The Karakhanids (Il-khanid)

The Karakhanids (or Ilkhanid) can first be traced in historical sources in the ninth century, as a powerful tribe in Transoxania. By the late tenth and early eleventh century, they had formed a politically united Karakhanid state, as evidenced by the coinage from this period, on which a series of Karakhanid rulers are described as sovereigns of Transoxania. A distinctive feature of this state was the division of political power into ‘appanages’, or areas of financial government within which estate revenues were assigned to the khan.  This was also a period of great cultural innovation, with monuments in Bukhara and Samarkand still standing as tribute to the Karakhanid legacy.