Fromo or Phromo Kesaro (

Bactrian script Bactrian (, , meaning "Iranian") was an Eastern Iranian language formerly spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria (present-day Afghanistan) and used as the official language of the Kushan and the Hephthalite empires. Name It was long thoug ...

: , phonetical transcription of "Rome Caesar") was a king of the

Turk Shahis The Turk Shahis were a dynasty of Western Turk, or mixed Turco-Hephthalite origin, that ruled from Kabul and Kapisa to Gandhara in the 7th to 9th centuries AD. They may have been of Khalaj ethnicity."The new rulers of Kabul, who according to ...

(also known as the Kabul Shahis), a dynasty of

Western Turk The Western Turkic Khaganate () or Onoq Khaganate () was a Turkic peoples, Turkic khaganate in Eurasia, formed as a result of the wars in the beginning of the 7th century (593–603 CE) after the split of the First Turkic Khaganate (founded in th ...

or mixed Western Turk-

Hephthalite The Hephthalites (), sometimes called the White Huns (also known as the White Hunas, in Iranian as the ''Spet Xyon'' and in Sanskrit and Prakrit as the ''Sveta-huna''), were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE, ...

origin, who ruled from

Kabul Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...

and Kapisa to

Gandhara Gandhara () was an ancient Indo-Aryan people, Indo-Aryan civilization in present-day northwest Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar valley, Peshawar (Pushkalawati) and Swat valleys extending ...

in the 7th to 9th centuries. In Chinese sources "Fromo Kesaro" was transcribed (pinyin: ; jyutping: ), "

Fulin The Shunzhi Emperor (15 March 1638 – 5 February 1661), also known by his temple name Emperor Shizu of Qing, personal name Fulin, was the second emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper. Upon the deat ...

" ( ) being the standard Tang dynasty name for "Byzantine Empire".

Origin of the name "Rome Caesar"

From 719 CE,

Tegin Shah Shahi Tegin, Tegin Shah or Sri Shahi (ruled 680–739 CE, known to the Chinese as 烏散特勤灑 ''Wusan Teqin Sa'' "Tegin Shah of Khorasan") was a king of the Turk Shahis, a dynasty of Western Turk or mixed Western Turk-Hephthalite origin who ...

was the king of the Turk Shahis. He then abdicated in 739 CE in favour of his son Fromo Kesaro. The name "Fromo Kesaro" was the probable phonetic transcription of "Rome Caesar" in honor of , the title of the then

Eastern Roman The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

Emperor

Leo III the Isaurian Leo III the Isaurian (; 685 – 18 June 741), also known as the Syrian, was the first List of Byzantine emperors, Byzantine emperor of the Isaurian dynasty from 717 until his death in 741. He put an end to the Twenty Years' Anarchy, a period o ...

who had defeated their common enemy the Arabs in 717 CE. Leo III the Isaurian then sent an embassy through Central Asia in 719 CE, which travelled as far as China. The Chinese annals record that "In the first month of the seventh year of the period Kaiyuan

19 CE AD 19 ( XIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Silanus and Balbus (or, less frequently, year 772 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination AD 19 for this year ha ...

their Lord

"] sent the Ta-shou-ling [an officer of high rank] of T'u-huo-lo [吐火羅, Tokhara] (...) to offer lions and ling-yang [antelopes], two of each. A few months after, he further sent Ta-te-seng ["priests of great virtue"] to our court with tribute."

Investiture of Fromo Kesaro in 738/739 CE

The Turk Shahis were nominally vassals of the Chinese

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

court and regularly sent embassies for official matters. In 738 CE,

sent a request to abdicate in favour of his son Fromo Kesaro. These events are recorded in the Chinese annals

Cefu Yuangui ''Cefu Yuangui'' (冊府元龜) is the largest '' leishu'' (encyclopedia) compiled during the Chinese Song dynasty (AD 960–1279). It was the last of the '' Four Great Books of Song'', the previous three having been published in the 10th ce ...

Conflict with the Arabs

Kabulistan Kabulistan ( Persian: کابلستان) is a historical regional name referring to the territory that is centered on present-day Kabul Province of Afghanistan. By the 10th century, Ibn Khordadbeh and the Hudud al-'Alam report the southern part ...

was the heartland of the Turk Shahi domain, which at times included

Zabulistan Zabulistan (, ''Zābolistān'', ''Zāwulistān'' or simply ), is an ancient and medieval name for a historical region that included mainly southeastern region ( Zabol) of Iran and some parts of what is now southern Afghanistan. By the tenth ce ...

and

. Some of their coins were minted in eastern Gandhara, in the Turk Shahi's winter capital of Hund (

Udabhandapura Hund (Pashto: ), historically known as Udabhandapura (Udabhāṇḍa(pura) in Sanskrit), is a small village in Swabi District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is located on the right bank of the Indus River, approximately 15 km north of ...

). During their rule, the Turk Shahi were in constant conflict against the eastward expansion of the

Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate or Abbasid Empire (; ) was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (566–653 CE), from whom the dynasty takes ...

. Circa 650 CE, the Arabs attacked Shahi territory from the west, and captured

. But the Turk Shahi were able to mount a counter-offensive and repulsed the Arabs, taking back the areas of Kabul and

(around

Ghazni Ghazni (, ), historically known as Ghaznayn () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana (), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan with a population of around 190,000 people. The city is strategica ...

), as well as the region of

Arachosia Arachosia (; ), or Harauvatis ( ), was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire. Mainly centred around the Arghandab River, a tributary of the Helmand River, it extended as far east as the Indus River. The satrapy's Persian-language name is the et ...

as far as

Kandahar Kandahar is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city, after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118 in 2015. It is the capital of Kandahar Pro ...

. The Arabs again failed to capture Kabul and Zabulistan in 697-698 CE, and their general

Yazid ibn Ziyad Yazīd ibn Ziyād ibn Abīhi () (died 683/84) was a general of the Umayyad Caliphate responsible for the province of Sijistan during the reign of Caliph Yazid I between 680/81 and his death. He was appointed by one of his brothers Ubayd Allah or ...

was killed in the action. Fromo Kesaro appears to have fought vigorously against the Arabs. The Arabs are known to have been forced to pay tribute to Fromo Kesaro, since Sasanian coins and coins of Arab governors were overstruck on the rim with the following text in the

describing his victory over the Arabs: The victories of Fromo Kesaro against the Arabs may have forged the Tibetan epic legend of King Phrom Ge-sar.

Succession

In 745 CE, Fromo Kesaro sent a request to the Chinese court in order to abdicate in favour of his son Bo Fuzun (勃匐準, his name is only known from Chinese sources). These events are again recorded in the Chinese annals ''

Jiu Tangshu The ''Old Book of Tang'', or simply the ''Book of Tang'', is the first classic historical work about the Tang dynasty, comprising 200 chapters, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories. Originally compiled during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingd ...

'' and ''

Tang Huiyao The ''Tang Huiyao'' () is an institutional history of the Tang dynasty compiled by Wang Pu and presented to Emperor Taizu of Song in 961. The book contains 100 volumes and 514 sections; it has an abundant content for the period before 846, and sca ...

''. The Turk Shahis eventually weakened against the Arabs in the late 9th century CE.

and

Zabul Zabul (Pashto/Dari: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the south of the country. It has a population of 249,000. Zabul became an independent province from neighbouring Kandahar in 1963. Historically, it was part of the Zab ...

were lost to the Arabs, while in

the

Hindu Shahi The Hindu Shahis, also referred to as the Kabul Shahis and Uḍi Śāhis, were a dynasty established between 843 CE and 1026 CE. They endured multiple waves of conquests for nearly two centuries and their core territory was described as having c ...

took over. The last Shahi ruler of Kabul, Lagaturman, was deposed by a

Brahmin Brahmin (; ) is a ''Varna (Hinduism), varna'' (theoretical social classes) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the ''Kshatriya'' (rulers and warriors), ''Vaishya'' (traders, merchants, and farmers), and ''Shudra'' (labourers). Th ...

minister, possibly named Vakkadeva,

H. G. Raverty Henry George Raverty (31 May 1825 – 20 October 1906) was a Cornish officer and linguist in the British Indian Army. Life Raverty was born in Falmouth, Cornwall. He served from 1843 to 1864, rising to the rank of Major in the 3rd Bombay Nativ ...

, Tr. ''Tabaqat-i-Nasiri'' of Maulana Minhaj-ud-din, Vol. I, p. 82 in c. 850, signaling the end of the Buddhist Turk Shahi dynasty, and the beginning of the

Origin of the name "Rome Caesar"

Investiture of Fromo Kesaro in 738/739 CE

Conflict with the Arabs

Succession

Notes

References

Sources