JOURNAL 
OP THE 
ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. 
Part I.—HISTORY. LITERATURE, &c. 
No. II.—1886. 
The Decline of the Sdmdnis and the Rise of the Qhaznavis in Mdward- 
un-Nahr and jpart of Khurdsdn. (With some unpublished coins .)—- 
B^j E. E, Oliver, M. L 0. E., M. R. A. S, 
To Englishmen in India the history and geography of Central Asia 
are matters that have always commanded considerable attention, and of 
recent years “ the progress of events ” has forced them into recognition 
as matters of interest, possibly vital interest, to Englishmen everywhere. 
But beyond the outlines of certain well known historical features and a 
few famous names, our knowledge is still very indefinite and uncertain ^ 
and an attempt to fill in the details for any particular time or State, 
difidcult in the extreme. The history of the Middle Ages in the East 
may be said to be still unwritten. The whole is made up of struggles 
for supremacy by various races, conflicting tribes, and petty chiefs, who 
founded innumerable dynasties, the very names of which, with the cities 
and territories they ruled, are now unknown, or at best can be traced by 
evidence the most slender and obscure. 
Not the least valuable among such evidence is the numismatic. 
“The coins of the Muslim East”, as Mr. Stanley Lane Poole writes in 
a recent work, “do not so much recall history as make it.” The right 
to coin money in his own name, and of being mentioned in the Friday 
prayers was one of the most cherished privileges of every Muhammadan 
who could in any way get himself recognised as a ruler, and, fortunately 
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