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

ISBN 92-3-103985-7 The khanate of Kokand
power such as Russia should ‘restore to Asia the wisdom it once conferred on others’. He
took an interest in life at court, the state, the economy and in particular irrigation, and in
the emirate’s international relations.
The khanate of Khiva
Khwarazm’s geographical remoteness has always given it a special quality. Through con-
tact with the great transcontinental trade caravans, it managed to overcome its isolation and
participate in the movement of political renewal that reached the Uzbek khanates during
the last period of independence.
The population of the khanate, which numbered about 1 million at the end of the nine-
teenth century, was made up of Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs and a large number of
Turkmens. 23 When Khwarazm had the military strength and political will to expand, it tra-
ditionally moved north, towards the Kazakh lands, and above all south, to the Murghab and
Tejen basins and the southern oases inhabited by Turkmens, as far as neighbouring Persia.
The language of administration was Chaghatay Turki, the language used by two famous
mirāb-chroniclers of the khanate, Mu’nis (1778–1829) and his nephew Agahi (1809–74),
to compile the history of the dynasty. Agahi lived under six khans, from Muhammad Rahim
I (1806–25) to Muhammad Rahim II (1864–1910).
The khanate of Kokand
Centred on the Ferghana valley, the khanate of Kokand was the most recent and dynamic
of the Uzbek states, with over 2 million inhabitants at the end of the nineteenth century,
500,000 of them nomads. Seven rulers belonging to the Uzbek Ming dynasty succeeded
each other in the course of a century, from the khanate’s founder, ‘Alim Khan (1798–1810),
to Khudayar Khan (1845–58; 1865–75). They implemented a policy of territorial expan-
sion towards the emirate of Bukhara (Khujand, Tashkent and Ura-tepe were taken by ‘Alim
Khan in 1809), the Kazakh lands to the north and the Kyrgyz lands to the south. 24 The
increase in irrigated land and the cultural renaissance impressed even the most powerful of
Kokand’s neighbours.
It was in the reign of Madali Khan (1831–9) that the khanate reached its apogee before
being invaded for a short period by the emir of Bukhara, Nasrullah Khan, in 1842. There-
after, the khanate was prey to incessant rivalries between nomadic and sedentary
23 According to the 1897 census, there were 450,000 Turkmens in the whole of Turkistan, 248,000 of
whom were in the province of Transcaspia.
24 Bregel, 2003, map 30, pp. 61, 31 and 63.
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