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The Turk Shahi were the kings of Kapisa, Gandhara and Kabul, in the valleys south of the Hindu Kush. Modern scholarship gives them this name and holds them to be Turkic by descent.[1] From 719 the Tang invested the kings of Jibin with the Turkic title tegin.[2] These kings are usually identified with the Turk Shahi.[3] The rule of the dynasty ended when a Brahman dynasty, the Hindu Shahi, took Kabul in the ninth century.[4] The accounts do not agree on when the Turkic dynasty began. The dates run from about 625 to about 719.[5][6][7]

Name and sources

No chronicle of the dynasty has come down. The Tang histories call the country Jibin, and Xuanzang calls it Kapisa.[8] The name Turk Shahi comes from al-Biruni, who writes of kings who resided at Kabul, Turks said to be of Tibetan origin. A Brahman dynasty followed them.[1][9] The coins call the kings shahi, which is the title shah in Bactrian and Sanskrit form.[3] Most of the written evidence from the time of the dynasty is Chinese. The Arabic accounts and al-Biruni’s India are later.

Kapisa before the Göktürks

Xuanzang came to Kapisa about 630.[10] He gives the country a circuit of four thousand li, with the snow mountains behind it to the north and the Black Range on its other borders. The country bred good horses, and goods from many lands gathered there.[10] The people paid in gold, silver and small copper coins. Their writing was much like that of Tokharistan.[10] The king was a Kshatriya, shrewd and brave, and his authority reached more than ten countries.[10] He honoured the Three Jewels. The country had more than a hundred monasteries and some six thousand monks, most of them students of the Mahayana.[10] According to some scholars, Xuanzang’s account says that the royal line of Gandhara had died out and that Gandhara had fallen to Kapisa.[11]

Göktürk overlordship

The Jiu Tang Shu says that the realm of Tong Yabgu bordered Jibin in the south and that Jibin came under him.[12] The Xin Tang Shu says that he subdued Persia and Jibin.[13] Some scholars date the advance of the western Göktürks to the Indus to about 625.[14][15] In that case the Hephthalite king Narendra II kept Gandhara and recognised the yabgu as his overlord. Kapisa went to a western Göktürk prince, who joined the two kingdoms after Narendra’s death.[5] The Tang histories name the king of Kapisa in 658 as Hexieji.[16] Some scholars derive the name from a Turkic Qarγïlacï and take it for the family name of the dynasty.[5]

In 718 Puluo, a brother of the yabgu of Tokharistan, listed the king of Kapisa among the kings under his elder brother.[17] He gave him two hundred thousand soldiers and horsemen.[17] The figure is the petitioner’s own.

The Tang and the kings of Jibin

The Tang histories follow the kings of Jibin from the first years of the dynasty. In 619 an envoy brought a jewelled belt, a golden lock and crystal.[18] In the Zhenguan years the kingdom sent famous horses. Taizong sent the officer Hechuluoba with rich gifts. When he arrived, the king bowed twice with his face to the east, and he sent guides to take the envoys on to India.[18] In 642 Jibin sent a rat that ate snakes.[19] In 653 the Cefu yuangui records that Jibin and Cao each had a newly installed successor and sent envoys.[20]

The people of Jibin told the Tang that the first ancestor of the king was called Xinnie, and that power had passed from father to son through twelve generations to the king Hexieji.[16] In 658 the Tang made the country the Xiuxian Area Command.[21] In the early years of Longshuo it named the king commissioner of eleven prefectures and governor of Xiuxian.[21]

In 719 Jibin sent an astronomical text and secret remedies.[22] The Xin Tang Shu has the emperor invest its king as Geluodazhi tegin.[18] The Tang Huiyao dates the investiture to the next year.[23] Some scholars regard Geluodazhi as the name of Zabulistan.[24] If so, the tegin of Zabulistan became king of Kapisa.[24] In 739 the king Wusan Tegin Sa, now old, asked that his son Fulin Jipo succeed him, and the emperor agreed.[25] In 745 the emperor named the king’s son Bofuzhun heir to the thrones of Jibin and Wuchang, which is Oḍḍiyāna.[2][26] The last embassy in the Tang histories dates from 758.[25]

Titles and descent

The Jibin notices of the Tang histories do not call the kings Göktürks. Two of the titles they give are Turkic, the tegin and the sa of Wusan Tegin Sa, which some scholars take for shah.[24]

Three other witnesses say more. The pilgrim Huichao travelled through these lands between 723 and 729.[27][28] He is quoted as saying that the kings and soldiers of Gandhara, Kapisa and Zabul were Göktürks.[27][28] He tells how the father of the Göktürk king had surrendered to the king of Jibin with his people, his soldiers and his horses. When the Göktürk force had grown, he killed the king of Jibin and made himself lord of the country.[27][28][29] Al-Biruni gives the founder of the dynasty the name Barhatakin. He tells that Barhatakin hid in a cavern and came out before the people as a miraculous being, and that he thereby came to power.[29] Some scholars see an echo of the Göktürk story of origin in the cavern.[29] They also read the name as Turkic: Baγa tegin, with Barha as a Sanskritised Baha.[3] Silver coins add a wolf’s head on the crown, which is taken for a sign of Turkic affiliation.[1]

The line of Zabul

The Xin Tang Shu describes Zabulistan as lying south-west of Tokharistan.[18] Göktürks, people of Jibin and Tokharians lived there mixed, and the king of Jibin took their young men to resist the Arabs.[18] It records an embassy in 710 or 711 and then uses the verb 臣 (chen) with Jibin as its object.[18] The French translation of the passage renders it as a conquest of Kapisa by Zabulistan.[30] The same chapter uses the verb for the states that all submitted to Tibet, which supports the opposite reading, that Zabulistan became a vassal of Jibin.[18]

Huichao says that the king of Zabul was the nephew of the ruler of Kapisa and Gandhara.[27][7] The Arabic sources give the kings of Zabul the title zunbil. Some scholars think that the title belonged to a branch of the same family, which parted from the kings of Kabul about 670 after a quarrel between the king and his brother.[29]

Three datings

The accounts place the beginning of Turkic rule in three different years.

  • About 625. A western Göktürk prince received Kapisa when the yabgu’s army came to the Indus, and his line kept it.[5]
  • About 666. The first Zunbil of the Arabic chronicles appears in that year. They argue that Barhatakin was his brother and founded the dynasty of Kabul at the same time.[6]
  • About 711 to 719. Barhatakin came to power when Zabulistan extended its authority over Kapisa after 711.[7] His son Tegin Shah followed him in 719.[3]

Coins

The kings of Kapisa and Gandhara struck coins in several scripts. Some scholars date a coin type with a crown carrying one crescent, and the Pahlavi legend nyčky, to the years from about 630 to about 720.[31] A new portrait with a crown of three crescents follows, with the Bactrian legend “His Highness the King” and a Brahmi legend śrī ṣāhi. The reading ascribes this type to Barhatakin.[3]

The issues of Tegin Shah date by regnal years, by the Late Kushan era and by the Yazdgird era. Their legends are in Pahlavi, Bactrian and Brahmi.[32] One issue names his Indian queen. Another is dated to the year 494 of the Late Kushan era, which is 725 or 726.[33] A third bears the year 77 of the Yazdgird era, which is 729.[34] The coins of Fromo Kesaro, who ruled from 739 to 746 on this view, follow Late Sasanian models and those of the Arab governors.[35][36] Silver coins of a ruler Vahitigina show a crown with a wolf’s head and a divinity on the reverse like that on the coins of Khosrow II.[1] Some scholars identify Vahitigina with Barhatakin.[1]

Wars with the Arabs

Under Muʿāwiya, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Samura took Zabul and Rukhkhaj and reached Kabul. Its ruler had to pay tribute, but he soon drove the Arabs out.[37] Some scholars date this after Ibn Samura’s death in 670 or 671, when the king of Kabul expelled the Arabs and his brother took Zabulistan and Rukhkhaj.[29] An Arab expedition against Kabul in 697 and 698 was repulsed.[37] In 710 and 711 the governor Qutayba sent a tax-collecting expedition against Zabulistan.[38] A Bactrian legend, struck over the rim of coins of some Arab governors, is understood to say that Fromo Kesaro defeated the Arabs and laid a tax on them.[36] The Turk Shahi ruler of Kabul at one time paid the Arab governor of Khurasan an annual tribute of two thousand slaves.[39]

In 795 the Muslims invaded Zabul and went on to Kabul.[37] Under al-Maʾmūn the ruler of Kabul was captured and became a Muslim.[37] The Arabs gained a firm hold of the region only in 870, when the Saffarid Yaʿqūb ibn Layth invaded Kabul through Balkh and Bamiyan.[37]

The end

One reconstruction counts 177 years for the Turk Shahi and dates the end of their rule at Kabul to 843 on the evidence of inscriptions.[40] Their western branch, the Zunbils of the Arabic sources, ruled Rukhkhaj a little longer, until Yaʿqūb ibn Layth took Kabul in 870.[40] Others date the change to 860 or later.[41] In it the Brahman Lalliya, founder of the Hindu Shahi, wrested Gandhara and Kabul from the Turk Shahi with the help of a Gurjara-Pratihara king.[41] A third account says only that the Hindu Shahi were founded in the second half of the ninth century by Lalliya, who had deposed his former master, the Turkish ruler of Kabul.[4]

Kings named in the record

The Chinese texts name these kings of Jibin.

  • Hexieji, king in 658, the twelfth of his line.[21]
  • Wusan Tegin Sa, king in 739 and old by then.[25] Some scholars identify him with the king invested in 719 or 720.[24]
  • Fulin Jipo, the son whom the old king proposed as successor in 739.[25] Some scholars emend the last syllable and read the name as Frōm Kēsar, Caesar of Rome.[35]
  • Bofuzhun, named heir in 745.[18]

Relations with other states

Red is war, blue alliance, gold trade. Where several held at once, the line shows what prevailed; alliance and trade can run side by side. Each line rests on an article. Point at a state to see its weightiest relation, select it to see its events. The slider shows what stood in a given year, and Play runs through the years.

  1. Tang619 to 758

    • Embassy619 to 758embassies and investiture as kings of Jibin

  2. The Umayyad Caliphate671 to 698

    • War671 to 698Arab raids on Kabul and tribute

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Litvinsky 1996, p. 383
  2. ^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  3. ^ a b c d e Litvinsky 1996, p. 368
  4. ^ a b Minorsky 1970, p. 254
  5. ^ a b c d Litvinsky 1996, p. 365
  6. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 174–175
  7. ^ a b c Litvinsky 1996, p. 367–368
  8. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221; Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  9. ^ Marquart 1901, p. 296
  10. ^ a b c d e Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  11. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 130
  12. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  13. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  14. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 362
  15. ^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 372
  16. ^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  17. ^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 200–201
  18. ^ a b c d e f g h i Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  19. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 970; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  20. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  21. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  22. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99
  23. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99
  24. ^ a b c d Chavannes 1903, p. 132
  25. ^ a b c d Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99
  26. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 213–214
  27. ^ a b c d 慧超 ca. 727
  28. ^ a b c Litvinsky 1996, p. 363
  29. ^ a b c d e Litvinsky 1996, p. 367
  30. ^ Chavannes 1903, p. 161
  31. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 366
  32. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 369–371
  33. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 369
  34. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 370
  35. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 372
  36. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 374
  37. ^ a b c d e f Litvinsky 1996, p. 466
  38. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 373
  39. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 177
  40. ^ a b c Litvinsky 1996, p. 175
  41. ^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 176
  42. ^ Litvinsky 1996, p. 376

Sources

Literature

  • B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Josef Marquart, Ērānšahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenacʿi (1901)
  • V. Minorsky, Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, "The Regions of the World": A Persian Geography 372 A.H. – 982 A.D., translated and explained, with the preface by V. V. Barthold, 2nd ed. (1970)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Hyecho 慧超, 往五天竺國傳 Wǎng Wǔtiānzhúguó Zhuàn (ca. 727)

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Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Turk Shahi of Kabul and Kapisa.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/turk-shahi/

Last revised: 8 November 2026