Qutayba Ibn Muslim - Conquests in Central Asia

Conquests in Central Asia

The Arabs had reached Central Asia in the decade after their decisive victory in the Battle of Nihavend in 642, when they completed their completed their conquest of the former Sassanid Empire by seizing Sistan and Khurasan. The first Arab attacks across the Oxus ranged as far as Shash (Tashkent) and Khwarizm, but they were little more than raids aiming at seizing booty and extracting tribute, and were interrupted by the inter-tribal warfare that broke out in Khurasan during the Second Islamic Civil War (683–692). Subsequent governors, most notably Sa'id ibn Uthman and al-Muhallab ibn Abi Suffrah, made attempts to conquer territory across the river, but they failed. The native princes, for their part, tried to exploit the Arabs' rivalries, and with the aid of the Arab renegade Musa ibn Abdallah ibn Khazim, who in 689 seized the fortress of Tirmidh for his own domain, they managed to eject the Arabs from their holdings. Nevertheless, the Transoxianian princes remained riven by their own feuds, and failed to unite in the face of the Arab conquest, a fact which would be suitably exploited by Qutayba after 705.