A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

chapter fourteen
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand in the seventeenth to
nineteenth centuries
bukhara
When Abdallah II died in 1598, his son and successor Abdalmumin,
who had spent a number of years as governor of Balkh, managed to stay
on the throne only a few months before he was ousted and killed in the
disorders that followed his father’s death.No other adult male son of
Abdallah II had survived to take over – a curious feature in a system
where a plethora of sons and grandsons born of a ruler’s several wives
was often the problem; it seems that in this case Abdallah II, perhaps
inspired by the example of his allies the Ottomans but applying his own
modified version, had suppressed all the male contenders for succession
except Abdalmumin.
What Abdallah did not do, however, was to eliminate his brother-inlaw
Jani Muhammad, whose father Yar Muhammad had taken refuge
with the Shaybanids of Bukhara after the conquest of the khanate of
Astrakhan by the Russians in 1556.Jani Muhammad married the Uzbek
khan’s sister, and he acceded to the vacated throne in Bukhara as the first
ruler of a dynasty called Janid or Ashtarkhanid; the Janids too were
Juchids, but not through Shiban but through Tuqay Timur, one of
Juchi’s other sons (in fact, his thirteenth son), so that some historians
prefer the name “Tuqay-Timurids” to the genealogically less revealing
appellations Janids or Ashtarkhanids.Under their rule the city and
khanate crystallized into an almost classical pattern of a Muslim polity
of its time, cherishing and even enhancing traditional values while
ignoring or rejecting the vertiginous changes initiated by the Europeans
but now reaching other parts of the world.Most khans, especially the
virtuous Abdalaziz (ruled 1645–81), were devout Muslims who favored
the religious establishment and adorned Bukhara with still more
mosques and madrasas.Samarkand was not neglected either, but the
center of political and religious activities had definitively shifted to
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