A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

164 A history of Inner Asia
the latter conquest, however, began in the eighteenth century, if we
include northern Kazakhstan in this area.Each step had its special characteristics
and internal as well as external ramifications.The Siberian
expansion appears at first sight to have been almost elemental, undertaken
by the spontaneous dynamism of Cossacks and merchants.It was
methodically propped up by strategic or logistical settlements, however;
above all, Moscow just as relentlessly extended firm government control
over the freshly acquired possessions, thus becoming a permanent neighbor
of much of Inner Asia as conceived of in this study.
Until directly attacked by Russia, however, the people of Inner Asia
remained absorbed in their more immediate goals and conflicts.The
Kazakh khans, despite witnessing the expansion of the infidel giant to
the north and his absorption of the khanate of Sibir, had their sights
turned chiefly southward toward the Syr Darya and Ili and the territories
beyond these two rivers.Their khan Qasim (1511–23) was the first
personality under whom the recently formed nationality acquired the
more discernible structure of a khanate.From then on and for the rest
of the sixteenth century, his successors would usually hold on to the
northern bank of the Syr Darya and to such cities as Tashkent and
Sayram, except for periods when the campaigns of the Shaybanid
Abdallah II made them withdraw deeper into the Kazakh steppe.Haqq
Nazar (1538–80), on the other hand, made significant inroads into
Moghulistan, especially into the Issyk Kul area, where he and his
Kazakhs struck up friendly relations with Muhammad, leader of the
Kyrgyz.Qasim and Haqq Nazar could with some legitimacy claim to
speak for all Kazakhs.From the seventeenth century until the Russian
conquest in the nineteenth, howewer, these nomads only seldom and for
brief periods recognized the authority of a single khan; usually they
formed three separate tribal confederations or “Hordes,” thus called by
the Russians (“Orda”) but known as “Jüz” (“Hundred”) in Kazakh: the
Lesser Horde in western Kazakhstan, the Middle Horde in central
Kazakhstan, and the Greater Horde in southeastern Kazakhstan (more
or less coterminous with Semireche).This fragmentation could not but
undermine their power to resist subsequent incursions by the Kalmyks
and eventual conquest by the Russians.
The Shaybanids had mostly peaceful relations with the Chaghatayids
of Moghulistan and Kashgaria, but only after the latter had given up
their ambitions in Fergana, an area claimed by most rulers of
Transoxania; this rivalry caused an initial conflict between the two