History of civilizations of Central Asia, v. 6 ... - unesdoc - Unesco

ISBN 92-3-103985-7 The new political and strategic situation
systematically, and some of them, such as that led by Batyr Srym Datov (1783–97) 11 in
the Little Horde, and Kenesary Kasymov in the Middle Horde, are better known than oth-
ers. Sultan Kenesary Kasymov (1802–47), a descendant of Ablai Khan, led an uprising
from 1837 to 1847.
THE UZBEK KHANATES ON THE EVE OF THEIR CONQUEST BY THE ‘WHITE
TSAR’ 12
The history of Central Asia is better known in the periods when the region was part of a
great empire than in the periods when independent entities developed there. For instance,
the centuries after the Timurids are often considered to be a period of contraction, or
even decline in several knowledge traditions (Iranian, Russian and Western). However,
as a result of the pioneering work of V. V. Barthold and many subsequent academics and
researchers, the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century can no longer be viewed
as a phase of constant and irreversible political and cultural decline. Indeed, a study of the
contacts in the history of Central Asia – in particular, contacts between nomadic and seden-
tary populations 13 – enables us to place widespread ideas regarding the inevitable cultural
decadence arising from the capture by the Turkic-speaking nomads of the ancient centres
of Iranian civilization in Trans-oxania in their proper political and intellectual context. 14
Barthold was one of the first to associate an abundance of sources with a period described
as one of decline or at least contraction. Thereafter P. P. Ivanov 15 challenged the idea of a
documentary vacuum in Central Asia and defended the theory that there was a profusion
of sources that had not yet been studied, which would explain the lack of knowledge of
that aspect of its history. 16
The states of Central Asia have always depended on land-based lines of communication,
especially when they remained land-locked, as was the case in the post-Timurid era. Thus
the destabilization of political and economic circuits in the wake of the new global balance
of power 17 after the great European maritime adventures was clearly felt in the seventeenth
and the first half of the eighteenth centuries.
11 See Vyatkin, 2002.
12 Translation of the expression ak pādishāh, commonly used to designate the Russian tsar in the Uzbek
and Kazakh khanates.
13 Fourniau, 2000.
14 E. Allworth refers to the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries in Bukhara in a subchapter
entitled ‘Historiography of the Decline’: see Allworth, 1990, p. 107.
15 Ivanov, 1958, p. 12.
16 Kazakov, 1999.
17 Steensgaard, 1973.
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