Chakar

The chakar were the bodyguards of a Sogdian lord. Soldiers in the army of An Lushan bore the title.^[1] The New Tang History reports the rebels’ advance of 755–756. The imperial general Feng Changqing sent cavalry against them, “and these killed the Zhijie to the number of 1,000”. A year later, at the siege of Suiyang, “a great chief, covered in armor, led some of the Zhijie, cavalrymen to the number of 1,000”, before the walls.^[1] In the ninth century, under al-Ma’mun, the Sogdian military elites at Baghdad were organised on the Sogdian model of the sovereign’s bodyguard, the chakar.^[2]