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.
 (1598–1599) |
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ABŪ SA`ĪD (3), `ABDULLAH I. (5), `ABD UL-
LATĪF (6),
Samarkand, Samarkand, Samarkand,
A.H. 936–939 A.H. 947 (1540) A.H. 947–959
(1529–1532) (1540–1551)
DECORATIONS IN THE SHĀH ZINDA, SAMARKAND
 CHAPTER XXVII

The House of Astrakhan

Among the Mongol chiefs who struggled for mastery in Eastern Russia
454
at the epoch of Tīmūr’s intervention was a descendant of Chingiz,
named Kutluk, who rose to fame by defeating Tīmūr’s great rival,
455
Tokhtamish Khān, near Kiev in 1399. His offspring vegetated in
obscurity for nearly two centuries in the Khānate of Astrakhan, on
the lower reaches of the Volga, and were then driven eastwards by
the growing power of the Russian princes. Thus, towards the close
of the sixteenth century, the head of this ancient line, Yār
Mahammad Khān, sought refuge in Transoxiana, and was received
with honour by the Shaybānides, whose pride in their descent from
Tīmūr was flattered by the exile’s recognition of their claims to
kinship. Iskandar Khān gave his daughter, the sister of `Abdullah,
greatest of the Shaybānide line, in marriage to the Astrakhan chief’s
son, Jāni Khān.
The new-comer soon showed that he possessed the warrior’s
instincts, and took a prominent part in his brother-in-law `Abdullah’s
campaigns. And so it came to pass that when the last of the
Shaybānides, `Abd ul-Mū´min, was slain, the nobles of Transoxiana
offered the crown to Jāni Khān. He, being well stricken in years,
declined it in favour of his son Dīn Mahammad, who united the blood
of Chingiz and of the fallen dynasty. He did not long survive to enjoy
his fortune; perishing in battle with the Persians, who attempted to
drive the Uzbegs from Khorāsān. His successor, A.H. 1007 (1598) was
his brother Bāki Mohammad, while Vāli Mohammad, another of old
Jāni’s sons, took possession of Balkh and the country west of the
Oxus. A third brother was murdered in A.H. 1011 (1602) by the Kara
Turkomans who dwelt at Kunduz, and from them Bāki Mahammad
exacted a terrible vengeance. Kunduz was taken by storm, and the
entire garrison was put to the sword. This punishment brought Shāh
`Abbās of Persia into the field, determined to guard his north-
eastern frontier from foes who threatened the existence of his
authority. He met with a crushing defeat near Balkh, and escaped
with the greatest difficulty from capture. The remainder of Bāki
Mohammad’s reign was disturbed only by those insurrections,
fomented by kinsmen, from which few Eastern princes were free. He
died in A.H. 1014 (1605), and was succeeded by his brother Vāli
Mohammad, the erstwhile lord of Balkh. Vāli Mohammad’s rule was
brief and inglorious. He wallowed in debauchery, and surrendered all
power to an unscrupulous vezīr, whose fiendish cruelties aroused
fierce resentment, and led to his master’s defeat and death at the
hands of a kinsman, Imām Kulī Khān (1611). The new ruler was of
sterner and purer mould. He courted the society of the learned and
pious, and laboured to secure his country’s prosperity. And so, under
his wise and just régime, Bokhārā regained a share of her ancient
glory. She grew rapidly in wealth, and again became a beacon-light
in the darkness of Central Asia. At length, after a reign of thirty-eight
years, the good Imām Kulī Khān felt himself unequal to the task of
governing, and sought the repose which is the ideal of all true
Musulmans. He summoned his brother Nāzir Mohammad from Balkh
456
and surrendered his realm to him. Then, taking a pilgrim’s staff,
he set out for Medīna, where he died in the odour of sanctity,
leaving traces of his munificence which have endured to the present
day.
His successor (1642) found it impossible to secure a place in his
people’s affections. He was immensely rich, and endeavoured to win
public regard by his largesses; but Bokhārā sighed for the good
times of old Imām Kulī Khān, and the popular feeling found vent in a
revolt which raged in the northern provinces. Nāzir Mohammad sent
his son `Abd el-`Azīz to quell it, but the faithless prince placed
himself at the head of the rebels and marched on Bokhārā. The
unhappy father fled to Balkh, leaving his capital at his unnatural
foe’s mercy, and `Abd el-`Azīz took up the fallen sceptre (1647).
Nāzir Mohammad, in despair, divided the rest of his realms among
his sons who had remained faithful to him—the fourth, Subhān Kulī
Khān, receiving in fief the country round the ford of Khwāja Sālū on
the Upper Oxus. But his old age was still embittered by his children’s
contests for supremacy. Worn out at last by the unequal struggle, he
resolved to spend the brief remainder of his days in the sacred soil
457
of Medīna, and died, broken-hearted, on his pilgrimage thither.
His death served only to increase the hostility between his sons.
Subhān Kulī Khān, who had established himself at Balkh, became a
thorn in the side of his brother `Abd el-`Azīz of Bokhārā. A third
458
brother, Kāsim Mohammad, was despatched with an army to
reduce him to submission; but he was defeated, and driven to take
refuge at Hisār, and peace was restored on the masterful Subhān
Kulī Khān being recognised as heir to the throne. Hardly had the
clouds of civil war been dissipated ere Bokhārā became the prey of
foreign invasion (1663). Khiva had long been a province of the
southern Khānate, but its prince, Abū-l-Ghāzi, a man whose life had
been one long romance, determined to throw off the hated yoke. He
drove the Bokhārans from the Lower Oxus, and carried the war into
the enemy’s camp. Defeated with great slaughter by `Abd el-`Azīz
near Kerminé, he escaped with a grievous wound by swimming
across the great river. Nothing daunted, he soon took the field again,
and carried his ravages to the very gates of Bokhārā.
His son and successor, Anūsha Khān, was still more
venturesome. He invaded `Abd el-`Azīz’s territory at the head of a
great force, A.H. 1076 (1665), and actually gained possession of the
capital during the sovereign’s temporary absence at Kerminé. The
latter hastened to his people’s aid. With only forty devoted followers
he hewed his way to the citadel, and summoned his subjects to oust
the invader. The call was but too eagerly obeyed: all classes rose as
a man against the abhorred Khivans. The Sicilian Vespers were
repeated, and but few escaped to tell the tale of disaster. This
splendid heroism exhausted `Abd el-`Azīz’s stock of mental
459
vigour. He determined to abdicate in favour of his brother Subhān
Kulī Khān, and seek the secure refuge which Medīna offered to those
oppressed with the carking cares of life. His temperament, indeed,
predisposed him in favour of a course which had become traditional
in his family. It was a rare mixture of the adventurous and the
contemplative. Daring in battle, prompt in action, `Abd el-`Azīz
inherited a tendency to asceticism, and was wont to withdraw
himself from worldly affairs and remain plunged in prolonged
meditation on the ineffable goodness of his Maker. Without regret he
laid down his crown and betook himself as a humble pilgrim to the
Holy City, which is the goal of every true follower of the Prophet.
Subhān Kulī Khān assumed the insignia of royalty on his
brother’s departure; but gratified ambition brought with it no
accession of happiness. The Astrakhanides, with many virtues, were
deficient in filial love, and Subhān Kulī’s heart was wrung by the
jealousy and disrespect of his children. His neighbour of Khiva, too,
did not take to heart the terrible lesson taught him in the preceding
reign. In A.H. 1095 (1683) he invaded Bokhārā, and, though defeated
by a loyal chief named Mohammad Bi, he repeated his incursions in
the following year. In A.H. 1100 (1688) his successor advanced to the
very gates of Bokhārā; but he, too, was soundly beaten by
Mohammad Bi, and Khiva fell for a time under Subhān Kulī Khān’s
dominion. This age witnessed the apogee of Bokhārā’s greatness in
the estimation of the Mohammedan world. Aurangzīb, the narrow-
minded zealot who sat on the throne of Akbar, sent thither
ambassadors with elephants and other costly gifts; and Ahmad II. of
Turkey, whose lust for conquest far exceeded his military genius, did
not disdain to address his Bokhāran brother a grandiloquent epistle
460
describing mythical successes against the Frankish unbelievers.
In spite of endless trouble with rebellious nobles, Subhān Kulī
Khān found a leisure to cultivate the Muses; and he was also the
author of a book on medicine which epitomises the lore of Galen,
Hippocrates, and Avicenna, but suggests nostrums in the shape of
prayers and talismans of which none of those worthies would have
approved. He was now eighty years of age, and felt that a time had
come when he must bid adieu to ambition. He called around him his
nobles, and publicly designated his son Mukīm Khān, who ruled at
Balkh, as his successor. Then he peacefully resigned his breath after
a reign of twenty-four years, A.H. 1114 (1702).
Mukīm Khān found an obstacle in his path in the person of his
elder brother `Ubaydullah, and a civil war broke out in which the
great Uzbeg nobles of Bokhārā found their account. The faithful
Mohammad Bi took up the gauntlet for Mukīm, while the elder
pretender’s cause was espoused by Rahīm Bi, the chief of the
powerful Mangit tribe. It lasted for five years, when, thanks to his
nominal vassal’s support, `Ubaydullah triumphed. He chafed under
the dictation of the Mangit king-maker, and was promptly
suppressed by poison; another brother named Abū-l-Fayz being
elevated to the throne in his stead, A.H. 1130 (1717).
The new sovereign’s character was wholly deficient in the
strength of purpose so needful in one who aspires to rule his fellow-
men, and he owed to his utter insignificance his recognition by the
turbulent nobles who surrounded him. It is the fate of all long-lived
dynasties to end miserably with a succession of rois fainéants; and
the Astrakhanides were no exception to the rule. Not only did Abū-l-
Fayz meekly submit to the dictation of Rahīm Bi; he bowed the neck
to a foreign potentate, and disgraced his country in the eyes of
Islām.
In 1736 Nādir Shāh of Persia, whom Vambéry styles the last of
461
the Asiatic conquerors of the world, after crushing the Ottoman
power in Georgia, turned his eagle glance on the states on his north-
eastern frontier. A host under his son Rizā Kulī Khān was hurled
against Andakhūy and Balkh, and soon the Sun and Lion of Persia
waved over both citadels. Flushed with victory, Rizā Kulī Khān
crossed the Oxus and fell upon Abū-l-Fayz Khān’s dispirited legions.
But Ilbars, the lion-hearted ruler of Khiva, came to the rescue, and
the forces of the two Khānates gained the day in an encounter with
the invaders at Karshī. Nādir Shāh, who had far deeper designs at
stake, recalled his impetuous son, and informed the Khāns of Central
Asia that the expedition had been undertaken without his consent,
and that he wished to live in amity with the descendants of Chingiz.
Meantime Persian gold was brought into play. Rahīm Bi and other
Uzbeg chiefs were won to his side, and a breach was produced by
the jealousy between Bokhārā and Khiva. Then, secure from attack
from his dreaded foes of Khiva, Nādir Shāh invaded India, A.H. 1152
(1739), took Delhi with fearful slaughter, and bent his steps
homewards with booty valued at eighty millions sterling.
When the news of this successful raid reached Abū-l-Fayz he
sent an embassy to the conqueror, who was resting on his easily
won laurels at Peshawar. “I am the last off-shoot,” he wrote, “of an
ancient line. I am not powerful enough to withstand a monarch so
redoubtable as thou, and so I keep myself apart, offering prayers for
thy welfare. If, however, thou shouldst deign to honour me by a visit,
462
I will show thee the regard due to a guest.” The fatuous prince at
the same time sought to associate his neighbour of Khiva in his
abasement, but his overtures were received with outspoken
contempt.
Nādir Shāh saw in the submission tamely offered by Bokhārā
(1740) a means of crushing his inveterate enemy, Ilbars Khān, and
he accepted Abū-l-Fayz’s invitation.
He marched from Peshawar to Herāt with three hundred
elephants, a tent embroidered with pearls, and the famous Peacock
463
Throne, ravished from the Hall of Private Audience at Delhi.
Thence he travelled to Karki on the Oxus frontier of Bokhārā, where
he was met by Rahīm Bi with presents and supplies for his locust-
horde of followers. Thence he fared to Charjūy, and traversed the
mighty river by a bridge which he threw across it in three days.
Leaving half his army to protect the priceless baggage, he moved on
to Karakūl, a fortress one day’s march from the capital. Here he was
met by Abū-l-Fayz, attended by his nobles, courtiers, and clergy,
bringing a present of beautiful Arab horses. The titular sovereign of
Bokhārā presented himself as a suppliant, but was given a seat by
Nādir Shāh. Clad in a robe of state and crowned, the imperious
guest carried his complaisance so far as to address his host as
“Shāh.” But further honours were in store for the obsequious Abū-l-
Fayz. Nādir deigned to accept his lovely daughter as a wife,
bestowing her sister, at the same time, on his nephew. He created
Mohammad Rahīm Bi, to whose influence he owed his reception,
Khān, and gave him command of 6000 chosen troops levied in
Turkestān. Having thus brought Bokhārā to heel, Nādir Shāh turned
his attention to Khiva. He sent an envoy to Ilbars Khān, demanding
his instant submission. The Khivan was a man of ungovernable
temper, and his reply was to put to death those who held out to him
the olive branch. This breach of the usages of Islām sealed his fate.
He was attacked by Nādir Shāh with an overwhelming force, and
closely invested in his fortress of Khanka. After undergoing a
cannonade for three days, the proud Ilbars was forced to throw
himself upon the mercy of a man whose fearful butchery of the
population of Delhi showed that he was insensible of the softer
feelings; and against him pleaded the children of the slaughtered
envoys, whose blood cried aloud for vengeance. He was put to
464
death, and twenty-one of his principal officers shared his fate.
Having thus rid himself of a perpetual thorn in his side, Nādir Shāh
returned to Charjūy, whence he sent back to her father the young
princess whom he had lately wedded. He then returned to Khorāsān
by way of Merv, and fell a victim to a conspiracy among his
followers, provoked to extremities by his insane cruelty, A.H. 1160
(1747).
The news of his death led the all-powerful Mohammad Rahīm Bi
465
to throw off the semblance of loyalty to his effete master. He
entered Bokhārā with a strong force, seized the person of the
wretched Abū-l-Fayz, confiscated his treasure, and finally put him to
death. With him virtually ended the dynasty of the Astrakhanides,
which had exhibited many virtues, neutralised, however, by an
absence of will-power and a bias towards the mystic side of their
religion. Their age was one of profound decadence. Its architectural
remains, which reflect the spirit of an era much more closely than is
generally supposed, are insignificant. They are, indeed, limited to
the great college known as Shīr Dar, which was built at Samarkand
in 1610, and a few other public edifices which do not shine by
contrast with those dating from Tīmūr’s happier days. But Bokhārā
was destined to wallow in a yet deeper abasement under the
uncouth Uzbegs, who supplanted the cultured sovereigns of the
Astrakhan line.
 CHAPTER XXVIII

The House of Mangit

466
The family thus raised to royal rank by the ambition of Rahīm Bi
belonged to the great Uzbeg tribe of Mangit, which had been
brought from the north-east of Mongolia by Chingiz, and had settled
on the lower reaches of the Oxus and around Karshī, a Bokhāran
citadel 140 miles south-east of the capital. Their warlike spirit had
placed them at the head of the Uzbeg clans; and while the
Astrakhanide sovereigns retained any real power, the loyalty of the
Mangits was as conspicuous as their courage. We have seen how the
imbecility of the degenerate Abū-l-Fayz tempted his headstrong
minister, Rahīm Bi, to throw off the mask of allegiance. The latter
sealed his disloyalty by assassinating the murdered Khān’s young
467
heir, `Abd ul-Mū´min, who had married his daughter. By an irony
of fate Rahīm Bi was destined, in his old age, to sink to the condition
of a roi fainéant. His vezīr, a Persian slave named Dawlat Bi, usurped
all the functions of royalty, and misgoverned Bokhārā in his name.
On his deathbed, having no male heirs, he designated his uncle
Dāniyāl Bi as his successor—the choice having been probably
dictated by his vezīr, who was acquainted with Dāniyāl’s weak and
overscrupulous character, and fondly hoped to retain the mastery
which he had won over the degenerate Rahīm Bi. Dāniyāl was, at his
nephew’s death, governor of the town of Kerminé. His modest
disposition forbade him to assume the purple. He contented himself
468
with the title of Atālik, and placed Abū-l-Ghāzi Khān, the last scion
469
of the Astrakhanides, on the throne. But his son, the famous Ma
´sūm, who afterwards assumed the name of Shāh Murād, was not
of a nature to brook an inferior position. Under a mask of asceticism
and insensibility to the promptings of ambition, which imposed on
the priesthood and the mob, he cherished deep-seated schemes of
conquest. He gained unbounded influence over his doting father, and
persuaded him to connive at his assassination of the vezīr, Dawlat Bi,
under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Then he gathered all the
threads of authority in Bokhārā into his own hands, and, when the
470
dotard Dāniyāl Bi died, in 1770, none of his brethren ventured to
471
dispute his claims to the successorship. He was at first content to
govern without reigning; and Abū-l-Ghāzi, the grandson of Abū-l-
Fayz, was permitted to retain the trappings of royalty. In 1784,
however, Ma´sūm had rendered intrigue and overt opposition to his
rule hopeless, and felt strong enough to deprive the forlorn
descendant of Chingiz of his shadowy crown. From that year dates
the commencement of the reigning house, although the founder
eschewed the title of king and adopted that of “Dispenser of
Favours.” Ma´sūm, secure at home, turned his eyes to foreign
conquest. Khorāsān, the richest province of Persia, was powerless to
resist his encroachments; but the road thither was blocked by
Bahrām `Alī Khān, a Persian of the Kajar tribe to which the present
Shāhs belong. This remarkable man had established himself in the
472
chief strategical position of Central Asia in 1781. He had built for
himself a citadel out of the ruins of Old Merv, which, even in its
decay, conveys the impression of overwhelming strength; and his
stern rule had reduced his kinsmen, the Turkoman tribes, to abject
473
submission. In vain did he attempt to propitiate the ruthless Amīr
by an embassy, and offering prayers for the repose of the soul of
Dāniyāl Bi. In 1785 Ma´sūm set out for Merv at the head of 6000
Uzbeg horsemen. After lulling Bahrām `Alī into security by one of
those ruses in which he was so great an adept, he suddenly
appeared before Merv, and drew its defenders into an ambuscade, in
which Bahrām `Alī was slain. But the royal city defied his forces,
secure in the wealth poured into her lap by a system of irrigation,
the work of the Sultan Sanjar of the Seljūk line. Its headworks were
a mighty barrage on the Murghāb, thirty miles above Merv, which
474
was guarded by a strong castle. The governor of these defensive
475
works quarrelled desperately with Mahammad Khān, the son and
successor of Bahrām Khān; the causa teterrima belli being, as is
generally the case, a woman. In the torments of disappointed love
he had recourse to the Amīr Ma´sūm, to whom he delivered his
charge. Thus Merv’s relentless foe was enabled to strike at the root
of its prosperity. He destroyed the Sultan Band, as the barrage was
called, and turned the most fertile spot on the world’s surface into a
desert. Famine stared the inhabitants in the face, and they had no
other resource but to submit to the ruthless Amīr. He obtained
possession of the coveted prize without striking a blow, and
transported the bulk of its population to Bokhārā, where they have
476
left indelible traces in the population.
Ma´sūm’s thirst for conquest was not stayed by this splendid
capture. He carried his raids far into Persia, laid Khorāsān waste, and
swept off so many of its wretched inhabitants that the price of
477
Persian slaves fell in the Bokhārā bazaar to a few pence. His
conduct towards other princes who had the misfortune to be his
neighbours was equally devoid of mercy and good faith; and at his
478
death, in 1799, the people of Khiva, Kokand, and Balkh felt that
Central Asia had been delivered from a scourge almost as terrible as
that wielded by Chingiz Khān. Amongst his own subjects Ma´sūm
left behind him a reputation of piety and virtue. “Under his reign,”
479
writes `Abd ul-Kerīm, “the prosperity of Bokhārā excited the envy
of Paradise. Religion had then taken a new lease of life. The prince
was occupied only in good works, in prayers and practising devotion.
He had renounced the pleasures and pomps of this world; he
touched neither gold nor silver, and he spent on his own needs only
the proceeds of the capitation tax levied from Jews and infidels.”
Historians who are not blinded by religious prejudice give us a very
different estimate of his character and the influence of his reign.
 Under this cruel and hypocritical bigot Bokhārā lost the last
semblance of national spirit, and succumbed to a terrorism such as
that which sapped the power of Spain. Ma´sūm it was who revived
the office of Rā´is-i-Sharī`at, or religious censor, which had fallen
into desuetude in the rest of Islām. These officials drove the people
to prayer with whips, visited neglect of outward observances with
severe floggings, and, on its repetition, with death. The use of wine
and tobacco was forbidden under the like penalties, and thieves and
prostitutes were delivered over without trial to the executioner.
Spoliation and the levy of blackmail were carried by these pests to
the height of a fine art, and the sanctity of the harem itself was not
480
respected. No system can be conceived which was better
calculated to repress all independence of thought and action, and
encourage the growth of hypocrisy and even darker vices.
Ma´sūm had designated his son Sayyid Haydar Tūra as his
successor; but the new sovereign had to reckon with three paternal
uncles, `Omar Bi, Fāzil Bi, and Mahmūd Bi, who raised the standard
481
of revolt in the northern provinces. Amīr Haydar marched against
them at the head of an army so powerful as to render resistance
impossible. The rebels threw themselves into strong places, but
were driven from these retreats by concentrated artillery fire. Two of
them, `Omar Bi and Fāzil Bi, were tracked to a village by the Amīr’s
troops, were captured and put to death; while Mahmūd Bi, the third,
482
sought safety in Kokand. Amīr Haydar’s store of energy was
apparently exhausted by this early test. He permitted Iltuzar Khān of
Khiva to ravage the suburbs of his capital, and not until the cry of his
suffering subjects could no longer be disregarded did he give orders
for an expedition to avenge their woes. It consisted of 30,000
Uzbegs under the command of a general of distinction named
Mahammad Niyāz Bi. The avenging host followed the course of the
483
Amū Daryā until the confines of Khiva had been reached. In the
meantime, Iltuzar, overjoyed at the prospect of victory, crossed the
Amū Daryā in the enemy’s rear and established himself in an
entrenched camp with 4000 chosen men. The invaders were on the
horns of a dilemma. To leave the river was to enter a waterless
desert, wherein none would emerge alive; while retreat to Bokhārā
was barred by the Khivans’ entrenchments. In desperation they
attacked the foe with suddenness and vigour, driving them into the
Amū Daryā and securing a decisive victory. Khiva lay open to their
attack, but the pusillanimous Haydar was content to rest on his
vicariously won laurels, and to pass the rest of his reign in the
practice of a pharisaical piety and association with priests, who ruled
the people in his name with a rod of iron. As is too frequently the
fate of Oriental princes, he was unable to resist the enervating
influence of the harem, and lost his power of initiative by wallowing
484
in licensed debauchery. He died in 1826, after an inglorious reign
of twenty-seven years.
 CHAPTER XXIX

Amīr Nasrullah, a Bokhāran Nero

In writing of the monkish Haydar’s successor, Vambéry appositely

quotes an old Uïghūr proverb, “The princes of an age are its
485
mirrors.” Nasrullah Khān epitomised the vices which flourished
unchecked in Bokhārā. The passion for low intrigue, the lust and
cruelty, the self-righteousness and hypocrisy so often associated with
the Mohammedan character, were found in him in their highest
development.
As the third son of Haydar, he had small chance of succeeding to
the throne; but he kept that goal constantly in view during his
father’s lifetime, and paved the way thither by pandering to the
greed of the military caste. No opportunity was lost of gaining
adherents among the Amīr’s courtiers. Hākim Bi, the Kushbegi, or
486
vezīr, and his father-in-law Ayāz Topchi-bāshi, who held an
487
important military command, were devoted to his interests.
On Haydar’s death, his eldest son, Husayn Khān, took possession
of the citadel of Bokhārā and was proclaimed Amīr. He received
fervent assurances of loyalty from Nasrullah, who was the while
actively plotting to subvert his authority, and who held a council of
war at Karshī, at which Mū´min Beg Dādkhāh, one of Husayn’s chief
lieutenants, assisted.
At this crisis he learnt that his brother had died suddenly after a
reign of barely three months, and took immediate steps to assert his
 488
claims. He obtained a legal decision in his favour from the chief-
justice of Karshī, who also invited the clergy of Samarkand to
espouse his cause. In the meantime another brother named `Omar
Khān seized the reins of power at Bokhārā, and sent orders to the
governor of Samarkand on no account to surrender his charge. But
on Nasrullah’s arrival the gates were flung open to him by the
influence of the mullās, and he was enthroned on the famous Blue
Stone, or Kok-tāsh, whereon nearly every Amīr since Tīmūr’s reign
had received investiture. Then began a triumphant progress
throughout the realm. Katti-Kurgān, Kerminé, and other cities
surrendered to the pretender, who replaced their governors by
creatures of his own, and bade the former swell his train. Thus
attended, he arrived before Bokhārā and closely invested the city.
Starvation soon decimated its swarming population. A pound of meat
489
sold for seven tangas, flour was introduced through Nasrullah’s
trenches in coffins, and the stench of stagnant water in the irrigation
canals grew intolerable. The Kushbegi and his father-in-law Ayāz
took advantage of the people’s agony to proffer their submission,
and undertook to give the signal of capitulation by blowing up an
490
ancient cannon, said to have weighed nearly thirteen tons. On
hearing the muffled roar of the explosion, Nasrullah immediately
attacked the city from two quarters, and entered it in triumph on the
22nd March 1826. `Omar saved his life by instant flight, but three of
his brothers, with many of their adherents, were butchered in cold
491
blood.
 COURT-YARD OF A HOUSE IN SAMARKAND

The policy with which Nasrullah inaugurated his reign partook of

the ingrained cunning which was his chief characteristic. He seemed
to prefer amusements to affairs of state, and thus induced the
Kushbegi to believe that his own lease of power would be
indefinitely prolonged. Meantime no occasion was lost of
strengthening his hold on the lower classes by acts of apparent
generosity and justice. The motto on his seal was that adopted by
the noble-hearted Tīmūr, whom he affected to regard as his
492
prototype. It was “Truth and Equity”! When he felt himself strong
enough to throw off the mask, he banished his benefactor to Karshī,
and afterwards to Samarkand. Ayāz Topchi-bāshi’s suspicions were
lulled by ardent asseverations of friendship, lest he should make
away with the vast possessions which Nasrullah had long marked as
his own. He summoned the old man to his presence, gave him a
beautiful horse, and aided him to vault into the saddle with his own
 493
royal hands. The victim set out for Samarkand, of which he had
been appointed governor, in the assurance that he had not
participated in his son-in-law’s disgrace; but he was soon ordered
back to Bokhārā, and thrown into prison with the Kushbegi. To
Nasrullah’s eternal disgrace, he put both of these early friends to
death in the spring of 1840. Then he turned his attention to the
military class, which had attained preponderance in an empire won
and kept together by the sword. They were butchered in large
numbers without any form of trial, or banished to a distance from
the capital. The clergy had been permitted by his bigoted
predecessor to meddle in the affairs of state, and even the warrior-
prince Ma´sūm had not ventured to thwart them. Nasrullah
overturned their authority, and substituted his royal commands for
494
the hitherto sacred injunctions of law and custom.
His evil passions gained a complete mastery as he grew older.
He gave full rein to the foulest lust, and neither rank nor sex were
sacred in his eyes. His temper became utterly ungovernable. “When
495
angry,” writes one who knew him well, “the blood comes into his
face and creates a convulsive action of his muscles; and in such fits
he gives the most outrageous orders, reckless of consequences.”
These spells of madness alternated with periods when he became a
prey to the wildest suspicion. To gratify it, an army of spies was
maintained, who were paid to report the most trivial words of those
496
whom he believed to be disaffected.
Our readers may well wonder why a tyrant of his mould was
allowed to reign for more than a generation and to die in his bed.
The key to the mystery is to be found in his attitude towards the
populace, by whom he was idolised as their protector against the
497
violence of the military class. Juvenal, in lamenting the atrocities
of a monster of the like nature, remarks that he did not perish until
498
he came to be feared by the dregs of the people.
His foreign policy was as perfidious as his domestic. He attacked
Shahrisabz, a little state enclosed in his dominions, which had, like
Holland, preserved its independence by the bravery of its people and
their ability to lay the environs of their capital under water at an
499
invader’s approach. He was baffled, and Shahrisabz continued to
be a thorn in his side during his long reign,—albeit that he
endeavoured to gain a footing there by espousing the ruler’s sister.
With Kokand he was more successful. That state was governed by
Khān Mohammad `Alī, a prince descended in the female line from
the great Baber, emperor of Hindustān, who had won glory by
500
successes against the Chinese on his western frontier. Thus he
incurred Nasrullah’s jealousy, and his ruin was determined on. It was
compassed by the aid of a Persian soldier of fortune named `Abd us-
Samad Khān, who had fled his country after attempting to
501
assassinate his master. He knew how to cast and work cannon—
engines of war which exercise an overwhelming influence on the
Oriental mind; and commended himself to Nasrullah by military
knowledge and an eagerness to pander to his worst vices. He
became his âme damnée, even as the infamous “Azimulla” prompted
every atrocity committed by Nana Sahib during the Indian Mutiny.
The excuse for aggression was afforded by the frontier fortress of
Pishagar, which Nasrullah declared had been erected by the
Kokandis on his territory. Its destruction was peremptorily
demanded; and, on Mohammad `Alī’s refusal to comply, it was
attacked by a strong force, accompanied by a breaching battery
502
under `Abd us-Samad’s command. The mud walls of Pishagar
were unable to resist the iron shower, and its surrender was followed
in the succeeding year by that of Ura Teppe and of Khojend. The
Khān of Kokand, seeing that the capital was in peril, sued for peace,
and, by the treaty of Kohna Bādām, ceded Khojend and recognised
the Bokhāran Amīr as his suzerain.
With the cunning which in the East passes for the highest
manifestation of diplomacy, Nasrullah placed the newly conquered
territory under the governorship of Sultan Mahmūd, a brother of the
Khān of Kokand and a pretender to his throne. But hardly were
these arrangements completed ere Mahmūd and his brother came to
terms, and both Khojend and Ura Teppe were temporarily lost to
Bokhārā. The wrath of the Amīr was unbounded. In April 1842 he
took the field against Kokand with a host of 30,000 horsemen and
503
regulars, and 10,000 Turkoman mercenaries. He reached Khojend
by forced marches, and captured that city without firing a shot,
504
though it was defended by a garrison 15,000 strong. Thence he
moved rapidly on the capital and drove Mohammad `Alī to seek
refuge in Marghilān. Here he was taken prisoner, dragged back to
505
Kokand, and slaughtered with the greater part of his relatives.
Nasrullah’s relations with Khiva were bitterly hostile throughout
his reign; and he played into the hands of the common enemy,
Russia, by harrying the Khān’s territory at a time when all his force
was needed to oppose an expedition under General Perovski.
The petty states of Balkh, Andakhūy, and Maymana on the
southern frontier were the objects of his constant aggression, and
the mutual jealousy of Persia and Afghanistān allowed him to
assume suzerainty over them. Thus the weakness of his neighbours
turned to his advantage. He was hailed by his obsequious courtiers
as king of kings, and firmly believed himself destined to repeat the
conquests of his model, Tīmūr.
This was the man at whose gates knocked the two greatest of
European Powers. England had watched the constant advance of
Russia towards her Indian frontier with ill-concealed alarm, and in
1832 Alexander Burnes was despatched on an unofficial mission to
Bokhārā. He accomplished nothing, and was fortunate indeed to
506
escape from the bloodthirsty tyrant’s clutches.
The next attempt made by England to establish friendly relations
with the leading Central Asian Powers was less fortunate. Her agent
was Colonel Stoddart of the Indian Army, a man utterly unfitted by
507
training and temperament for a diplomatic mission. His rude and
overbearing manners gave the deepest offence to a despot
accustomed to see all around him tremble at his slightest
 508
movement. He was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, and
languished there, with brief intervals of comparative liberty, till death
put an end to his sufferings. In 1840 he received a companion in
affliction in the person of Captain Arthur Conolly, whose gentle
disposition and high culture rendered him equally unfit to cope with
a truculent monster such as Nasrullah. He had been charged with
the duty of uniting the Central Asian Khānates in an informal alliance
against Russia—a task which their common jealousies rendered
absolutely impossible. Thus his overtures were politely rejected by
Khiva and Kokand in succession. Enticed by Nasrullah into his camp,
he was seized, robbed of all his possessions, and sent to join poor
Stoddart in captivity. In the meantime the Russians had begun to
509
compete for Nasrullah’s favour. Major Batanieff was despatched to
Bokhārā in 1840 by the Tsar Nicholas, with orders to conclude a
treaty of commerce and amity with the Amīr. He was received with
ostentatious courtesy, and his presents found especial favour in
Nasrullah’s eyes. But every attempt to arrive at a modus vivendi was
baffled by those excuses and procrastinations in which Oriental
monarchs are past masters. He left in 1841, after vainly interceding
for his rivals, who languished in daily expectation of death. Their
fate was sealed by his departure and by the news of our disasters in
510
Kābul.
On the 17th June 1842 the unfortunate men were brought out to
die. Stoddart, who had been forced to embrace Mohammedanism,
was the first to suffer. When his head had been severed from his
body the executioner paused, and Conolly had an offer made of life
as the price of his apostasy. He scorned the bargain, and stretched
out his neck to receive the fatal blow. This atrocious crime was never
511
avenged by the country which had sent her sons forth to perish,
but for many years Bokhārā was a word full of evil associations in
the English mind. It was undoubtedly prompted by the fiendish `Abd
us-Samad, who lost no opportunity of gratifying his hatred of
Europeans. Nor were Stoddart and Conolly Nasrullah’s only victims.
A lust for blood seized him, and all who professed Christianity were
proscribed. The missionary Wolff, who visited Bokhārā in 1844 in
order to learn the two young officers’ fate, and if possible to procure
their release, gives a list of seven Englishmen who were slaughtered
512
at `Abd us-Samad’s instigation.
Nasrullah’s closing years were embittered by conspiracies
amongst his nobles; and his successor Mozaffar ud-Dīn was strongly
suspected of having incited one of those movements, which was put
513
down with much bloodshed. He was maddened, too, by the
repeated failure of his attempts to reduce Shahrisabz. On his
deathbed, in 1860, he learnt that that last stronghold of
independence had fallen to his conquering arm. His last act was to
order the execution of its chief, who was his brother-in-law, and all
his children, and his own wife, whose only crime was her
514
relationship to the rebel, beheaded in his presence.
Sayyid Mozaffar ud-Dīn Khān, who succeeded this monster of
iniquity, had attained the mature age of thirty-eight on his death. He
was the son of a Persian slave-girl, and at the age of fourteen was
515
appointed governor of Karshī, the Dauphinée of modern Bokhārā.
That he lived to reign in his turn was due to his extreme
circumspection, for he was swayed by the same vices as his father
had been. His first care was to regain the confidence of the priestly
caste, which had been alienated by the insane excesses of Nasrullah.
Then, inspired by those dreams of universal conquest which had
been the curse of his dynasty, he turned his attention to Shahrisabz,
which continued in a state of revolt. Undeterred by his failure to
reduce the stubborn mountaineers to subjection, he next attacked
Kokand. That Khānate had fallen into the hands of Khudā Yār, a
grandson of the murdered Mohammad `Alī, who had been brought
up under Nasrullah’s eye in that gilded sty, the Bokhāran Court. He
attained power at a period pregnant with danger to his country. The
lower reaches of the Sir Darya were enclosed in the coil of the
Russian advance. In 1853 the fortress of Ak-Mechet had fallen, and
516
eleven years later the Eagle waved over Turkestān and Chimkent.
The onward movement was checked in 1864 by the failure of an
assault on Tashkent; but Khudā Yār was foiled in his turn in a like
attempt on Turkestān, and retreated to his capital only to find that
517
the warlike Kipchāks, a tribe who, then as now, were the
backbone of the population, had set up a younger brother named
Mollā Khān in his stead. Khudā Yār fled to Bokhārā and implored the
Amīr to aid him to regain the throne. Mozaffar ud-Dīn saw in these
events an excuse for extending his own authority up to the frontier
of China. As a preliminary measure, he had Mollā Khān assassinated,
and, marching on Kokand, reinstated Khudā Yār. The Kipchāks,
however, were far from approving his choice. They rose in rebellion,
and, after a protracted struggle with the Bokhāran forces, they
succeeded in wresting the eastern half of the Khānate from Mozaffar
518
ud-Dīn’s protégé. But their strength was sapped by the war raging
on the northern frontier, and their trusted leader was slain by the
Russians at Tashkent. Thus when in 1865 the Bokhāran Amīr invaded
Kokand, in order to repress their insolence, he found the task an
easy one. Khudā Yār was replaced on his tottering throne, and, had
Mozaffar ud-Dīn possessed a trace of political foresight, he might
have united the forces of Central Asia against the common danger.
But his lust for conquest was increased by his cheaply won
successes in Kokand, and, spurred to his ruin by a fanatical
priesthood, he flung the gauntlet of defiance in the teeth of Russia.
Though General Chernaieff had made himself master of Tashkent,
and had Kokand at his mercy, he received a haughty summons to
519
evacuate his conquests, accompanied by a threat of a Holy War.
His reply was couched in language equally peremptory, and a
struggle began which closed in the deep humiliation of the proud
Amīr.
It remains for us to trace the origin of a Power which was
destined to play a part of the first importance in the history of
Central Asia, and to repeat the conquests of Chingiz and Tīmūr.
 PART II

RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA

 CHAPTER I

The Making of Russia

During the long dark centuries whose annals we have endeavoured

to reconstruct, the tide of conquest ran westwards. It was checked
at times by the might of civilisation or fanaticism, but its flow was
tolerably steady and quite beyond control. Had it not been for the
evolution of a still greater force on her eastern borders, the whole of
Europe would have been enveloped in the coils of a Mongolian
invasion. The world was saved from this calamity by the unconscious
agency of Russia. It remains to trace succinctly the history of her
rise, and to show how she combated the Yellow Terror, and, by a
reflex action, carried the banner of European civilisation eastwards.
Long ages before the Christian era the vast plains of Eastern
Europe were invaded by an Aryan race called the Veneti by
520
Ptolemy. In the fourth century we find them struggling for
521
existence with the Goths on the plains watered by the Vistula.
They afterwards split into three branches—the Veneti proper,
afterwards known as the Wends, the Antes, and Slavi. The first-
named pitched their tents in north-eastern Europe, and have left
522
indelible traces in the Baltic provinces of Prussia. The second
spread over the plain between the Dnieper and Dniester; while the
523
Slavs occupied the land between the latter river and the Vistula.
Their progress was impeded for a while by contests with the Huns,
but the overthrow of their fierce foes which followed the death of
Attila gave full scope to their expansion. They crossed the Danube
and occupied the rich country between the Adriatic and the Black
Sea; then, spreading northwards, they took possession of the lake
region of Pskov and Novogorod. These movements ceased in the
seventh century, the close of which saw the Slavs firmly established
in European Russia, Illyria, and Bulgaria. They were employed in
agriculture and stock-raising, and their characteristics appear to have
been much the same as those observed at the present day in the
rural populations of Eastern Europe. Ancient writers agree in
depicting them as being hospitable and cheerful, firmly attached to
ancient customs, courageous, and fighting only in self-defence. In
point of culture the Slavs of a thousand years ago failed to reach the
low standard attained by their contemporaries of the West; for they
were sparsely scattered over vast areas and plunged in continual
warfare with aggressive neighbours. Society was organised on a
patriarchal basis. The soil was held in common by the tribe or “land,”
whose affairs were discussed and whose chiefs were elected at a
general gathering of the members. The religion of the Slavs betrayed
its Eastern origin. The supreme deity was called Bog, his wife Siwa;
but there were good spirits (belbog) to be worshipped and evil ones
(chernebog) to be propitiated, and every village had its patron
524
divinity.
It is possible to carry too far the theory on which Mr. Buckle
insisted so strongly—that the destinies of a race are moulded by
their physical environment; but its general truth is demonstrated by
the history of Russia. The European dominions of the Tsar are an
unbroken plain. They contain no mountain fastnesses serving as a
refuge for inferior races, and were thus fit arenas for a struggle for
existence in which the most vigorous stem of the human family was
sure to survive and to expand. And then, Russia lay on the highway
of commerce between the East and West. The silks, spices, and
sugar of China traversed her plains on their passage to mediæval
cities, and the growth of local trade was fostered by the 35,000
miles of navigable river which the empire possesses. To this cause is
due the accretion of great urban centres, which played as great a
part in Muscovite history as they did in that of Western Europe.
These cities were fortified to serve as rendezvous for the
surrounding population in time of stress. Their government was
strictly democratic; affairs being directed by a general assembly of
the citizens, which elected a mayor, a commander of their trained
bands, and, later, a bishop. Traders and merchants, who were the
backbone of the urban population, were divided into self-governing
guilds; and the city, not the individual, sent out its fleets and
caravans and colonised distant regions. Each town became a nucleus
of a territory whose peasant-inhabitants rendered the City Fathers
the allegiance formerly paid to the tribe.
With the decay of the tribal conception came radical
modifications in the tenure of land. Individualism slowly triumphed
over socialism; a class of agriculturists sprang up, who long
remained free yeomen. But prisoners of war were reduced to
slavery, and freemen who continued in service for more than a year
encountered a similar fate. Hence the origin of a great body of serfs,
tied down to the soil and acknowledging the mastership of their
wealthier brethren. Such was the Russian township in its earlier
stages of growth. It was the nidus of a self-governing republic,
impelled to expand and conquer by the growth of population which
follows increased material prosperity, but powerless to defend itself
against foreign aggression. The consciousness of this defect led the
citizens to invite soldiers of fortune to lead their militia and give
organised means of repelling attack. These adventurers were styled
princes (kniaz). They were called on to engage to rule according to
custom and law. They were bound to keep a body of armed
retainers, who were paid by a stipulated tribute.
The prince was not only the head of the executive, but the right
arm of the general assembly (vetche), which still arrogated to itself
the right of deciding on peace and war. He exercised judicial
functions, pronouncing sentence on the findings arrived at by the
525
jurors who decided civil and criminal suits, and levying the fine
adjudged, which he appropriated to the maintenance of his dignity.
The Russian princes of the tenth century held a position analogous