The Afrighids (Khwarazmian: ʾfryḡ) were a native Khwarezmian Iranian[1][2][3] dynasty who ruled over the ancient kingdom of Khwarazm.

[4] According to him, the Afrighids ruled from 305, through the Arab conquests under Qutayba ibn Muslim in 712, and up to their overthrow in 995 by the rising rival family of Ma'munids.

Bordered by steppeland and desert on all sides, Khwarazm was geographically secluded from other areas of civilization, which allowed it to preserve a separate distinctive Iranian language and culture.

[7] The start of the Khwarazmian era seemingly took place in the early 1st-century, after they had freed themselves of Parthian rule, and established their own local dynasty of shahs.

[7] Khwarazm had initially been the subject of ineffective raids by the Arabs, who occasionally attacked from the neighbouring regions of Khurasan and Transoxiana.

In 712, however, the Arab governor of Khurasan, Qutayba ibn Muslim, capilizated on the civil war between the shah Azkajwar II and his brother Khurrazad.

According to al-Biruni, the Arabs killed all Khwarazmian scholars who knew the ancient history of the country; however, according to Bosworth, this is exaggerated.

[7] Once the Arabs withdrew from their raid, the Shahs recovered power in Khwarezm and they continued to adhere to their ancestral faith, which according to Al-Biruni was Zoroastrianism.

In the early 10th-century, the Khwarazmshahs were made vassals of the Samanid dynasty,[6][7] a Persian family which ruled mainly in Transoxania and Khurasan.

[6] An uncertain part of Khwarazmian history is the rise of Ma'munid family, who came to rule their hometown of Gurganj, one of the three main cities of the country.

The city had risen to rival Kath, most likely due to its commercial success as a trading post between the steppe and the Kievan Rus'.

The Khwarazmians continued to bury their dead in ossuaries until the 3rd-century, when they were replaced with stone boxes, a sign of the expanding influence of orthodox Zoroastrianism from Iran.