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HUNNIC TRIBES, Nezak Huns. Anonymous (“Nezak Shah”) Issue.
Bronze Drachm 27mm (3.40 grams) 26mm, Struck circa 500-600 A.D. Vondrovec ā-group.
Reference: Vondrovec [Göbl, Hunnen] Type 198
Bust right, wearing winged crown surmounted by bull’s head.
Fire altar flanked by attendants; wheel above each attendant..
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The Nezak Huns were one of the four groups of Huna people in the area of the Hindu Kush. The Nezak kings, with their characteristic gold bull’s-head crown, ruled from Ghazni and Kapisa. While their history is obscured, the Nezak’s left significant coinage documenting their polity’s prosperity. They are called Nezak because of the inscriptions on their coins, which often bear the mention “Nezak Shah”. They were the last of the four major “Hunic” states known collectively as Xionites or “Hunas”, their predecessors being, in chronological order, the Kidarites, the Hephthalites, and the Alchon.
The term ‘Hun’ may cause confusion. The word has three basic meanings: 1) the Huns proper, that is, Attila’s people; 2) groups associated with the Huna people who invaded northern India; 3) a vague term for Hun-like people. Here the word has the second meaning with elements of the third.
The Nezaks enter the historical record in the late 5th century, with their minting of coins in Ghazni, which had previously been controlled by the Sassanian Persians, the Indo-Sasanians. Their emergence may have been a consequence of the weakening of Persian influence in the region after the defeat of the Persian king Peroz by the Hephthalites (a people related to the Nezak), in Bactria in 484 CE.
From that point, the Nezaks consolidated their power in Zabulistan and in the 6th century expanded into Kabulistan, deposing the Alchon Huns from Kapisa.
Nezak coins with the bull’s crown appear well into the 8th century, at which time it appears that a confederacy emerges between the Nezaks and the Alchons, possibly against Turkic invaders.
Around the middle of the 6th century CE, the Alchons, after having extensively invaded the heartland of India, had withdrawn from Kashmir, Punjab and Gandhara, and going back west across the Khyber pass they resettled in Kabulistan. There, their coinage suggests that they merged with the Nezak Huns.
Eventually, the Nezak-Alchons were replaced by the Turk shahi dynasty, first in Zabulistan and then in Kabulistan. The last Nezak king known by name was Ghar-ilchi, who was confirmed by the Chinese emperor. Between 661 and 665, Chinese and Arab sources indicate that a new Turkic ruler became Shah of Kabul. Having lost Ghazni and Kabul, the Nezak dynasty declined rapidly as indicated by the progressive elimination of Nezak symbols from the historical coin record.
 The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites), also known as the White Huns, were a nomadic confederation in Central Asia during the late antiquity period. The stronghold of the Hephthalite power was Tokharistan on the northern slopes of the Hindukush. By 479, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdiana and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 they had captured areas of present-day northwestern China (Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin). By the end of the 5th century, the Hephthalites overthrew the Indian Gupta Empire to their southeast and conquered northern and central India. But later they were defeated and driven out of India by the Indian kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta in the 6th century.
In Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are called Yanda or Ye-ti-i-li-do, while older Chinese sources of c. 125 AD call them Hoa or Hoa-tun and describe them as a tribe living beyond the Great Wall in Dzungaria. Elsewhere they were called the “White Huns”, known to the Greeks as Ephthalite, Abdel or Avdel, to the Indians as Sveta Huna (“white Huns”), Chionite or Turushka, to the Armenians as Haital, while their Bactrian name is ηβοδαλο (Ebodalo). According to most specialist scholars, the spoken language of the Hephthalites was different from the Bactrian language that was utilized as the “official language” and minted on coins. They may be the eponymous ancestors of the modern Pashtun tribal union of the Abdali, the largest tribal union in Afghanistan.
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