A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

180 A history of Inner Asia
Shah’s death in 1747 by having the still officially reigning Abulfayz murdered
and ridding himself of the khan’s twelve-year-old son
Abdalmumin in the same manner.Between that year and 1785, the
Manghit ataliqs still maintained the fiction of legitimate Genghisid reign
by allowing puppet khans to occupy the throne, but effective rule was in
their hands at least since the second phase of Muhammad Rahim’s
tenure of office (1753–58).Nevertheless, it is customary to associate the
beginning of the Manghit Dynasty with the accession of Muhammad
Rahim’s cousin Shah Murad (1785–1800).
The Manghits were the first non-Genghisid dynasty to rule
Transoxania since the Timurids (besides being the last native monarchy).
A similar evolution was taking place in Khiva and Khoqand, where
khans of Uzbek tribal origins no longer felt any need to legitimize their
rule through a Genghisid genealogy (although in Khoqand, it seems, the
Ming rulers did make an attempt to link themselves to Babur and thus
to gain a Genghisid genealogy on the cognatic side).The new tack taken
by the Manghits in Bukhara was emphasized by the switch of the ruler’s
title from khan to emir, which in this case meant a shift from tribal Turco-
Mongol to Islamic legitimation: for emir stood here for Amir (al-
Muminin), “Commander of the Believers,” the once prestigious Arabic
title of the Caliph (although according to some scholars Manghit rulers
called themselves “emirs” simply because that was their original identity,
emirs or begs, members of the Turco-Mongol tribal and military elite of
non-Genghisid ancestry).
The Manghits succeeded better than their Genghisid predecessors in
the efforts to achieve centralized rule by reducing the power of Uzbek
tribal chieftains and relying on a small, partly non-Uzbek standing army
and on a Persian-speaking bureaucratic class often recruited from the
emir’s Persian slaves; assuming the image of devout Islamic rulers and
sponsoring the religious class, both secular and that of the Sufi orders,
was another means of the emirs to consolidate their authority.This produced
greater internal stability, population growth and a certain economic
revival, which in turn benefited from increasing trade with
Russia.At the same time, however, the despotic and conservative nature
of the regime made it incapable of grasping the dramatic changes going
on elsewhere, especially where it would matter the most, in Russia.This
had two major consequences: one was conquest by Russia in 1868, the
other the continuation of an almost medieval social structure of the
emirate as an informal Russian protectorate until 1920.