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A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

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Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 193<br />

Khoqand in 1843 and besieged it for forty days, but an attack on<br />

Bukhara by the khan of Khiva Allahqulikhan forced Nasr Allah to hurry<br />

home and saved the city and the khan, who also recovered Khujand and<br />

Tashkent.<br />

The depravity of some khans, wars with Bukhara, and the unresolved<br />

tension between the khans’ authority, tribal factions, and the settled population,<br />

together with the resulting civil wars, eventually deprived the<br />

khanate of what there was left of political stability, and in the end the<br />

Russians were virtually forced to impose their own solution.This<br />

instability is illustrated by the career of the last ruler, Khudayar<br />

(1845–75): he was removed from the throne in 1858 when another<br />

member of the dynasty, Malla Khan, replaced him (1858–62); in 1862<br />

he regained his throne, but lost it to yet another relative (1863–65);<br />

finally in 1865 Khudayar ascended the throne for the third and last time,<br />

thanks to the support he had received from the emir of Bukhara<br />

Muzaffar.The squabbles among the Central Asians were characteristic<br />

of the incomprehension they had of the historic events that were changing<br />

their world.The Russians captured Tashkent in that same year of<br />

1865; in 1868 they defeated the emir of Bukhara and, drastically reducing<br />

his territory, made him their de facto vassal.In the same year, without<br />

even having to resort to military action, they imposed a treaty on<br />

Khudayar Khan that had a similar form, and after having annexed all<br />

of the khanate’s northwestern and northern territories.The new<br />

arrangement, however, did not suffice to save the khan or the khanate,<br />

in contrast to Bukhara.In 1873 a series of rebellions, led by Ishaq Hasan<br />

and Abdurahman Awtobashi, broke out and by July 1875 forced<br />

Khudayar Khan to seek refuge at the Russian mission.The Russians<br />

helped him leave the khanate and find safety in Tashkent, which by then<br />

was the administrative center of the newly established guberniya or imperial<br />

province of Turkestan.Khudayar’s son Nasriddin was placed on the<br />

throne at Khoqand, but in October of the same year he was overthrown<br />

by a usurper named Pulat Khan and had to seek asylum in Russian-held<br />

Khujand.The disorders in the khanate continued, until in February<br />

1876 the Russians occupied the entire territory and annexed it, as the<br />

oblast (region) of Fergana, to the province of Turkestan.

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