A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

202 A history of Inner Asia
One final comment on the administrative borders of Central Asia:
both the khanate of Khiva and the emirate of Bukhara lost important
segments of their territories: those of Khiva were incorporated in the
Syrdarya region, those of Bukhara in that of Samarkand, together with
the precious city itself.On the other hand, the emirate’s territory was
extended farther east so as to include almost all of modern Tajikistan
except eastern Badakhshan, which was incorporated in the Fergana
region, and Khujand, which was divided between the Fergana and
Samarkand regions.
The new political map of Central Asia thus reflected a blend of geographical,
historical, and strategic factors used or created by the Russian
conqueror.The native population played little or no active part in this
process, which only marginally took account of a reality that in the
Soviet period would play a paramount role, namely the ethnolinguistic
one.Yet the life of the natives was immediately and increasingly affected
by the new order.The break with the past brought about many radical
departures, but two deserve special mention: the relative peace and
order installed by the European conqueror in an area where internecine
warfare and marauding had been endemic, and the surrender of the
population’s overall destiny to the discretion of a new and alien master
who was an infidel.
Tashkent became the seat of the Russian governor and administration.The
choice made sense on several counts.Its climate is salubrious
and, although continental, without the extremes characteristic of places
farther north or south; its location, at first sight somewhat eccentric, was
quite central within the province of Turkestan; situated near the right
bank of the Syr Darya, it also lay in an area where the worlds of historic
Transoxania to the south and of the Kipchak steppe to the north met
and overlapped; on the ethnolinguistic level, this was reflected in the Sart
population of the city, which spoke Turki Turkic or Tajik Persian, and
the Kazakh population of the countryside, which spoke Kipchak Turkic;
this overlapping was also visible in the historic role of Tashkent as one
of the crossroads of long-distance trade routes.The fact that its prominence
had previously never equalled that of Bukhara or Samarkand
may similarly be ascribed to this position in a transition zone: for
although Tashkent benefited from the contact with the steppe nomads,
it was also too exposed to their unpredictable incursions and tribal movements,
and to occasional contests between the rulers of Transoxania and
the Kazakhs and other nomads, to become a major metropolis.Once
peace was solidly established by Russia, however, Tashkent quickly sur-