The Yabghus of Tokharistan (625-758)

At the end of the 6th century the Western Turks took Tokharistan, the old land of Bactria on the upper Oxus. In 625 Tong Yabghu Khagan made his son Tardu Shad its ruler, with his seat at Kunduz.

The Chinese monk Xuanzang stayed at Tardu Shad's court in Kunduz in 630 on his way to India and described the Turkic rulers of the region. The Yabghus of Tokharistan controlled the trade routes from Samarkand to India, and their coins carry a Turkic tamga.

From the mid-7th century the Arabs pushed north from Khorasan. For a time the yabghus leaned on the Tang and held out, but their lands kept shrinking, and their last remnants survived in the mountains of Badakhshan until 758. Their southern neighbours, the Turk Shahis of Kabul, lasted another century.