Al Muhtaj - Later History

Later History

The Muhtajid rulers succeeding Abu 'Ali are not well recorded. Abu'l Muzaffar (b.?) Muhammad was the ruler of Chaghaniyan toward the end of the 10th century. He was an ally of the Turkish general Fa'iq and together they fought against Abu'l Muzaffar's relative, Abu'l-Hasan Taher b. Fazl b. Muhammad, who had either been the previous ruler of Chaghaniyan or had usurped power there. Taher's army marched to Balkh in 991 but in the ensuing battle he was killed and Abu'l Muzaffar Muhammad established himself in Chaghaniyan. The alliance with Fa'iq meant that he was also an enemy of the Simjuris; he therefore took part in the conflicts that marked the end of the Samanids as a power (see Nuh II of Samanid for details).

By the end of the century the Muhtajid rulers became vassals of the Ghaznavids, who had supplanted the Samanids in Afghanistan and Khurasan. In 1025 an unnamed Chaghani ruler and other Ghaznavid vassals joined Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna when he crossed the Oxus River to meet his ally, the Karakhanid ruler of Kashgar Qadir-khan Yusuf. During the reign of Mahmud's successor Mas'ud, the governor of Chaghaniyan was described as a son-in-law of Mas'ud's named Abu'l-Qasem, who may have been a Muhtajid. Abu'l-Qasem temporarily had to flee from the province in the face of an invasion by the Transoxianan Karakhanids. No more rulers of Chaghaniyan are mentioned after this, and only a few years later the Seljuks took control of the region.