Turkish tribe. The translator holds that these are two different words.[15] The first name is no clearer. A title čur of the Orkhon inscriptions would be expected, but the ending -in has no explanation.[18] Shir-i Kishvar may be the Persian form of a Turkish Arslan, “lion of the countries or tribes”, or the Yel Arslan Tegin of Dinawari.[21]

The bride from Chin

The tale says that a pagoda came to Bukhara with the daughter of the king of Chin and was set up at Ramitin.[6] The Chinese histories record no marriage of a Chinese princess to Bukhara.[20] Two theories try to place the bride. The first identifies her as a princess of the fallen Sui house. She was married to Bukhara after a Bukharan embassy to the first Tang emperor between 618 and 626, and this theory identifies Ramitin as the seat of the kings of Bukhara of that time.[22] The second identifies the king of Chin as the eastern Göktürk khan Taspar, a friend of Buddhism. That would fit the pagoda in the trousseau better.[23] Both theories reason from the pagoda alone. In addition, the Persian word Chin is used loosely in the epic.[23]

References

  1. ^ a b c Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 6-8
  2. ^ a b Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 6
  3. ^ Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 6-7
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 7
  5. ^ a b Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 7-8
  6. ^ a b c d Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 8
  7. ^ Frye 1954, xii
  8. ^ Narshakhī, History of Bukhara; Frye 1954, p. 18
  9. ^ Frye 1998, p. 15
  10. ^ a b c de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 114
  11. ^ Frye 1954, p. 106-107
  12. ^ Frye 1954, p. 105
  13. ^ a b Frye 1954, p. 105-106
  14. ^ a b c Markwart 1938, p. 147–148
  15. ^ a b Frye 1954, p. 107-108
  16. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 149–150
  17. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 148
  18. ^ a b Frye 1954, p. 107
  19. ^ Golden 1992, p. 132
  20. ^ a b Markwart 1938, p. 151
  21. ^ Frye 1954, p. 108
  22. ^ Markwart 1938, p. 151–152
  23. ^ a b Markwart 1938, p. 152

Sources

Literature

  • Richard N. Frye (trans.), The History of Bukhara. Translated from a Persian Abridgment of the Arabic Original by Narshakhi (1954)
  • Richard N. Frye, Early Bukhara (1998)
  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)

Related

What links here5

Persons
Arsilas · Istemi
Places
Bukhara
Peoples
Sogdians
Sources
Narshakhī, History of Bukhara

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Abrui and Shir-i Kishvar.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/abrui-and-shir-i-kishvar/

Last revised: 8 November 2026