Nezak Tarkan

Hephthalite copy of a Sasano-Arab coin of Abd Allah ibn Khazim with AH 69 (688 CE) date. In the margin: a Hephthalite countermark with crowned facing head and a late tamgha 20px. Time of Nezak Tarkhan, circa 700 CE. Nezak Tarkhan or Tarkhan Nizak (-710 CE) was a nomadic ruler of Tokharistan who led a revolt against the Arab commander Qutayba bin Muslim around 709 CE. He is sometimes considered as the last Hephthalite ruler, ruling from his castle in Balkh.

Nezak Tarkhan is first mentioned in 651 CE as the Hephthalite ruler of Badghis, when he allied with the marzban of Merv against the Sasanian ruler Yazdegerd III. Yazdegerd III was defeated and barely escaped with his life, but he was murdered in the vicinity of Merv soon after, and the Arabs managed to capture the city of Merv the same year.

In 659, Chinese chronicles still mentioned the "Hephtalite Tarkhans" (悒達太汗 Yida Taihan, probably related to "Nezak Tarkhan"), as some of the rulers in Tokharistan who remained theoretically subjects to the Chinese Empire, and whose main city was Huolu 活路 (modern Mazār-e Sherif, Afghanistan). Yaqut al-Hamawi called Badghis "the headquarters of the Hephthalites" .

Nezak Tarkhan, the ruler of the Hephthalites of Badghis, led a new revolt in 709 with the support of other principalities as well as his nominal ruler, the Yabghu of Tokharistan.

According to some authors, he may have been of Nezak descent