Incorporation of nomads into military and administrative system of settled polities: the example of Khorezm in pre-mongol period

The problem of incorporation of representatives of nomadic tribal structures into sedentary polities has an extensive historiography, however, in this article we consider a specific example of such a phenomenon that manifested itself in the history of Khorezm during the reign of the Anushteginid dynasty there, that is, in the XII – early XIII century. Some aspects of this problem have certainly been considered by researchers and the author of the article himself devoted several earlier works to this, however, this article is, on the one hand, a generalization of existing scientific experience, and on the other hand, it aims to highlight specific mechanisms for the incorporation of nomads into the military and administrative system that were used by the Khorezm rulers during their more than a century-long reign. As we will point out in this article, the most well-known mechanisms to historians such as dynastic marriages and the subsequent involvement of nomads in the system of military and administrative management are rarely mentioned by Muslim historians and geographers. At the same time, there is much more information about patronage from the ruling elite of Khorezm towards representatives of the nomadic aristocracy, which on the one hand strengthened the position of individual political actors, and on the other hand, destabilized the situation inside the Khorezm state.