Ma'munids (Khwarazmshahs of Jurjaniyya)

The Ma'munids were the emirs of Jurjaniyya (Gurganj, old Urgench), the city where the caliphate's governors of Khwarazm had resided. ^{1 3} In 995 Ma'mun ibn Muhammad killed the last Afrighid and became Khwarazmshah, founding the new house. ^{1 4} The sources do not mention them before 992, so the author asks whether they were local notables seeking independence from the Arabs or governors appointed by the Samanids. ¹

Shohruxmirzo Ismoilov argues that a fals struck at Jurjaniyya in 356/967 in the name of Muhammad ibn Ali, kept at the University of Tübingen, shows that the house was ruling long before 995, and he dates its beginning to around 967. ^{1 2 5} He also reports the view of A. Özbayraktar that the Samanids created this emirate between 348 and 372 AH (959–982). ⁶

• Muhammad ibn Ali, emir of Jurjaniyya (fals of 356 AH). ⁶
• Ma'mun ibn Muhammad (386–387/996–997 in the author's table): the first dirham bearing the name Ma'mun, 387 AH. ^{6 4}
• Ali ibn Ma'mun (387–406/997–1015 in the author's table): 33 types struck at Jurjaniyya, Kath, Farawa, Nasa and Bukhara. ⁴
• Abu al-Abbas Ma'mun ibn Ma'mun (399–407/1008–1017 after Bosworth, as the author cites): a dirham of 405 AH bearing a title granted by the caliph. ^{7 8}

The house ruled as Khwarazmshahs for about fifty years; the author says it carried out wide reforms, and that its coins show Islam and its traditions fully in possession of Khwarazm's spiritual life in the tenth century: they copy caliphal and Samanid coins, carry Qur'anic verses and show no living creatures. ² Verses from al-Tawba, al-Saff, al-Fath and al-Rum appear on them, such as al-Tawba 9:33 and al-Rum 30:4, together with the names of Nuh ibn Mansur, the Samanid Abd al-Malik and the caliphs al-Ta'i and al-Qadir. ⁹

In 1017 Mahmud of Ghazna conquered Khwarazm and handed it to his governor Altuntash, founding the Altuntashid house, of which no coins are known. ² The author holds that some Ma'munid coins struck outside Khwarazm help trace the state's borders in the tenth and eleventh centuries. ¹⁰