The heart of Asia

by Francis Henry Skrine; Sir E. Denison Ross

FOOTNOTES

[1] The Iranian branch of the Aryans is represented in our times by the Tājiks of Turkestān. Cf. Les Aryens au nord et au sud de l’Hindou-Kouch, par Ch. de Ujfalvy, passim.

[2] More correctly Paropanisus. See an article on “Bactria,” by E. Drouin, in the Grande Encyclopédie.

[3] The mention of Bākhdi (= Balkh) in Fargard 1 of the Avesta, is perhaps still older.

[4] The Greek historians, following a tradition which made the conquests of Sesostris (Rameses II.) even more extensive than they really were, maintain that this conqueror penetrated into Bactria and Scythia. Rameses II. flourished in the thirteenth century before our era. Cf. Maspero, Hist. Anc. des Peuples de l’Orient, p. 225. Equally fabulous is the account given by Diodorus Siculus of the conquest of Bactria by Ninus and Semiramis in B.C. 2180. Cf. E. Drouin, loc. cit.

[5] This was the most easterly town of the Persian Empire. Authorities differ as to the site, some identifying it with Ura Tepe.

[6] The oases at the embouchure of the Oxus were anciently styled Khwārazm, from a Persian word signifying eastwards. They constitute the modern Khiva. Soghdiana comprises Bokhārā and Samarkand, and the nomenclature is derived from Soghd, the old name for the source of its wealth, the river known to the Greeks as the Polytimetus and to moderns as the Zarafshan.

[7] Cf. Nöldeke, Aufsätze zur Persischen Geschichte, p. 23.

[8] Called the battle of Arbela, from a neighbouring city, just as the “crowning mercy” of Waterloo was in reality bestowed at a considerable distance from the town indelibly associated with it.

[9] According to Grigorieff, this means the district lying between the Oxus and Shahrisabz.

[10] The stadium was 600 feet in length; but, as the foot varied greatly in ancient time, this measure of length was never certain. The “great stadium,” otherwise known as the Alexandrian or Egyptian, was .12 of a geographical mile.

[11] Grigorieff suggests the identification of this place with the old town of Baykand, or with Hezārasp, in the Khorasmian oasis.

[12] It may perhaps be identified with Kalāt-i-Nādiri to the north-east of Meshed, called also the “Soghdian Rock.” The famous Roxana, whom Alexander soon afterwards married, was the daughter of a certain Oxyartes, who was among the captives taken with this fort.

[13] Rollin, Ancient History, v. 210. See also Quintus Curtius.

[14] He may, for example, have visited Iskander Kul, a lake which to this day bears his name.

[15] Cf. Gutschmid, Geschichte Irans, p. 22.

[16] In B.C. 327 Seleucus I. had been placed in charge of Syria and the East, and of Babylon—to which, with the aid of Antigonus, he added Susiana. In 316, owing to a quarrel with Antigonus, he fled to Egypt, but in 312 he re-entered Babylon. The era of the Seleucidæ dates from this event. Seleucus extended his dominions as far as the Oxus and the Indus. Not till 306 did he officially adopt the title of king. Gutschmid, op. cit. p. 24.

[17] Cf. E. Drouin, loc. cit.

[18] Diodotus seems to have prepared his subjects for this change of masters by issuing coins of the type struck by Antiochus II., but bearing his own portrait. Cf. Gardner, Greek and Scythian Coins, p. 20.

[19] Hist. x. ad fin. xi. 34.

[20] Gardner, Greek and Scythian Coins, p. 21.

[21] Cf. Justin, xii. 4: “Parthis deinde domitis prefectus his statuitur ex nobilis Persarum Andragoras: inde postea originem Parthorum reges habuere.”

[22] Parthian Coinage, Numismata Orientalia, vol. i. p. 2. Strabo, xi. 9. 2.

[23] Justin, xii. 6: “Imperiumque parthorum a monte Caucaso multis populis indicionem redactis usque flumen Euphratem protulit.”

[24] Ibid. xlii. 1.

[25] Gardner, ibid. p. 6.

[26] Gardner, ibid. p. 6.

[27] See Note 1 at p. 6 of Chap. iii.

[28] Strabo, xi. 8. 2.

[29] This sentiment finds many echoes in Latin literature. Cf. Odes and Epistles of Horace, passim. It is curious to note the identity between the tactics of the Parthians and those of the hordes of Chingiz and Tīmūr. The usual charge of bad faith is brought by the Romans against their terrible enemies.

[30] The Straits of Yenekale.

[31] The three great reformers Lao-tse, Kung-fu-tse (Confucius), and Meng-tse (Mencius) flourished under the princes of this dynasty.

[32] The greatest calamity which this ruthless despot inflicted on his country was the wholesale destruction of literature which he ordered, in view of keeping his people in ignorance. This atrocious measure was attended by the slaughter of many learned men. Cf. Legge, Analects of Confucius, p. 6.

[33] Also called Khamil, a town about 700 miles east of Kulja.

[34] According to Richthofen, the Yué-Chi were of Tibetan stock, but Vambéry and Gerard de Realle assert that they were Turks. Their nidus was to the north-east of Tangut.

[35] Cunningham, Survey of India, vol. ii. p. 62.

[36] Ct. d’Herbelot, Bib. Orient. vol. vi. p. 10; and Boulger, Hist. of China, p. 11.

[37] Cf. Rapson, Indian Coins, in Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie, p. 7.

[38] Cf. Ujfalvy, Les Aryens au nord et au sud de l’Hindou-Kouch, p. 64.

[39] A distinctly Greek type survives to the present time in the mercantile and settled agricultural population of Bokhārā, and the neighbouring khanates, who are known as Tājiks.

[40] Strabo (xi. 8) tells us that the Greek power in Bactria was overthrown by the Asii, Pasiani, Tokhari, and Sakarauli. The first two names are probably identical, and represent the royal family of the Tokhari. They may be identified with the Asiani of Trogus Pompeius. The Sakarauli are the Sarancæ of Trogus, and correspond with the Chinese Sé or Su, i.e. the Sakas. Cf. Cunningham, Survey of India, vol. ii. p. 65.

[41] Cf. Journal Asiatique, Série Nouvelle, vii. p. 162, 1896.

[42] Cf. Colonel Yule, Introduction to Wood’s Oxus, p. xxv.

[43] Identified with Kandahār.

[44] Cf. Drouin’s excellent article on “Bactria” in the Grande Encyclopédie.

[45] General Cunningham states, without quoting any authority, that the Yué-Chi waged war with the Chinese in Khotan during this year (Survey of India, ii. 63).

[46] General Cunningham, Survey, vol. ii. p. 64.

[47] This point is worthy of note in that eminent scholars used to maintain that the names were practically identical. Cf. Vivien de St. Martin, Les Huns Blancs, 1849, p. 64.

[48] These notes on the Ephthalites are taken principally from M. Drouin’s excellent Mémoire sur les Huns Ephthalites dans leur rapports avec les rois Perses Sassanides, privately printed in Louvain, 1895.

[49] Their chiefs originally bore the title of Shen-Yü, which in the reign of Tulun (A.D. 402) was changed to Khākān, an ancient title which we now encounter for the first time in history.

[50] The best accounts of the Sāsānide dynasty are to be found in Nöldeke’s admirable translation of the portion of Tabari’s annals dealing with that period—Geschichte der Araber und Perser zur Zeit der Sāsāniden, Leyden 1879, and his Aufsätze zur Persischen Geschichte, Leipzig, 1887. From these sources we have derived most of our details, and will therefore give no further references.

[51] Or Artabanus.

[52] Some authorities maintain that this city was founded by Shāpūr II. about 340.

[53] Gūr means “wild ass.” The king, who is one of the favourites of Persian tradition, received this sobriquet on account of his passion for hunting wild asses. He usurped the crown.

[54] The Sāsānides were fire-worshippers, disciples of Zoroaster.

[55] This pass is traversed by the famous Georgian Military Road connecting Vladikavkaz with Tiflis.

[56] Transoxiana was never included in the kingdom of the Sāsānides; the possessions of Achemenides stretched far farther east than those of the Sāsānians.

[57] Cf. p. 21, note 2, supra.

[58] Here we follow Malcolm (History of Persia), who bases his account on those of various well-known Persian historians, such as Mīrkhwānd and Khwāndamīr.

[59] We are told that when Bahrām Gūr returned from this expedition to his capital, Ctesiphon, he appointed his brother Governor of Khorāsān, designating Balkh as his residence.

[60] According to the Persian historians, the Khākān was named Khush-Nawāz. Nöldeke, however, disapproved of this reading, the invention he thinks of Firdawsi, and employs that of Akh-Shunwar.

[61] Tabari tells us that Pīrūz had previously ceded to the Khākān the important frontier town of Tālikān.

[62] Some of the means would hardly commend themselves to modern economists. Pīrūz remitted taxes and large sums from the treasury; but he also compelled the rich to feed their poorer neighbours from these taxes.

[63] The more ancient form is Kavadh.

[64] I.e. Ctesiphon.

[65] We are told that this made him look upon Anūshirawān as a talisman, and the interesting detail is added that the mother and the boy were conducted back to Madā´in in a cart as became a princess. Wheeled traffic is unknown on these roads, but Professor Nöldeke refers us to Plutarch’s Artax. 27, where we are told that the king’s wife used that means of locomotion. In recent times Europeans have taken their carriages from Meshed to Teheran on Kobād’s route.

[66] Persian historians assert that he was converted by a sham miracle, and that he continued to believe in Mazdak during the rest of his life. But his motives were probably purely political, and not based on conversion.

[67] The famous Orkhon inscriptions which have been deciphered by MM. Radloff of St. Petersburg, and V. Thomsen of Copenhagen, belong to this branch of the Turks.

[68] De Guignes, ii. p. 374.

[69] Cf. De Guignes, vol. ii. p. 378.

[70] Persian and Roman writers assert that Anūshirawān conquered Transoxiana, but this seems most improbable. For, as Nöldeke points out (footnote to page 159 of his Sāsānides), Huen-Tsang, who visited the country soon after these events, speaks only of Turkish and other barbarian States. Moreover, the State of Transoxiana at the time of the Mohammedan invasion augurs strongly against the extension of Persian rule.

[71] For a full account of his life—historical and fictitious—we refer the reader to the Appendix of Nöldeke’s Sāsāniden, p. 474.

[72] It was reconquered in 629 by Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor, who set up the Cross in the city which had first beheld the emblem of salvation; and the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross is kept on the 14th September in memory of that event.

[73] The origin of this well-known expression is curious. The designation Yemen, or the “right hand,” was given by its northern neighbours to a strip on the south-eastern coast of the Red Sea. But in Arabic, as in the Latin and many other languages, the right hand is associated with good fortune. Hence by mistranslation the territory became known to the West as “The Blessed,” or “Felix.” It is well watered, and is better peopled than any other part of the Arabian peninsula.

[74] The Ka`ba is said to have contained 160 idols, each tribe having its separate God; and so great was the toleration in ante-Mohammedan times that on the pillars of the temples there were also to be found images of Abraham and of the Virgin and Child. In the sixth century the primitive religion had lost its old signification and had developed into fetishism.

[75] Swedenborg was fifty-eight ere he had his first vision.

[76] There are two popular fallacies to be noted with regard to the so-called “Hegira.” In the first place, it should be transcribed as Hijra; and secondly, the word does not mean flight, but separation, for the incident to be recalled was not Mohammed’s flight to Medīna—but his separation from his family.

[77] “Islām” is synonymous for Mohammedanism in all Arabic-speaking countries. Its literal meaning is “resignation”—a heart-whole submission to the divine will.

[78] Khalīfa Rasūl Illāh was the full title of the “Successor of the Prophet of God.” The correct designation of the holder of the office is Khalīfa, while the office itself is Khilāfaa. The former word has till quite lately been transcribed “Khalif,” or Caliph. The self-styled successor of the Mahdi in the Soudan is, however, known to Europe under the correct designation, Khalifah.

[79] The outraged hospitality was avenged, for the murderer was torn to pieces by the mob, while the body of Yezdijerd was embalmed and buried in his ancestral tomb at Istakhr.

[80] He was the Prophet’s son-in-law, and had been elected in A.H. 44 by a council of six as successor to the stern `Omar, the second Caliph.

[81] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. li.

[82] Cf. Muir, Decline and Fall of the Caliphate, p. 208.

[83] Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 15. From this date until the appearance in Central Asia of Kutayba in A.H. 86, our history is little more than an enumeration of Arab governors in Khorāsān, whose rule was usually as uneventful as it was shortlived. We have, however, considered it fitting to enter here into detail somewhat disproportionate to the rest of our narrative, seeing that the facts have hitherto been only accessible in works of Oriental writers.

[84] Müller, Der Islam, i. p. 354.

[85] Tabari, Annales, II. p. 109.

[86] He was not the son of the famous governor of Basra.

[87] In the interim the post seems to have been filled for a short time by Khulayd ibn `Abdullah el-Hanafī (Tabari, II. p. 155).

[88] Tabari, II. p. 156.

[89] Vambéry considers Tarkhān (or Tarkhūn) to be an old Turkish title, which Mohammedan authors have regarded erroneously as a proper name.

[90] Tabari, II. p. 156.

[91] Tabari, II. p. 169. Tabari says he was the first to cross the mountains of Bokhārā on a camel, loc. cit.

[92] Tabari, II. p. 169. The Persian Tabari does not mention this queen, but relates the same incident of the king of the Turks; Ba`lami, the Persian translator, also adds that the shoe was sold by Ubaydullah to the merchants of Basra. Cf. Zotenberg’s Chroniques de Tabari, tome iv. p. 19.

[93] The direm, derived from the Greek drachma, contained 25 grains of silver, and was worth about 5d. of our money. On this basis the value of the shoe would be £4166 sterling!

[94] Vambéry, History of Bokhārā, p. 20. The author says he has this fact from “Arabic authors,” but we have been unable to find any mention of it in either the Arabic or Persian versions of Tabari.

[95] According to Tabari (II. p. 179), Sa`īd was met by a great Soghdian force on reaching Samarkand. The rival hosts stood facing each other till nightfall, but on the following day Sa`īd made a furious onslaught and put the defenders to flight, taking fifteen young nobles as hostages.

[96] Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, p. 39.

[97] Bellew and Vambéry both call him “Muslim,” a reading which has been adopted in the Russian translation of Narshakhi, published in Tashkent in 1897. The latter, indeed, contains a note to the effect that the name is written “Salm” in Arabic sources. It is also the spelling in the Persian Tabari. Salm was twenty-four years of age on his appointment. His father was `Ubaydullah, the famous governor of Basra.

[98] This warrior held command of the Arab troops in Central Asia under several viceroys in succession, and thus gained the confidence of his troops and an intimate knowledge of Khorāsān and the adjoining tracts. The stability in the office of generalissimo went far to neutralise any disadvantages occurring from the frequent changes in that of viceroy.

[99] Tabari (II. p. 394) tells us that Salm took his wife Umm Mohammed with him, and that she was the first Arab woman to cross the Oxus. She bore him a son, who was surnamed the “Soghdian.”

[100] £55 reckoned in our currency.

[101] Narshakhi’s account of these events brings the lack of discipline among the Arabs into a strong light, and serves to account for the vicissitudes of their rule in Central Asia.

[102] This curious custom still survives in Merv. “One day,” writes O’Donovan, “the town-crier, accompanied by half a dozen other Turcomans, entered my hut, each to present me a new-born child. I could not catch the exact words; all I could understand was that one of the infants was O’Donovan Beg, another O’Donovan Khan, a third O’Donovan Bahadur. I forget what the others were. It turned out that the Tekkes’ newly born children are, as a rule, called after any distinguished strangers who may be on the oasis at the time of their births, or have resided there a short time previously, or after some event intimately connected with the tribe” (The Story of Merv, p. 329).

[103] Cf. Aug. Müller, Der Islam, p. 411, who gives the date as A.H. 85.

[104] An entertaining account of this cruel and witty governor will be found in d’Herbelot, under the article Heggiage-ben-Josef-al-Thakefi.

[105] Merv has been styled by almost all European writers on the subject, “The Queen of the World.” Now the origin of this high-sounding title is the expression Merv-i-Shāhijān, a title used to distinguish this town from Merv er-Rūd. This word Shāhijān has been taken as a corruption of Shah-i-jahān, or “Queen of the World.” Yakūt says that Shāhijān means “Soul of the King.” The form as it now stands is probably “Arabicised” from an old Persian form Shahgūn, “what appertains to a king.” Cf. Rückert, Gram. Poet. und Rhet. der Perser (Gotha, 1874), p. xix. The mistranslation, if such it be, has shared the fate of most mistranslations of the kind, and become universal among Europeans.

[106] It must be remembered that Bokhārā is the name of a kingdom as well as of a town.

[107] Between Balkh and Merv er-Rūd, three days’ journey from the latter. Istakhri, the geographer, speaks of it as the most important place in Tokhāristān.

[108] Dihakān = the man (i.e. the head man) of the dih, or village.

[109] Vambéry seems to confuse the two accounts, for he says: “He had not yet arrived within the limits of ancient Bactria when the inhabitants of Balkh came out to meet him, and conducted him with honour into their city.” But Tabari speaks distinctly of an engagement, in connection with which he remembers an interesting detail. Among the captives taken at that time was the wife of a certain Barmek. She was taken into the harem of Kutayba’s brother `Abdullah, by whom she had a son, who was commonly regarded as the ancestor of the famous Barmecīdes of the court of Baghdād. The story was probably invented to give the family a less obscure lineage than that of humble immigrants from Balkh. Cf. Muir, History of the Caliphate, p. 358.

[110] Cf. Tabari’s Annales, Series II. p. 1187, and Zotenberg’s Chroniques de Tabari, vol. iv. p. 157.

[111] Neither version of Tabari gives any details of this siege, but Narshakhi’s account, of which we extract a portion, is most vivid.

[112] Tabari says that he had gone five farsakhs, but mentions no place-name.

[113] Narshakhi records that the lieutenant, who was named Varkā, was answerable for this catastrophe. A citizen of Baykand, it seems, had two beautiful daughters. These the lieutenant abducted, whereupon the father remonstrated with him, saying: “Baykand is a large town, why, when you have the whole population to select from, should you carry off my daughters?” As Varkā gave no answer, the enraged father drew out his knife and stabbed him, but not mortally.

[114] Narshakhi tells that in Baykand, Kutayba found a heathen temple in which was a silver idol weighing 4000 direms; also a quantity of golden vessels which, when weighed together, amounted to 150,000 mithkals. But the most remarkable of his discoveries were two pearls, each the size of a pigeon’s egg. Kutayba on beholding them asked the people whence such large pearls had been brought. They replied, “that they had been brought to the temple by birds in their beaks.” When Kutayba sent intelligence of his conquest of Baykand to Hajjāj, he also despatched these two pearls, with the account of the tradition relating to them. The reply of Hajjāj ran thus: “We have read your story, and it has filled us with wonder; but more wonderful than the two large pearls, and the birds that brought them, is your generosity in having sent to me these precious prizes you had taken. May the blessing of God be upon you.”

[115] Ed. Schefer, p. 43. Khartūm may possibly come to offer a parallel.

[116] Vambéry, Bokhara, p. 25.

[117] Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1195.

[118] Scholars have hitherto failed to read this satisfactorily. The forms that occur are Kur-Bughanūn, Kurighanūn, etc. Professor Houtsma has suggested that the termination should be read nūīn, i.e. prince.

[119] Narshakhi.

[120] Not, of course, to be confounded with Fārāb opposite Chārjūy; but the reading of the name is doubtful.

[121] The italics indicate three excellent puns in the original Arabic. Hajjāj had a universal reputation as a master of this difficult tongue. The words may be transcribed as follows: Kiss bi Kissa wansif Nasafan waridd Wardan.

[122] Narshakhi’s version of the campaign is full of discrepancies, and the events of the years 88–91 are perforce presented to the reader without much regard for chronology or natural sequence. The results are to be found in Bellew’s epitome (Yarkand Expedition, p. 117).

[123] Annales, Series II. p. 1201.

[124] Vambéry says, evidently following his Turkish Tabari: “Their women ... tore their faces!”

[125] One of the most famous tribes of Yemen.

[126] Vambéry says a yearly tribute of 2,000,000 direms!

[127] Narshakhi, ed. Paris, p. 40.

[128] Vambéry follows Narshakhi in ignoring this revolt, which was certainly a very serious one as far as Kutayba was concerned, but both versions of Tabari give detailed accounts of its various phases.

[129] Old Persian word signifying commander-in-chief.

[130] He was opposed to Nīzek’s design. We are also told that, in order that a certain appearance of respect might be kept up, his chains were of gold. Cf. Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1206.

[131] Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1218.

[132] On the river Jīhūn, one of the three principal towns of Khwārazm, of which Medīnat-el-Fīl, or the Town of the Elephant, was the largest.

[133] Tabari relates that one day several Soghdians mounted the rampart and called out: “Oh ye Arabs, why do ye exert yourselves thus vainly? Know that we have found written in a book that our town shall not be taken except by one whose name is “Camel-Saddle,” whereupon Kutayba called out—“God is great! for verily that is my name.” (In Arabic, Kutayba means literally “camel-saddle.”)

[134] He is said to have obtained no less than 20,000 native levies, men from Kesh, Nakhshab, and Khwārazm. Cf. Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1256.

[135] In the year 95 Hajjāj died at the age of fifty-four.

[136] Welīd had been most anxious to make his own son heir-apparent in the place of his brother, and in his designs had been supported by Hajjāj and Kutayba. Hence the bad blood that existed between the conqueror and the new Caliph.

Vambéry adds the following details without reference (not to be found either in Tabari or Narshakhi): “Having conquered Farghāna, he went through the Terek Pass into Eastern Turkestān. Here he encountered the princes of the Uïgurs, who in default of union among themselves were easily conquered. We are told that the Arabs extended their incursions into the province of Kansu.... Turfan, on the very first appearance of the Arabs, embraced Islam.” (Bokhara, pp. 31, 32).

[137] Gibbon recognised the greatness of Kutayba as a conqueror, while lamenting the scanty notices to be found of him in European works; cf. Decline and Fall, chap. li. d’Herbelot, in his Bibliothèque Orientale, dismisses our hero, under the heading Catbah, in a very summary manner. “Ce fut un des plus villains Arabes de son siècle, Valid, sixième Khalife de la race des Ommiades, le fit général de ses armées en Perse, l’an de l’Hégire 88. Il conquît tout le grand pays de Khorazan, et obligea en ces quartiers-là à brûler leurs idoles et à bâtir de Mosquées. Après cette conquête, il passa dans la Transoxiana et prit de force les fameuses villes de Samarcande et de Bokhara, et défit Mazurk roi de Turkestan, qui s’était approché pour les sécourir. Ce grand capitaine finit ses conquêtes l’an 93 (sic) de l’Hégire.”

[138] Tabari, Annales, Series II. pp. 1283–96.

[139] An important town on the Perso-Turkish frontier, north-east of Baghdād.

[140] This saying is not to be found in the Arabic Tabari, but in the Persian version. See Zotenberg, vol. iv. p. 204.

[141] See Zotenberg’s translation of the Persian Tabari, vol. iv. p. 221.

[142] After remaining, as Tabari tells us, four months in Khorāsān to settle the administration of the province.

[143] Zotenberg, vol. iv. p. 225 et seq.

[144] Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1318.

[145] He directed that converts were to be exempt from all taxes, and placed on the same footing as the Arabs; while unbelievers were to be taxed to the utmost. No churches, synagogues, or fire-temples were to be destroyed, but the erection of new ones was forbidden. Cf. Muir, Caliphate, p. 380.

[146] His post was the same as Hajjāj’s, and was equivalent to a viceroyalty of the Eastern conquests of the Caliphate.

[147] Known by the sobriquet of Khuzayna, “the Village Girl,” because of his effeminate ways.

[148] See Tabari, Annales, Series II. pp. 1431 and 1433. Vambéry (who reads the name as Tarshi) states that this man succeeded Yezīd ibn Muhallab on the appointment of Maslama. Cf. Bokhara, p. 37. The Persian Tabari also says that the nomination was made by Maslama. Cf. Zotenberg, vol. iv. p. 268.

[149] The Annales devote many pages to his progress, but as the details are of small importance we refrain from summarising them, and merely follow the abridged account of the Persian Tabari.

[150] He seems already to have been dismissed, and to have been reinstated.

[151] It is very remarkable that from this point in the history the account in the Arabic is as prolix as that in the Persian translation is compressed and condensed.

[152] Vambéry calls him (wrongly) Esresh.

[153] Called by Vambéry, Jandab. He succeeded to the command in A.H. 111. He had previously been in Sind, and on his way to join the army at Bokhārā he narrowly escaped falling into the Khākān’s hands. Tabari relates that he obtained his promotion by offering to Hishām’s wife a necklace of precious stones, which the Caliph admired so greatly that Junayd procured another like it for him. See Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1527.

[154] In this battle a nephew of the Khākān was taken prisoner, and afterwards sent to the Caliph. Tabari notices that there is a doubt as to the year in which these engagements took place, some saying A.H. 112 and others 113 (730, 731).

[155] This defeat was known as the battle of the Defile (ash-Shīb), A.H. 112 (730).

[156] Tabari, Annales, Series II. p. 1539.

[157] About ten or eleven thousand perished in the battle, the remainder were betrayed to the Khākān (Tabari, loc. cit. p. 1542).

[158] Tabari, loc. cit. p. 1543.

[159] Junayd in his report seems to have laid the blame of his defeat on Saura for advancing too far out of Samarkand. According to Tabari, his words were: “Saura disobeyed me; I ordered him to keep near the river, but he did not do so” (loc. cit. p. 1544). Beladhori also, in his very brief account of this campaign, makes no mention of defeat or even disaster. He merely says that Junayd fought the Turks till he had utterly repulsed them, and then asked the Caliph for reinforcements. The account in the Persian Tabari is roughly as follows:—Junayd’s first brush with the Turks was successful; but their Khākān was not discouraged by his reverse. He mustered a host so formidable that Junayd found it necessary to order Saura, who had taken possession of Samarkand, to join forces with him. He then marched against the Khākān with 20,000 men. The Turkish leader adopted tactics which have again and again enabled a prescient leader to triumph against immense odds. On learning that Saura had left Samarkand, he turned and fell upon him with such ferocity that not one of his 20,000 troops escaped to tell the tale. Thereupon Junayd summoned every town of Khorāsān and Tokhāristān to send him its quota of reinforcements; and having thus gathered an army of 43,000 strong, despatched it under a trusted follower to relieve Samarkand, which was closely besieged by the victorious Khākān. The Mohammedans reached the city when their garrison was on the point of surrendering, and attacked the beleaguering host. For the first time during many disastrous years the banner of Islām prevailed. The Khākān was smitten hip and thigh, and forced to raise the siege of Samarkand. Junayd placed a garrison there of 5000 men under Nasr ibn Sayyār, and returned to Merv, where death soon closed his brilliant career.

[160] He appears to have received the appointment from his brother Khālid, the governor of `Irāk.

[161] It is worthy of remark that in the Persian Tabari the record of Asad’s second tenure of office is not only very brief, but even differs essentially from that of the Arabic original.

[162] In Schefer’s edition of Narshakhi (p. 59) the date is absurdly given as 166.

[163] Descendants of `Abbās, uncle of the Prophet. See note below, p. [80].

[164] Cf. Tabari, loc. cit. p. 1988 et seq.

[165] Hārith ibn Surayj mentioned above was still with the Turks, and when Nasr ibn Sayyār reported his victory to the governor of `Irāk the latter ordered him to capture Hārith, subdue Farghāna, and destroy the town of Shāsh.

[166] By the promulgation of a general amnesty the Soghdians were brought back to their allegiance.

[167] Their names were Welīd II., Yezīd II., Ibrāhīm, and Merwān II.

[168] His father, Mohammed, had died in A.H. 124.

[169] An amusing incident is given in this connection by Tabari. Kirmānī was very stout, and the passage by which he had to escape was so narrow that his servant was obliged to drag him through by main force, and the operation very nearly killed him.

[170] See note 1, p. 82.

[171] For a full account of the story of El-Kirmānī and Hārith ibn Surayj, see Tabari, Annales, Series II. pp. 1855–69, 1887–90, and 1917–35.

[172] The following table will explain the descent of the two branches:—

Kossay
|
`Abd Menāf
|
+------+--------------+
| |
`Abd Shems Hāshim
| |
Umayya `Abd al-Muttalib
|
+--------------+----+------------+
| | |
Abū Tālib `Abdullah `Abbās
| |
`Alī Mohammed

[173] Zotenberg, op. cit. vol. iv. p. 323 et seq.

[174] He was then not twenty years of age.

[175] We are told that Abū Muslim wished to have a distinctive colour for his party, the Umayyads having adopted white. After making one of his slaves clothe himself in suits of various colours, he ordered him to dress in black, and finding the sombre hue the most awe-inspiring adopted it for his party. Cf. Zotenberg, lot cit. p. 327. Later the Khārijites adopted red, and the Shi`ites green.

[176] Nasr ibn Sayyār was a poet of no mean order, and Arabic histories contain many quotations from his compositions, specimens of which will be found on p. 87 and 88 of Nöldeke’s Delectus Vet. Carm. Arab.

[177] Two very different versions of the end of Nasr are to be found in Oriental histories. That given in the text is the usually accepted one; but in the Persian translation of Tabari (cf. Zotenberg, loc cit. p. 329), in the Tārīkh-i-Guzīda, etc., we are told that he fled unaccompanied as far as Ray, where he died. No mention is made here of the engagements with Kahtaba, who, according to the author of the Guzīda, gained possession of Jurjān, Ray, Sāva, and Kum without striking a blow.

[178] His horse ran away with him and, slipping on the banks of the river, threw its rider into the water, where he was drowned. His disappearance was not remarked until daybreak. The Guzīda says that Ibn Hobayra also perished in the battle.

[179] Numbering, according to the Persian Tabari, more than 30,000 men.

[180] The Caliph’s two uncles, Dā´ūd and `Abdullah,—the former in Mekka and Medīna, the latter in Palestine,—were responsible for the wholesale extermination of the Umayyads in those countries. The historians tell us that `Abdullah on one occasion invited seventy members of the house of Umayya to a feast, under promises of a full amnesty, and that, at a given signal, the servants fell upon the unsuspecting guests and put them all to death. This tragedy recalls the famous “Blood bath” in Stockholm, but the Umayyads had no Gustav Wasa to avenge their death. We are told that the spirit of revenge carried them so far that they caused all the tombs of the Umayyad Caliph to be opened, and what remained of their corpses to be scattered to the winds. Cf. Chroniques de Tabari, vol. iv. p. 343.

[181] History of Bokhara, p. 40.

[182] Es-Saffāh was ten years younger than Abū Ja`far, but, as Weil suggests, was preferred to the latter, because his mother was a free woman, while his brother’s was a slave.

[183] See Weil, Geschichte der Khalifen, vol. ii. pp. 24, 25.

[184] The correspondence is fully reported by Tabari; and Weil, recognising its historical interest, has translated in full three of the letters. Cf. Weil, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 27, 28.

[185] Tabari, Annales, Series III. p. 122.

[186] An account of this man may be found in the Siasset Namèh, pp. 122–23 of Schefer’s text.

[187] In the Arabic, Wadhālika innahu kāna min sanāyi`ihi.

[188] Numbering 6000 men.

[189] Wrongly read by Weil as Jumhur.

[190] Tabari, loc cit. p. 120.

[191] According to both versions of Tabari, he fell from a window and broke his back.

[192] El-Mahdi, who was at this time about twenty years of age, had, we are told, a lieutenant to assist him in his duties as governor.

[193] The Rāvandīs believed in the transmigration of souls, and held that the soul of the Deity was temporarily resident in the body of the Caliph, while the souls of Adam and Gabriel were residing in the bodies of two of his generals. For accounts of this sect, see Weil, Geschichte der Khalifen, vol. ii. p. 36 et seq.; Muir, The Caliphate, p. 448; Tabari, Annales, Series III. p. 129 et seq.; and Zotenberg, Chroniques de Tabari, vol. iv. p. 137 et seq.

[194] In the preceding pages undue space may appear to have been given to the history of the Caliphs, but the growing importance of Central Asia will in future render our history almost independent of events at Baghdād.

[195] The famous Annales of Tabari (which have been our Haupt-Quelle for the history of the Arabs in Central Asia), like those of Ibn el-Athīr, are arranged under the heading of each succeeding year. We make a point of giving throughout the name of each governor of Khorāsān appointed by the Caliphs, for, though such details are in themselves trivial, no list of them has, to our knowledge, appeared in any European work.

[196] Weil, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 65, says that he gave himself out as a prophet, but Tabari says nothing of this. Cf. Tabari, Annales, Series III. p. 149.

[197] El-Mahdi had held this post since A.H. 141 (758).

[198] We have not thought fit to dwell at any length on the adventures of this famous impostor. Professor Vambéry, in his History of Bokhara, devotes no less than ten pages to the rising. The story, in its main outlines, is familiar to Englishmen from Moore’s Lalla Rookh.

[199] Cf. Tabari, loc. cit. p. 631.

[200] This powerful family took its descent from one Barmek, a physician of Balkh. One of its members, Khālid ibn Barmek, became vezīr of the first `Abbāsid Caliph, and under El-Mahdi was intrusted with the education of the heir-apparent Hārūn. Khālid’s son Yahya succeeded him as vezīr in A.H. 170 (786), and showed himself one of the most capable rulers of his age. For an account of their fall consult Sec. iii. of the Terminal Essay in vol. x. of Burton’s Thousand and One Nights.

[201] August Müller, generally so accurate, calls him erroneously Isā ibn Alī, and equally erroneously states that he was killed in battle in the year 191, whereas he did not die till 195 (see below).

[202] Zotenberg, op. cit. iv. p. 469.

[203] Cf. Müller, op. cit. i. p. 497; Vambéry, Bokhara, pp. 53, 54; Zotenberg, op. cit. iv, 71 et seq.

[204] Its exact nature is not known, but it was probably the fruits of a life of reckless dissipation.

[205] Cf. Zotenberg, op. cit. tome iv. p. 481.

[206] He was minister of both the civil and military departments, and was hence known as Dhu-l-Rīyāsatayn, or “Lord of the two Ministries.”

[207] Cf. Weil, Geschichte der Khalifen, vol. ii. p. 197.

[208] He was called “the Magian, the son of a Magian.”

[209] Ma´mūn had conceived an aversion for Tāhir (some authors say because Tāhir reminded him of his brother Amīn’s death), and, being conscious of this, Tāhir naturally feared the proximity of the Caliph. He superseded a certain Ghassān, whom Ma´mūn had left in charge of Khorāsān.

[210] Who died A.H. 166 (782).

[211] His full title was Sāmān-Khudāt, being lord of a village which he himself had built and given the name of Sāmān. He claimed descent from the Sāsānide Bahrām Chūbīn. Cf. Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, pp. 57, 58.

[212] Vambéry (Bokhara, p. 55) notes that “the fact that Sāmān, whilst still a heretic, had held a command long after the Arab conquest, proves the small progress Islāmism had at first made among the followers of Zoroaster.”

[213] See above, p. 96.

[214] See note 1 above, p. 100.

[215] Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, reads absurdly 292!

[216] Cf. Mīrkhwānd, Historia Samanidarum, ed. Wilken, p. 3. Narshakhi says that Ahmed was made governor of Merv, but from what follows this seems erroneous.

[217] d’Herbelot quotes a Persian quatrain in which the Tāhirides are enumerated—

Dar Khorāsān zi āl-i-Massābshāh,
Tāhir u Talha būd u Abdullāh,
Bāz Tāhir, digar Mohammad dān
Kū be Ya`kūb dād takht u kulāh.

Translation.—In Khorāsān, of the house of Massāb (Tāhir’s name was Tāhir ibn Husayn ibn Massāb) there were the following princes—Tāhir, Talha, `Abdullah, another Tāhir and then Mohammad, who gave up throne and crown to Ya`kūb.

[218] He ruled from A.H. 232–247 (846–861).

[219] In Arabic Saffār, whence the dynasty took its name.

[220] Cf. Khwāndamīr’s account of the Saffārides in his Habīb-us-Siyar. We refer the reader also to Nöldeke’s brilliant sketch of this man’s career, entitled “Ya`qūb the Coppersmith” (Sketches from Persian History, pp. 176–206).

[221] Malcolm, History of Persia, vol. i. p. 148.

[222] Cf. Müller, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 29.

[223] Narshakhi (ed. Schefer, p. 78) gives the date as A.H. 260 (872), Mīrkhwānd (ed. Wilken, p. 4) as A.H. 261 (873).

[224] Narshakhi, loc. cit. Muwaffak is here spoken of as Caliph, but he was merely chief minister of state to his brother the Caliph Mu`tamid.

[225] This point is not made clear by Persian historians. The Saffārides had by their victories become masters of all the provinces ruled by the Tāhirides, of which Transoxiana was certainly one. It is hard to conceive either that they should have renounced their claim on Transoxiana, or that the feeble Caliph should have taken upon himself to pronounce the Samānīdes independent of Khorāsān.

[226] Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, p. 79.

[227] Vambéry is in this place (see Bokhārā, p. 58) guilty of a curious error, for he says that this Rāfi` was the Rāfi` ibn Layth who had rebelled against Hārūn er-Rashīd in A.H. 190 and was pardoned in 196 by Ma´mūn. He would by the year 272 have been rather old to receive a governorship of a province.

[228] Mīrkhwānd (ed. Wilken, p. 6) says that it was in connection with this friendship that certain mean persons poisoned the mind of Nasr against his brother. This author tells us that Isma`īl had requested and received of Rāfi` the province of Khwārazm, and this, so Nasr’s advisers said, was merely a plot to deprive Nasr of Transoxiana.

[229] See below, p. [110].

[230] Five farsakhs to the south of Aulié-ātā. For a full account of what is known of Christianity in Central Asia in early times we refer the reader to an excellent monograph on this subject by M. Barthold, of St. Petersburg, which was published in vol. viii. of the Zapiski, or Journal of the St. Petersburg University Oriental Faculty. Much valuable information on this subject is also to be found in Col. Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither.

[231] Ed. Schefer, p. 84.

[232] Bellew (Forsyth Mission, p. 119) says that Isma`īl received his patent of succession from the Caliph while engaged in this campaign; but this is not in agreement with Narshakhi, whom he gives as his authority.

[233] See above, p. 105.

[234] Cf. Weil, op. cit. ii. p. 483.

[235] Weil, op. cit. ii. p. 485, hints at this duplicity, basing his statement on the fact that the Caliph praised and rewarded Isma`īl when he heard of his victory over `Amr. Khwāndamīr, in his Habīb-us-Siyar, leaves the question open, and expressly says that Isma`īl acted “either on the Khalif’s orders or on his own initiative.”

[236] Nizām ul-Mulk, in his Siyāset Namé, tells an amusing anecdote in this connection. After `Amr had been taken prisoner, towards nightfall one of his fellows, having procured some meat and borrowed a saucepan, was preparing a meal for his master: while he for a moment left his cooking to fetch some salt, a dog came and poked his head into the saucepan. In trying to pull out a bone the handle of the pot fell round his neck, and he scampered off, carrying the scalding pot with him. On seeing this, `Amr remarked: “This morning 300 camels bore my kitchen, and to-night a dog has carried it off.”

[237] Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, p. 90. The editor was here (as in only too many places in this uncritical edition) guilty of allowing an absurd date to be printed in his text; for the date of `Amr’s death is given as 280!

[238] Narshakhi, loc. cit. Vambéry points out (op. cit. note to p. 66) that Sind and Hind are “a random boast” of the author.

[239] The governor before him had made Bokhārā his residence.

[240] A very striking description of the literary talent gathered there is given by ath-Tha`labi, in the Yatīmatu ´d-Dahr, vol. iv. p. 30 (Damascus ed.).

[241] Vambéry (Bokhara, p. 67) adds to this list Kazwīn, Shīrāz, and Isfahān, which were towns in the dominion of the Būyides. The Būyides and the Sāmānides practically shared the whole of Persia and Central Asia as follows:—

Sāmānides—Khorāsān, Sīstān, Balkh, Bokhārā, and Samarkand.

Būyides—The two `Irāks, Fars, Kirmān, Khuzistān, and Luristān.

Tabaristān and Jurjān were continually changing hands.

[242] He died of some malady at a place called Zarmān, whither the doctors had sent him for change of air.

[243] Dawlat Shāh, in his Lives of the Poets (see Browne’s edition, p. 44), quotes from `Unsuri the following quatrain in which the rulers of the house of Sāmān are enumerated—

Nūh kas būdand zi āl-i-Sāmān mazkūr
Dā´īm bi imārat-i-Khorāsān mashhūr
Ismā`īl ast u Ahmadī u Nasrī
Dū Nūh u dū `Abd-ul-Malik u dū Mansūr.

Translation.—Nine members of the house of Sāmān were famous in the government of Khorāsān, namely, Ismā`īl, one Ahmad, one Nasr, two Nūh’s, two `Abd el-Melik’s, and two Mansūr’s.

[244] Cf. Vambéry, Bokhara, p. 81, and Bretschneider, Mediæval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources (London, 1888), vol. i. p. 236 seqq. An interesting article was published in 1874 by Grigorieff in the Memoirs of the Eastern Branch of the St. Petersburg Archæological Society, vol. xviii. p. 191 seqq. This article contains the Turkish text of an extract from the Tārīkh-i-Munajjim-Bāshī, with an introduction, a translation, and copious notes. The name of Kara-Khānides was first suggested by Grigorieff for this dynasty, after Satuk Kara Khān, who was the first of its kings to embrace Islām. The title is more convenient than the others by which this dynasty has been known, such as Uïghūrs, Ilek-khāns, and Ilkhāns, as will appear from note below, p. [116]. Bretschneider, whom on such subjects it is hard to contradict, was by no means convinced by Grigorieff’s positive assertion that the Kara-Khānides were not Uïghūrs.

[245] The passage from his famous history, the Tārīkh-i-Jahān-Kushāy, dealing at great length with the Uïghūrs, has been translated by d’Ohsson. Cf. Histoire des Mongols, vol. i. p. 430 et seq.

[246] Narshakhi (ed. Schefer, p. 233) calls this dynasty of “Turkish Khāns” the “house of Afrāsiyāb.” Afrāsiyāb is one of the most prominent figures in Firdawsi’s great epic of kings, the Shāh Namé. B.C. 700 is given as a conjectural date of the first migration of the Turks across the Oxus—as far as India and Asia Minor. According to the coins, it appears that the Turks (under what name it is not known) entered the Greek kingdom of Bactria. Cf. Reinaud, Rélations de l’Empire, Rom. avec l’Asie Centrale (Paris, 1863), p. 227. Tradition has it that Afrāsiyāb flourished about B.C. 580. He was the emperor of Tūrān, of which Turkestān was a province, and was the great foe of Īrān. During his reign Siyāwush, son of the emperor of Īrān, Kay-Kā´ūs, having incurred his father’s displeasure, fled across the Oxus, which formed the boundary between the two kingdoms, to Afrāsiyāb, who held court at Rāmtīn. Siyāwush received Afrāsiyāb’s daughter Ferengis in marriage, with the provinces of Khotan and Chīn as her dowry. Afrāsiyāb’s brother Gersīwaz, jealous of the strangers growing power, set his brother’s mind against Siyāwush, and induced him to take the field against his son-in-law, who was captured and conveyed to Rāmtīn and there put to death. Siyāwush left a posthumous son by Ferengis, named Kay-Khosrū, who became emperor of Īrān. Kay-Khosrū, bent on avenging his father’s death, besieged Rāmtīn, drove Afrāsiyāb out of his country, and occupied it for seven years; Afrāsiyāb afterwards returned and recovered his capital, but was finally defeated and slain. Kay-Khosrū now became master of Samarkand and Bokhārā; but, wishing to devote his days to religious contemplation, resigned his government to Lohrāsp, the son-in-law of Kay-Kā´ūs, who soon exacted homage from the rulers of Tartary. Thus the Persian dynasty existed till the overthrow of Darius II.

[247] The accurate transcription of this name is Khitā´ī; however, for convenience the more familiar spelling of Khitāy has been retained throughout.

[248] The exact position of this town, which during the tenth and eleventh centuries was the capital of the Khāns of Turkestān (see Ibn el-Athīr), is not known. Abulfeda says it was not far from Kāshghar. Juvaynī says that in the days of the Mongols it was called Gu-Balik.

[249] Grigorieff, in his well-known but harsh, and indeed unjust, review of Vambéry’s Bokhara, published as an Appendix to vol. i. of Schuyler’s Turkestan, says (1) that the Ilik Khāns were not Uïghūrs, but Karlukhs, and (2) that the Kara-Khitāys were their descendants. Though he takes M. Vambéry to task for not knowing such “facts,” neither of these statements will bear the light of modern research. Vambéry was, however, wrong in calling the Kara-Khitāys Uïghūrs.

[250] Klaproth (Sprache und Schrift der Uiguren) proves convincingly that the Hui-ho of the Chinese authors anterior to the Mongol period are identical with the Uïghūrs, and that the Uïghūrs are to be classed among the Eastern Turks. The term Hui-ho was, however, used by Chinese writers of the Mongol period to designate Mohammedans generally (cf. Bretschneider’s article on the Uïghūrs in his Mediæval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, to which excellent monograph most of these notes are due). Translations of the principal Chinese records of the Uïghūrs are to be found in Videlou’s supplement to d’Herbelot’s Bib. Orient.

[251] The name Uïghūr is first found in Mohammedan histories at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Previously to this they seem to have been known by the name of Taghazghaz, which is doubtless a corruption. Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, or, History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, by Ney Elias and E. Denison Ross, p. 94 of Introduction.

[252] For notices of these places, consult Grigorieff’s article on the Kara-Khānides, and Bretschneider’s Mediæval Researches.

[253] He was not actually the last of the Sāmānides, for one member of the family named Isma`īl el-Muntazir had escaped from Ilik’s hands. His subsequent adventures would go to make an exciting story. For six years he maintained himself at the head of a faithful following. With the help of the Ghuz he twice defeated Ilik’s troops, and (in 391–1001) actually wrested Nīshāpūr from the hands of the governor, Mahmūd of Ghazna’s brother. He finally perished at the hands of a Bedouin in A.H. 395 (1005).

[254] His name was Abū-l-Husayn Nasr I.

[255] A tentative list of the Khāns of Turkestān is given in S. Lane-Poole’s Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 134. They ruled, according to this author’s computation, from about A.H. 320–560 (932–1165).

[256] He was born in A.H. 333 (944). Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 287.

[257] Cf. Forsyth’s Mission to Yarkand,—Dr. Bellew’s chapter on the History of Kāshghar, p. 121. The account of the first introduction of Islām into Kāshghar is given in a Turki work entitled the Tazkira Bughra Khān (which was translated from the Persian of Shaykh `Attār). Extracts from this somewhat fantastic work have been published in the original in Shaw’s Turki Grammar.

[258] Ed. Schefer, p. 233.

[259] They advanced within three stages of Balāsāghūn. They are spoken of as coming from Sīn (China), but they were probably not Chinese but Eastern Uïghūrs (cf. Bretschneider, i. 253).

[260] His name is often given in Oriental histories as Kadr. See Raverty, Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri.

[261] Cf. Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, p. 234.

[262] We are told by this same author that they had caused much depredation among the Mohammedans, which seems inconsistent with what has been said of them before.

[263] S. Lane-Poole gives the date of Boghrā Khān’s death as 435, and makes no mention of his son Ibrāhīm.

[264] Narshakhi, ed. Schefer, reads this name Tumghāch.

[265] S. Lane-Poole (loc. cit.) says Ibrāhīm died in 460, and was succeeded by his son Nasr, who died in 472. It will be seen that great confusion exists with regard to these Khāns. Major Raverty, in his translation of the Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, furnishes a long list of Ilik Khāns; but it is hard to reconcile any two accounts, so much do the names and dates differ.

[266] S. Lane-Poole (Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 135) says Mahmūd Khān II.

[267] S. Lane-Poole (loc. cit.) reads Mahmūd Khān III., and from this point the list he gives no longer corresponds with Narshakhi’s account.

[268] Mīrkhwānd (Vüllers, Historia Seldschukidarum, p. 176), and Vambéry following him, say that Mohammad was reinstated.

[269] The modern Khiva.

[270] See chap. XX.

[271] This history, by Hamdullah Mustawfi, is one of the most important Persian chronicles. The whole text has never yet been published, but the portion relating to the Seljūks was edited and translated by M. Defrémery.

[272] There is some confusion as to the precise origin of this branch of the Turks. Aug. Müller says that during the disorders which attended the downfall of the Sāmānides and the struggles between the Ghaznavides and the Khāns of Kāshghar, the Ghuz, through internal dissensions, became split up into subdivisions. The foremost of these was a branch who in A.H. 345 (956) settled down in Jend (east of Khwārazm). They received the name of Seljūk from their chief, who had been compelled to quit the court of his master Pighu Khān of the Kipchāk Turks. He is said to have embraced Islām (Müller, Islām, ii. 74).

[273] He was the first prince to bear the title of Sultān. Cf. Gibbon, chap. 47.

[274] Malcolm, op. cit. i. p. 195.

[275] Cf. Müller, op. cit. ii. p. 76.

[276] The son of Altuntāsh mentioned above, p. 123.

[277] Gibbon (chap, lvii.) speaks of this victory as the “memorable day of Qandacan” which “founded in Persia the dynasty of the shepherd kings.” He gives the date as A.D. 1038.

[278] Mohammad, who, as stated above, had been nominated by his father Mahmūd to succeed him in Ghazna, had been almost immediately deposed by his brother Mas`ūd.

[279] Malcolm, op. cit. i. p. 199.

[280] Müller, op. cit. i. 77.

[281] Vide supra, p. 112, note 1.

[282] Cf. Gibbon, chap. lvii. De Guignes gives a somewhat different version of the relations between the Emperor and the Turk (vol. iii. p. 191). He says: “Constantin-Monomaque qui regnoit alors à Constantinople, ne crut pas devoir négliger l’alliance d’un prince qui faisoit trembler toute l’Asie: il lui envoya des ambassadeurs pour lui proposer de faire la paix, et Thogrulbegh y consentit.” This difference is due to the fact that Gibbon’s authorities were Byzantine, while De Guignes’ were Mohammedan.

[283] It would, however, be wrong to regard these Turks as uncultured people; for though few traces of their early literature have come down to us, testimony is not wanting to the fact that they had, long before they began their westward migrations, a written language and perhaps a literature.

[284] He was not received in audience by the Caliph till A.H. 451 (1059). In 455 (1063), in spite of his outward show of respect, Toghrul Beg practically forced the Caliph to give him his daughter in marriage. But, in the same year, as Toghrul was about to claim his bride, fortune suddenly deserted him, and he died at the age of seventy in Ray, where, according to Mīrkhwānd (see ed. Vüllers, p. 65), he wished to celebrate his nuptials.

[285] His name is familiar to the English public through the medium of `Omar Khayyām. All who have read Fitzgerald’s admirable translation of the Rubaiyāt know the story of the three famous schoolfellows—`Omar Khayyām, the poet; Nizām ul-Mulk, the statesman; and Hasan ibn Sabbāh, “the Old Man of the Mountain.” These three, as schoolboys at Nīshāpūr, had sworn that whichever of them should rise highest in the world should help the others. Of two of them we shall have to speak below.

[286] His was not actually their first expedition, for, in 1050, parts of Armenia had been laid waste and countless Christians massacred by the Turks. Cf. Gibbon, chap. xlvii.

[287] We refer the reader to Gibbon’s 57th chapter for a vivid account of Alp Arslān’s dealings with the Romans (see also Malcolm, op. cit. i. 209–213).

[288] This was a chief named Yūsuf, who had long held out against the Sultan in his fortress of Berzem in Khwārazm. Cf. Malcolm, op. cit. i. 213; and De Guignes, iii. 213.

[289] Notably his uncle Kāwurd (see Müller, op. cit. ii. 94),—whom Vambéry calls Kurd; and Vüllers (in Mīrkhwānd’s Seljūks), Kādurd; and Malcolm (op. cit. i. 216), Cawder.

[290] Müller, op. cit. ii. 94.

[291] See below, chap. [xix].

[292] Vambéry (op. cit. p. 100) qualifies these statements as the “mere fabrications of partial Arab and Persian writers.”

[293] Op. cit. ii. 95.

[294] This assassin was one of the emissaries (or fadāwi) of Hasan ibn Sabbāh, Nizām ul-Mulk’s old school friend. For an account of the Assassins we refer the reader to the article under that heading in the Encyclopædia Britannica. For more than a century the devotees of the Old Man of the Mountain played a part in politics not dissimilar to that of the Jesuits at certain periods in Europe. See J. von Hammer’s Hist. de l’Ordre des Assassins (Paris, 1833); S. Guyard’s “Un Grand Maître des Assassins,” Journal Asiatique, 1877; and an article by Mr. E. G. Browne in St. Bartholomew’s Hosp. Journ., March 1897.

[295] The history of the remaining Seljūk kings (of the original branch) is so admirably epitomised by Malcolm that it was considered unnecessary in this place to do more than quote from his well-known History of Persia (vol. ii. p. 222 et seq.). These sons were Berkiyāruk, Mohammad, Sanjar, and Mahmūd.

[296] He was himself but fourteen years of age at the time of his father’s death.

[297] A.H. 487–498 (1094–1104). Malcolm throughout his otherwise excellent history scarcely ever condescends to supply the reader with a date of any kind.

[298] He died of consumption at the early age of twenty-seven (perhaps even younger). Cf. Müller, op. cit. ii. 120.

[299] He allowed his nephew the two `Irāks on condition that his (Sanjar’s) name should be mentioned first in the public prayers (cf. Habīb-us-Siyar).

[300] The modern Khānate of Khiva.

[301] The Khāns of Khiva still bear the title of Ewer-bearers to the Sultan of Constantinople.

[302] About A.H. 470 (1077).

[303] He was a descendant in the eighth generation of T’ai-tsu, or Apaoki, the first Liao emperor. Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 211; Visdelou, p. 28. For the various forms his name has taken, cf. Howorth on the “Kara-Khitāy,” J.R.A.S., New Series VIII. 273, 274.

[304] De Guignes called him Taigir.

[305] Called by the Mohammedans Churché, which corresponds to the Niuchi of Chinese historians. Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 224, note.

[306] Cf. d’Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, i. 163.

[307] Some scholars have wished to identify this name with Kirmān in Persia, but this seems most improbable. Bretschneider (op. cit. i. 216, note) suggests Kerminé, which is the site of the summer quarters of the present Amīr of Bokhārā. Cf. also Howorth, loc. cit.

[308] P. 134.

[309] Cf. De Guignes, iii. pt. ii. p. 253.

[310] Some confusion exists as to whether Kāshghar or Balāsāghūn was his residence. It seems improbable that he should have changed in so short a space.

[311] A.H. 521 (1127).

[312] A.H. 533 (1138).

[313] Il-Kilij, the son of Atsiz, perished in the battle.

[314] Cf. d’Herbelot, article “Atsiz”; and De Guignes, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 254.

[315] Thus, according to Narshakhi (p. 243). The statements of historians are somewhat conflicting in this place. De Guignes, following Abulfidā, says that Ye-liu Ta-shi (whom he calls Taigir) died in 1136, when about to abandon Kāshghar and return to his ancient settlements in Tartary. The Khitāys then set upon the throne his infant son, Y-li, with his mother Liao-chi as queen-regent. Bretschneider has translated a Chinese work which gives a list of all the line of Kara-Khitāy rulers, whose dynasty became extinct about 1203. We have not thought it necessary to reproduce a list of their names in this place. It may be mentioned, however, that Bretschneider’s account does not agree with De Guignes.

[316] Cf. De Guignes, vol. iii. pt. i. p. 254; Müller, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 173. Rashīd ud-Dīn tells us he had drawn auxiliaries from all parts of his dominions.

[317] The Kara-Khitāys were Buddhists.

[318] Cf. Müller, loc. cit.

[319] A.H. 537 (1142).

[320] Cf. De Guignes, loc. cit.; and Müller, ii. p. 174.

[321] Cf. De Guignes, iii. pt. i. pp. 256, 257.

[322] De Guignes (following Abulfidā) says A.H. 550 (1155).

[323] Cf. Müller, op. cit. ii. 173.

[324] Mīrkhwānd (ed. Vüllers, p. 183). Khwāndamīr (Habīb-us-Siyar) adds “Kunduz and Baklān” to the list.

[325] The word used is Khānsālār, which means the “Taster,” or “Table-Decker of the Household.”

[326] Mīrkhwānd (ed. Vüllers, p. 185) says that Kamāj and his son perished in this battle, but Hamdullah Mustawfi, in the Tārīkh-i-Guzīda, says they were spared.

[327] De Guignes, vol. iii. pt. i. p. 256.

[328] Mīrkhwānd relates (ed. Vüllers, p. 188) that when Sanjar fled with his army, and was hotly pursued by the Ghuz, a man who bore a striking resemblance to the Sultan was captured. Say what he might, the Ghuz would not be convinced that this was not Sanjar, and paid him all the respect due to royalty, until finally some one recognised him as the son of Sanjar’s cook, whereupon he was beheaded.

[329] Professor Shukovski, of St. Petersburg, published in 1894 an excellent and exhaustive monograph on the ruins and past history of Merv, under the title Razvilini starago Merva, “The Ruins of Old Merv.”

[330] Ed. Vüllers, p. 189.

[331] Mīrkhwānd has in this place evidently followed Hafiz Abru (the author of the Zubdat-ut-Tawārīkh), who says that the first day of plunder was devoted to articles of gold, brass, and silver; the second to bronzes, carpets, and vases; and the third to whatever of value was left, such as cotton-stuffs, glass, wooden doors, and the like. Cf. Professor Shukovski’s Ruins of Old Merv, pp. 29, 30.

[332] He is said to have been kept in a cage at night. Cf. De Guignes, iii. pt. i. 257. Mīrkhwānd has been followed in this relation, and we have seen what he considered to be the cause of the hostilities between the Ghuz and Sanjar. From Ibn el-Athīr (Tārīkh-i-Kāmil, xi. 118, as quoted by Professor Shukovski, Merv, p. 29) it would appear that the cause of the conflict was Sanjar’s refusal to give up Merv to the Ghuz, on the plea that he could not be expected to abandon his royal residence. De Guignes (iii. pt. i. p. 257) introduces this anecdote after the capture of Sanjar.

[333] Many say he died of an internal malady, A.H. 552 (1157). He was in his seventy-third year.

[334] The modern Chārjūy.

[335] Cf. De Guignes, iii. pt. ii. p. 258.

[336] Cf. De Guignes, loc. cit.

[337] He entered into a union with the Khān of the Kipchāk, named Ikrān, and married his daughter, who became the mother of the famous Sultan Mohammad Khwārazm Shāh; cf. Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, Raverty’s translation, i. 240. This Khān of the Kipchāks is called, on p. 254 of the same work, Kadr Khān, a discrepancy which escaped the notice of Major Raverty, who, however, calls attention to three different Kadr Khāns in one chapter (see op. cit. p. 267, note).

[338] Cf. Habīb-us-Siyar.

[339] In this account of the reign of Tekish we have followed the Habīb-us-Siyar. There is, however, a great discrepancy in this part of the history, for in one place Khwāndamīr says that the hostilities lasted only ten years (A.H. 568–578), when they were brought to a close by a treaty between the two brothers, in which Tekish granted the rule of certain towns in Khorāsān to his brother. An account of Sultan Shāh Mahmūd may be found in the Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, trans., i. 245–249.

[340] There is a misprint in d’Ohsson, op. cit. i. 180, the date being given as 1149. He also waged war on the Assassins in `Irāk and Kūhistan, and took from them their strongest fort, Arslān Kushāy.

[341] Tārīkh-i-Jahān-Kushāy, as quoted by Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 229, from d’Ohsson.

[342] Cf. d’Ohsson, op. cit. i. 180; and Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, trans., i. 253–260.

[343] He had solicited the hand of a daughter of the Gūr-Khān, and, having been refused, had become his secret enemy. Howorth, J.R.A.S., New Series VIII. p. 282.

[344] Cf. d’Ohsson (op. cit. i. 181), who does not quote his authority.

[345] Thus according to d’Ohsson. But De Guignes gives a very different account of Mohammad’s first Eastern campaign, which he dates A.H. 604 (1209). He says that Bokhārā and Samarkand were delivered over to him by the friendly Turkish princes, that on entering the Kara-Khitāy territory he gained a splendid victory. Thus the first disastrous campaign is wholly ignored. De Guignes, op. cit. i. pt. ii. pp. 266, 267.

[346] Cf. De Guignes, i. pt. ii. p. 267. d’Ohsson says as far as Uzkend, op. cit. p. 182.

[347] The name of this famous conqueror has been spelled in many different ways,—e.g., Genghiz (De Guignes), Gengis (Voltaire, in his tragedy of that name), Zingis (Gibbon), Tchinguiz (d’Ohsson), etc. We have adopted the one which most nearly approaches the Turkish and Persian pronunciation of the name. For authorities we would refer the reader to Sir H. Howorth’s History of the Mongols, part i. (1876); R. K. Douglas, Life of Jinghiz Khān (1877); an article by same author in the Encyclopædia Britannica; Erdmann’s Temudschin der Unerschütterliche (1862); and d’Ohsson and De Guignes (vol. iv.). The principal original sources for the history of Chingiz Khān are: (1) the Chinese account of a contemporary named Men-Hun, which has been translated into Russian by Professor Vassilief, and published in his History and Antiquities of the Eastern Part of Central Asia (see Transactions of Oriental Section of the Russian Archæological Society, vol. iv.); and (2) the Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri of Juzjānī, translated by Major Raverty. This important work comprises a collection of the accounts of Chingiz Khān written by his Mohammedan contemporaries. Other Chinese and Persian sources might be mentioned, but the above are the most important.

One very important authority for the Mongol period is the compilation, from Chinese sources, by Father Hyacinth, entitled History of the first four Khāns of the House of Chingiz, St. Petersburg, 1829. This Russian work is comparatively little known outside Russia. Both Erdmann and d’Ohsson often lay it under contribution. It may be added that Sir Henry Howorth, in his first volume on the Mongols (published in 1876), gives a complete bibliography of all the available sources for the history of Chingiz and his successors.

[348] M. Barthold, of the St. Petersburg University, has devoted much time to the study of the Mongol period in Central Asia, the fruits of which he has not yet published on an extended scale, though some shorter articles of great value have appeared in Baron Rosen’s Zapiski. The expeditions of Chingiz Khān and Tamerlane were admirably treated by M. M. I. Ivanin in a work published after his death, entitled On the Military Art and Conquests of the Mongol-Tatars under Chingiz Khān and Tamerlane, St. Petersburg.

[349] Since the discovery and decipherment of the Orkon inscriptions it may be regarded as certain that the form Khitan, or Kidan, is but the Chinese transcription of the word Kitai, which is the name of a people, most probably of Manchurian origin, who, as is well known, ruled over Northern China during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. It was borrowed by some of the tribes inhabiting those parts. Cf. note on p. 106 of vol. x. of Baron Rosen’s Zapiski, article by M. Barthold.

[350] Precisely the same thing occurred in the case of the Yué-Chi and the Kushans.

[351] This admirable summary is taken from S. Lane-Poole’s Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum, vol. vi. (also reprinted in his Mohammedan Dynasties, pp. 201, 202). It is a condensation of what may be read in great detail in Howorth’s Mongols, vol. i. pp. 27–50. Cf. also De Guignes, vol. iv. p. 1 et seq.; and d’Ohsson, vol. i. chaps. i. and ii.

[352] For information with regard to this name, cf. d’Ohsson, op. cit. vol. i. pp 36, 37, note.

[353] Thus according to the Chinese authorities. The Mohammedan historians give the date of his birth as A.H. 550 (1155).

[354] The above remarks on the Mongols have been translated from an article in Russian by M. Barthold in Baron Rosen’s Zapiski, vol. x. (St. Petersburg, 1897) pp. 107–8.

[355] Rashīd ud-Dīn, Jāmi`-ut-Tawārikh, Berezine’s ed. i. 89.

[356] The Chinese and Persian authorities are here again at variance.

[357] They had been converted to Christianity by the Nestorians at the beginning of the eleventh century. See very interesting note in d’Ohsson, op. cit. i. p. 48. This Toghrul received the title of Oang, or King, and called himself Oang-Khān. The similarity of this in sound to the name Johan, or Johannes (John), led to the fabulous personage so familiar in Marco Polo and other travellers, as Prester John. Cf. Yule’s Cathay and Marco Polo, passim.

[358] Cf. d’Ohsson, i. p. 47.

[359] Cf. S. Lane-Poole, loc. cit.

[360] The exact date is uncertain.

[361] This word may be read either Kuriltāy or Kurultāy. Cf. Pavet de Courteille, Dictionnaire Turk-Oriental, p. 429.

[362] Cf. d’Ohsson, i. 86.

[363] Ibid. p. 89.

[364] Cf. Howorth, J.R.A.S., New Series VIII. p. 283.

[365] The above facts are from the Jahān-Kushāy. Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 230, 231; the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 289; and d’Ohsson, op. cit. i. 166 et seq.

[366] Cf. d’Ohsson, i. 170 et seq.; Bretschneider, op. cit. i. 231.

[367] This occupied him between the years 1210 and 1214.

[368] S. Lane-Poole, loc. cit. See also Gibbon’s 64th chapter.

[369] Cf. Bretschneider, loc. cit.; and on the subject of the religious tolerance of Chingiz, Gibbon, chap. lxiv.

[370] Cf. d’Ohsson, i. 204.

[371] He had put his former ally `Othman to death in A.H. 607 (1210). See d’Ohsson, i. 183.

[372] Abū-l-Ghāzi, ed. Desmaisons, p. 99.

[373] Abū-l-Ghāzi, ed. Desmaisons, p. 100.

[374] Abū-l-Ghāzi, loc. cit.

[375] Abū-l-Ghāzi, pp. 101–103 of Desmaison’s text.

[376] The route he took was Kazwīn, Gilān, and Māzenderān (Tarikh-i-Mukīm Khānī).

[377] He is said to have died a lunatic. The island in question has long since been swallowed up by the sea. Cf. Tabakāt-i-Nāsiri, Major Raverty’s trans., vol. i. p. 278, note.

[378] We refer the reader especially to Müller’s Geschichte des Islams, pp. 213–225.

[379] Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 204.

[380] The best account of this offshoot is to be found in an excellent paper entitled “The Chaghatai Mughals,” by W. E. E. Oliver, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xx. New Series, p. 72, sec. 9. It will be found in a condensed form in Ney Elias and Ross’s Introduction to the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, or “History of the Mughals of Central Asia.”

[381] Vide ante on p. 155.

[382] In the valley of the Upper Ili, near the site of the present Kulja.

[383] During the reign of Chaghatāy Khān a curious rising occurred in the province of Bokhārā. A half-witted sieve-maker, from a village near Bokhārā, managed by various impostures to gather round him a number of disciples from among the common people, and so numerous and powerful did they become that in 630 (1232) they drove the Chaghatāy government out of the country, and, assuming the government of Bokhārā, proceeded to put to death many of its most distinguished citizens. They at first successfully repulsed the Mongol forces sent against them, but were finally vanquished, and order was again restored in Bokhārā. For this episode consult Vambéry, op. cit. p. 143 et seq.; Major Price’s Mohammedan History, iii. 2.

[384] Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Introduction, p. 32.

[385] Chaghatāy is said to have died from grief at his brother’s death (Habīb-us-Siyar).

[386] For historical data we have already referred the reader to Mr. Oliver’s paper and Vambéry’s Bokhara. S. Lane-Poole, in his Mohammedan Dynasties, gives a list of twenty-six Khāns of this house who ruled in Central Asia from A.H. 624 to 771 (A.D. 1227 to 1358), i.e. 140 years. The Zafar-Nāmé of Nizām Shāmī (see note below, p. [168]) gives a list of thirty-one Khāns of this line.

[387] Cf. Müller’s Geschichte des Islams, ii. p. 217.

[388] In A.H. 671 (1273) Bokhārā was sacked by the Mongols of Persia (Müller, op. cit. ii. p. 260).

[389] Bokhara, pp. 159–60.

[390] This Khānate embraced the present Zungaria and the greater part of Eastern and Western Turkestān; but the exact meaning of this geographical term is still undetermined. The subject has been fully discussed in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi (passim). Cf. also Bretschneider, op. cit. ii. 225 et seq.

[391] See Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Introduction, p. 37.

[392] The Calcutta text of the Zafar-Nāmé of Sheref ud-Dīn `Alī Yazdī, the famous biographer of Tīmūr, reads throughout Karān. S. Lane-Poole, op. cit., gives the date of his accession as 744 (A.D. 1343),—upon what authority it is not clear. Price (following the Khulāsat ul-Akhbār) is in agreement with the Zafar-Nāmé. We are, moreover, expressly told that he ruled fourteen years, and died in 747.

[393] Zafar-Nāmé (ed. Calcutta), i. p. 27.

[394] This took place in the plains round the village of Dara-Zangi (Zafar-Nāmé, ii. p. 28).

[395] The third son of Chingiz, who had inherited the kingdom of Mongolia proper.

[396] Zafar-Nāmé (ed. Calcutta) reads Dānishmand Oghlān.

[397] Perhaps a corruption of the older form Berūlās.

[398] The modern Shahr-i-Sabz.

[399] Sheref ud-Dīn affirms that his love of wine was so inveterate that he was not sober for a week in the whole year (Zafar-Nāmé (Calcutta edition), i. p. 41).

[400] He was born in A.H. 730. In 748 he became Khān of Jatah; in 754 he was converted to Islām; in 764 he died. His history, and the story of his conversion, is told at some length in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, pp. 5–23.

[401] Our readers will have traced for themselves the parallel afforded by France, exhausted by the horrors of the Revolution at the outset of Napoleon’s career.

[402] The sources for the biography of Tīmūr are plentiful. The best known, both in the East and in Europe, is the Zafar-Nāmé, by Sheref ud-Dīn `Alī, of Yezd. This was completed in 1424 by the order of Ibrāhīm, the son of Shāh Rukh, the son of Tīmūr. It was first translated into French in 1722 by M. Petis de la Croix, whose work was in turn englished shortly afterwards. It is this history that has served as a basis for all European historians, Gibbon included. There is, however, an older biography of Tīmūr, which, owing to its scarcity, is very little known. The only MS. in Europe is in the British Museum. It, too, bears the title of Zafar-Nāmé, or Book of Victory. It was compiled at Tīmūr’s own order by a certain Nizām Shāmī, and is brought down to A.H. 806, i.e. one year before Tīmūr’s death. The MS. itself bears the date of A.H. 838 (1434). Owing to the vast interest attaching to such a contemporary account, Professor Denison Ross has undertaken to prepare an edition of the text for the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

[403] He had gained the sobriquet “Leng” from a wound which caused him to halt through life, inflicted during the siege of Sīstān (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 243).

[404] For example, the names Jalā´ir, Berūlās, and Seldūz are those of well-known Turkish tribes.

[405] According to the Zafar-Nāmé of Sheref ud-Dīn `Alī Yazdi, and other historians who follow him, Hāji Birlās was the uncle of Tīmūr. The Zafar-Nāmé of Nizām Shāmī, however, states that he was Tīmūr’s brother.

[406] He was at this period about twenty-seven years of age, and had served with some distinction under Amīr Kazghan (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 245).

[407] We refer the reader to Gibbon’s 65th chapter for a striking account of Tīmūr’s wanderings in the desert, and to Petis de la Croix’s translation of the Zafar-Nāmé for Tīmūr’s thrilling adventures with his friend Amīr Husayn.

[408] Bokhara, p. 244.

[409] The famous order of dervishes called Nakshabandi was founded in Tīmūr’s reign by a certain Khwāja Bahā ud-Dīn, who died in A.H. 791 (1388). The three saints held in reverence by the dervishes next after him are Khwāja Ahrār (whose mausoleum is to be seen a few miles outside Samarkand), Ishān Mahzūm Kāshāni, and Sūfi Allah Yār. It is a group of members of this mendicant brotherhood which forms the subject of the frontispiece to this work by M. Verestchagin. There are two other sects of dervishes in Samarkand—(1) the Kādiriyya, whose founder was `Abd el-Kādiri Gīlāni, and (2) the Alf Tsāni, an order whereof the founder seems to be unknown, and which is sparsely represented.

[410] “He was of great stature, of an extraordinary large head, open forehead, of a beautiful red and white complexion, and with long hair—white from his birth, like Zal, the renowned hero of Persian history. In his ears he wore two diamonds of great value. He was of a serious and gloomy expression of countenance; an enemy to every kind of joke or jest, but especially to falsehood, which he hated to such a degree that he preferred a disagreeable truth to an agreeable lie,—in this respect far different from the character of Alexander, who put to death Clitus, his friend and companion in arms, as well as the philosopher Callisthenes, for uttering disagreeable truths to him. Tīmūr never relinquished his purpose or countermanded his order; never regretted the past, nor rejoiced in the anticipation of the future; he neither loved poets nor buffoons, but physicians, astronomers, and lawyers, whom he frequently desired to carry on discussions in his presence; but most particularly he loved those dervishes whose fame of sanctity paved his way to victory by their blessing. His most darling books were histories of wars and biographies of warriors and other celebrated men. His learning was confined to the knowledge of reading and writing, but he had such a retentive memory that whatever he read or heard once he never forgot. He was only acquainted with three languages—the Turkish, Persian, and Mongolian. The Arabic was foreign to him. He preferred the Tora of Chingiz Khān to the Koran, so that the Ulemas found it necessary to issue a Fetwa by which they declared those to be infidels who preferred human laws to the divine. He completed Chingiz Khān’s Tora by his own code, called Tuzukat, which comprised the degrees and ranks of his officers. Without the philosophy of Antonius or the pedantry of Constantine, his laws exhibit a deep knowledge of military art and political science. Such principles were imitated successfully by his successors, Shāh Baber and the great Shāh Akbar, in Hindustān. The power of his civil as well as military government consisted in a deep knowledge of other countries, which he acquired by his interviews with travellers and dervishes, so that he was fully acquainted with all the plans, manœuvres, and political movements of foreign courts and armies. He himself despatched travellers to various parts, who were ordered to lay before him the maps and descriptions of other foreign countries” (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 243).

[411] Shāh Rukh was Tīmūr’s favourite son. He derived his name, which means “King and Castle,” from a well-known move in chess, which royal game was one of Tīmūr’s few amusements (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 244).

[412] Cf. Price’s Mohammedan History, iii. 492, quoting the Khulāsat-ul-Akhbār. As a fact, Pīr Mohammad only obtained the government of Balkh, and was murdered in Kandahār in A.H. 809 (1406). Cf. De Guignes, v. 79.

[413] Cf. De Guignes, v. 81.

[414] De Guignes, v. 81. Khalīl spent some years in Moghūlistan, but, unable to bear a longer separation from Shād Mulk, joined her in Herāt. Shāh Rukh gave him the government of Khorāsān, and he died the same year (A.H. 812).

[415] His astronomical tables are amongst the most accurate and complete that come down to us from Eastern sources. They treat of the measurement of time, the course of the planets, and of the position of fixed stars. The best editions are those printed in Latin in 1642–48 by an Oxford professor named Greaves, and reprinted in 1767. The remains of his celebrated observatory still crown the hill known as Chupān Ata in an eastern suburb of Samarkand.

[416] Shāh Rukh’s authority, to judge by the coins which have come down to us, extended nearly as far as his more celebrated father’s. We have his superscription on the issues of mints as widely distant as Shīrāz, Kaswīn, Sabzawār, Herāt, Kum, Shuster, and Astarābād.

[417] Vambéry’s Bokhara, p. 223.

[418] Ibid. p. 244.

[419] The young prince was born in 1483, the son of `Omar Shaykh Mīrzā, whom he succeeded in the sovereignty of the eastern portion of Tīmūr’s dominions. His conquest of India, and foundation of the Moghul dynasty of Delhi, do not come within the scope of this work. He was equally great in war, administration, and literature: perhaps the most remarkable figure of his age.

[420] A.H. 903 (1497).

[421] An excellent table, showing the ramifications of the Tīmūrides, will be found in vol. vii. of the Mohammedan Coins of the British Museum.

[422] In the case of possessive pronouns and verbal inflexions, for example, we find direct and obvious imitations of the Turkish grammar.

[423] The “Great Caan” of Marco Polo.

[424] Cf. Bretschneider, op. cit. ii. pp. 139, 140.

[425] Cf. Bretschneider, loc. cit.

[426] Idem. Tūkā Tīmūr, from whom sprang the Khāns of the Crimea, was the youngest son of Jūjī. Cf. Lane-Poole’s Mohammedan Dynasties, p. 233. Tokhtamish, the inveterate foe of Tamerlane, belonged to the Crimean branch of the Khāns of Dasht-i-Kipchāk. The Khānate of Kazan was founded in 1439, on the remains of the Bulgarian Empire, by Ulugh Mohammed of the same line.

[427] Bretschneider, loc. cit.

[428] There seems some confusion on this point; I have followed Veliaminof-Zernof, but Bretschneider does not call this movement a migration of Uzbegs but a flight of the White Horde, whom he says were expelled from their original seats by Abū-l-Khayr. Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 82.

[429] The results of M. Veliaminof-Zernof’s careful researches into the history of the Kazāks were published in three volumes of the Memoirs of the Eastern Branch of St. Petersburg Archæological Society, under the title of The Emperors and Princes of the Line of Kasim. He called this dynasty the Kasimovski, after Kāsim Khān, the son of Jānībeg. Cf. also Levshin’s Description of the Hordes and Steppes of the Kirghiz-Kazaks, St. Petersburg, 1864. Mīrzā Haydar says: “The Kazāk Sultans began to reign in A.H. 870 (1465), and continued to enjoy absolute power in the greater part of Uzbegistān till the year A.H. 940” (1533). See Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 82.

[430] Tarikh-i-Rashidi, pp. 82 and 92.

[431] Thus according to both the Tārikh-i-Tīmūrī and the Tārīkh-i-Abū-l-Khayr, quoted by Howorth, op. cit. ii. 695.

[432] There is in the British Museum a silver coin of Shaybānī Khān, dated A.H. 910: Merv.

[433] An account of this campaign will be found in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 243 et seq. The account of the Emperor Bāber’s doings at this period are all the more interesting and valuable from the fact that in the famous Memoirs of Baber a break occurs from the year 1508 to the beginning of the year 1519; though an account is also given in the Tārīkh-i-Ālam-Ārāy of Mirza Sikandar, which was used by Erskine in his History of India.

[434] Lubb ut-Tawārīkh, book III. pt. iii. chap. vi.

[435] Cf. Veliaminof-Zernof, op. cit. p. 247.

[436] Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 245.

[437] Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 259. Cf. also Veliaminof-Zernof (p. 353), who bases his statements on the `Abdullah Nāmé of Hāfiz ibn Tānish. Copies of this valuable work are very scarce. Its scope and contents have been described (from a copy in the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg) by M. Veliaminof-Zernof. See Mélanges Asiatiques de St. Petersburg, vol. iii. p. 258 et seq.

[438] “The Seven Wells.” V.-Zernof reads Yati Kurūk, which might mean “the Seven Walls.” The former reading seems more probable.

[439] On the locality of this place, cf. Vambéry’s Bokhara, p. 257.

[440] Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 260.

[441] Probably to be identified with Panjakand, in the Zarafshān valley, forty miles east of Samarkand.

[442] Some distance north of Bokhārā.

[443] Cf. Tarikh-i-Rashidi, p. 261. Howorth (ii. 713) says `Ubaydullah was in this fort.

[444] Mirza Haydar does hesitate to speak thus of the fortunes of his own cousin Bāber, who had in his opinion sold himself to the heretic Persians.

[445] As Grigorieff suggested, the name Abū-l-Khayride would fit this dynasty far better than that of Shaybānide.

[446] “Bokharan and Khivan Coins,” a monograph published in the Memoirs of the Eastern Branch of the Russian Archæological Society, vol. iv., St. Petersburg, 1859. This excellent and original monograph is extensively laid under contribution in the present chapter, as it was also by Sir H. Howorth in his chapter on the Shaybānides, pt. ii. div. ii. chap. ix.

[447] See note, p. 190.

[448] The Tazkira Mukīm Khānī, being a history of the appanage of Bokhārā, makes no mention of Kuchunji, or Abū Sa`īd, who ruled in Samarkand, though they both attained the position of Khākān. Cf. Histoire de la Grande Bokharie, par Mouhamed Joussouf el-Munshi, etc., par Senkovsky, St. Petersburg, 1824.

[449] Their names were—Abū Sa`īd, `Ubaydullah, `Abdullah I., `Abd ul-Latīf, Nawrūz Ahmed, Pīr Mohammad, and Iskandar. All are described at some length by Vambéry and Howorth, the latter basing his account on a great variety of authorities.

[450] P. 284 et seq.

[451] Cat. Coins Brit. Mus. vii.

[452] Cf. Howorth, ii. 876.

[453] Khwārazm had never properly belonged to Chaghatāy’s territories in Transoxiana, and accordingly it is a common mint name on coinage of the Golden Horde (Cat. Orient. Coins Brit. Mus. vii. p. 26).

[454] Vide ante, p. 169.

[455] His genealogy is very doubtful; but, according to the best authorities, his ancestor was Jūjī Khān, one of the mighty conqueror’s sons, who had predeceased him (note at p. 304 of Vambéry’s History of Bokhara). Cf. Howorth’s Mongols, part ii. p. 744.

[456] Vambéry relates that when, in the great mosque of Bokhārā, the public prayers were read for the first time for the new ruler, the whole congregation burst into sobs and bitter tears (History of Bokhara, p. 319).

[457] Vambéry, p. 323.

[458] This prince was famed throughout the East for his love of letters. He was a poet of no mean skill, and an adept at prose composition. His end was untimely. Enticed to give a private interview to some of his brother Subhān Kulī Khān’s party, he was foully murdered by them (Vambéry, P. 323).

[459] Vambéry tells us that he was a man of amazing corpulence; and one of his historians avers that a child four years old could find accommodation in one of his boots! (History of Bokhara, p. 325).

[460] Vambéry, History of Bokhara, p. 333.

[461] History of Bokhara, p. 339.

[462] Page 95, History of Central Asia, by `Abd ul-Kerīm Bokhārī; translated into French by Charles Schefer, Paris, 1876.

[463] This throne was “so called from its having the figures of two peacocks standing behind it, their tails being expanded, and the whole so inlaid with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and other precious stones of appropriate colours as to represent life. The throne itself was six feet long by four broad; it stood on six massive feet, which, with the body, were of solid gold, inlaid with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. It was surmounted by a canopy of gold supported by twelve pillars, all richly emblazoned with costly gems, and a fringe of pearls ornamented the borders of the canopy. Between the two peacocks stood the figure of a parrot of the ordinary size, said to have been carved out of a single emerald. On either side of the throne stood an umbrella, one of the Oriental emblems of royalty. They were formed of crimson velvet, richly embroidered and fringed with pearls. The handles were eight feet high, of solid gold and studded with diamonds. The cost of this superb work of art has been variously stated at sums varying from one to six millions sterling. It was planned and executed under the supervision of Austin de Bordeaux, already mentioned as the artist who executed the Mosaic work in the Ám Khás” (Beresford’s Delhi, quoted by Mr. H. G. Keene at p. 20 of the third edition of his Handbook for Visitors to Delhi, Calcutta, 1876). Tavernier, who was himself a jeweller, and visited India in 1665, valued this piece of extravagance at two hundred million of livres, £8,000,000; Jonas Hanway estimated it as worth, with nine other thrones, £11,250,000 (Travels, ii. 383). It stood on a white marble plinth, on which are still to be deciphered the world-renowned motto in flowing Persian characters: “If there be a paradise on earth, it is even this, even this, even this.”

Agar Fardawsi ba ruyi zamīn ast:
Hamīn ast, hamīn ast, hamīn ast.

[464] `Abd ul-Kerīm Bokhārī, p. 106.

[465] Vambéry gives the date of this coup d’état as 1737 (p. 343); but `Abd ul-Kerīm Bokhārī makes it follow the assassination of Nādir Shāh, the epoch of which is not open to question (p. 110). The dates of events of the eighteenth century in Bokhārā are strangely uncertain, contemporary chroniclers rarely deigning to aid posterity by recording them.

[466] “Bi” is an Uzbeg word meaning “judge.” It is not spelt “bai,” nor does it mean “superior grey-beard,” as M. Vambéry supposes (History of Bokhara, p. 347).

[467] There are many versions of the death of `Abd ul-Mū`min. The most probable is that related by `Abd ul-Kerīm of Bokhārā, at p. 115, which is to the effect that Rahīm Bi had the young prince taken by his own followers on a pleasure-party, and then pushed into a well while he was dreamily peering into its depths.

[468] This is the highest degree in the Bokhārān official hierarchy (see Khanikoff’s Bokhara: its Amir and People, p. 239; Meyendorff’s Voyage à Bokhara, p. 259).

[469] Note at p. 120 of Schefer’s edition of `Abd ul-Kerīm Chronicles.

[470] See note at p. 135, ibid. The editor corrects an obvious lapsus calami,—A.H. 1148 for 1184.

[471] With characteristic Pharisaism, `Abd ul-Kerīm tells us that “fear and terror fell upon Ma´sūm’s brethren, even as they had possessed the brethren of Joseph. He set himself to repress their iniquities, and had their accomplices in crime put to death. He suppressed prostitution, and tolerated no disorders condemned by law. Bokhārā became the image of Paradise!” (p. 125).

[472] `Abd ul-Kerīm, p. 132.

[473] His mother belonged to the noble Salor tribe, ibid.

[474] `Abd ul-Kerīm, p. 137. For descriptions of ancient Merv the reader is referred to vol. v. Dictionnaire géographique de la Perse, by C. Barbier de Meynard, p. 526; Burnes’ Travels into Bokhara, London, 1834; Khanikoff’s Mémoire sur la partie Méridionale de l’Asie Centrale, pp. 53, 57, 113, and 128; and Prof. Shukovski’s exhaustive work referred to on p. 144—note 3, supra.

[475] `Abd ul-Kerīm assures us that this prince was the Plato of the century, a man full of wisdom and knowledge (p. 135).

[476] `Abd ul-Kerīm tells us that the number of families then deported was 17,000, which would give a total of about 85,000 individuals (p. 142).

[477] Vambéry, History of Bokhara, p. 354.

[478] `Abd ul-Kerīm (p. 151) gives the date as Friday, 14th Rajab A.H. 1214. Vambéry is apparently in error in placing it as 1802 (p. 360).

[479] P. 151.

[480] See Meyendorff’s Voyage d’Orenbourg à Boukhara en 1820, p. 281; Bokhara: its Amir and People, by Khanikoff, p. 248; Vambéry, History of Bokhara, p. 360.

[481] Amīr Haydar was the first of the present dynasty to assume the title of Pādishāh.

[482] `Abd ul-Kerīm, pp. 154–156. Vambéry gives a different version (History of Bokhara, p. 462), but we prefer to follow the native chronicler, who held high diplomatic posts in Bokhārā at the commencement of the century, and may be presumed to have had personal knowledge of the events which he records (see M. Charles Schefer’s Introduction to his Chronicle, p. iii).

[483] `Abd ul-Kerīm, pp. 163, 164.

[484] “He always has four legitimate wives: when he wishes to espouse a new wife he divorces one of her predecessors, giving her a house and pension corresponding with her condition. Every month he receives a young virgin, either as wife or slave. He marries the slaves who have not given him children, either to priests or soldiers” (`Abd ul-Kerīm, p. 163).

[485] History of Bokhara, p. 365. A long chapter is devoted to Amīr Nasrullah by Sir H. Howorth. See his History of the Mongols, part ii. pp. 790–809.

[486] “General of artillery.”

[487] Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 296.

[488] The Kushbegi was vehemently suspected of removing him by poison (Khanikoff, p. 298).

[489] About four shillings.

[490] Khanikoff, p. 301.

[491] 1 Vambéry, p. 366.

[492] Wolff, Bokhara, p. 232.

[493] Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 304.

[494] Wolff, Bokhara, p. 233.

[495] Ibid. p. 233.

[496] Wolff, p. 181.

[497] Ibid. p. 232.

[498] “Sed periit postquam cerdonibus esse timenduæs Cœperat” (Sat. IV. 153).

[499] Wolff, p. 248.

[500] Vambéry, p. 372.

[501] Khanikoff, p. 306; Wolff, p. 152, et passim.

[502] Vambéry, p. 373.

[503] Under `Abd us-Samad’s advice he had organised a corps of soldiers who were drilled and accoutred in the European fashion.

[504] Khanikoff, p. 313.

[505] Ibid. p. 314. Wolff adds that the unfortunate Khān’s pregnant wife was also butchered (Bokhara, p. 232).

[506] He published an interesting account of his wanderings in his Travels into Bokhara, being an account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia in 1831–33. London, 1834–39.

[507] Wolff, p. 176. It appears that he drew his sword on the court official charged with the duty of presenting him to His Majesty.

[508] “He delights to hear that people tremble at his name, and laughs with violence when he hears of their apprehensions” (Wolff, p. 233).

[509] The first regular Russian embassy to Bokhārā was that of M. Regni in 1820, which was described by Colonel Baron Meyendorff in his Voyage d’Orenbourg à Boukhara, Paris, 1826. The Russian reply to Burnes’ mission were those of Desmaison in 1834, and of Vitkovich in the following year (Vambéry, p. 380).

[510] The issue of our first attempt to meddle in the affairs of Afghanistān is too well known for recapitulation. The British forces left Kābul on January 1842 on their homeward march, and, out of 16,500 troops and camp followers, only one man lived to carry the news of disaster to Jalālābād. See Kaye’s History of the War in Afghanistan, 1851.

[511] Nasrullah was tormented by remorse to his dying day. He told the Shaykh ul-Islām of Bokhārā that “he had given himself a terrible wound by having killed Stoddart and Conolly.” And the chief-justice assured Wolff that the Amīr had more than once exclaimed, “The wounds of my heart, for having slain these English people, will never heal!” (Wolff’s Bokhara, pp. 176, 233). Even this black heart had one white spot. But we must not judge a bad man by the good he may do on impulse, nor a good one by the evil which alloys the finest nature.

[512] Wolff, Bokhara, p. 231. It is not exhaustive, for Vambéry (p. 389) mentions a poor Italian watchmaker named Giovanni Orlando as one of Nasrullah’s victims. Wolff’s work is disfigured by its author’s eccentricities, and is deficient in information of value as to the manners and economy of the country. But his courage and self-devotion are beyond all praise.

[513] Vambéry, p. 391. The date which he gives tentatively, 1840, is certainly wrong: had it occurred then, details would have appeared in the works of Wolff and Khanikoff. H. Moser, who twice visited Bokhārā during his reign, says that he lived in idleness till his father’s death, the date of which he inexplicably states to have been 1842 (A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 156).

[514] Vambéry, p. 391.

[515] H. Moser, p. 156.

[516] It was regarded in Central Asia as a bird of ill omen, and nicknamed Kara-Kush, “black bird” (Vambéry, p. 394).

[517] The Kipchāks are a race of Turkish origin, who, according to Howorth (History of the Mongols, part ii.), settled on the south-eastern Russian steppes, in the tenth and eleventh centuries. They afterwards split up into hordes, the “Golden” and the “Eastern,” but were united under Tīmūr’s great antagonist, Tokhtamish Khān. When his power was shattered the Kipchāks dispersed over Central Asia, and large numbers found their way to Kokand, then styled by its present name, Farghāna.

[518] Vambéry, p. 395.

[519] H. Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 156.

[520] Born at Pelusum in Egypt, A.D. 70, and flourished under M. Antoninus and Hadrian.

[521] Our authority here is Jornandes, more properly styled Jordanes, who lived at Byzantium under Justinian II. His work, De Gothorum Origine et Rebus Gestis, is to be found in Muratori’s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab Anno 500 ad 1500, 27 vols. folio.

[522] The Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg claim a Wendish origin, and are officially styled “Princes of the Wends.”

[523] Slav, originally Slovene or Slovane, was, according to Miklositch, Vergleichende Grammatik den Slavischen Sprachen (Vienna, 1879), the tribal name of one of several Aryan clans, whose settlements stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Ægæan Sea, from Kamskatka to the Elbe.

[524] “God” in Sanskrit is Bhagvan. Siva was the devoted wife of the demigod Rama, who is worshipped by Hindus with a fervour like that inspired by the Virgin Mary in Catholic lands.

[525] They were judges rather than jurymen of the British type. Their number was twelve, half of whom were chosen by the plaintiff and half by the defendant. See Stubbs’ Constitutional History, chap. xiii.

[526] Other writers give Cherson as the scene of this historic rite. Vladimir wears a halo in monkish legend, and is commonly styled the Saint, or the Great.

[527] According to Ujfalvy, the Mongols were leading a peaceful and patriarchal life round Lake Baikal in the second century before our era. Richthofen thinks that the primitive land of the Turks was not in the Altaï Mountains, as their legends would have it, but rather in the country below the Anan, the Lena, and the Seleuga (Les Aryens (Paris, 1896), p. 25).

[528] Khwārazm, an old Persian word said to mean “eastwards,” comprises the embouchure of the Sir Daryā, and is now known as Khiva.

[529] “Horde” is derived from the Old Turkish Urdu, meaning encampment. Hence Urdu, the lingua franca evolved in the progresses which the Mongolian emperors of India used to make yearly throughout the peninsula. The people of Samarkand still call the citadel Urda, “the encampment.”

[530] A Historical Sketch of Russian Policy in Central Asia, by Professor V. Grigorieff; Schuyler’s Turkestan, App. IV. vol. ii. p. 391.

[531] For further details consult Howorth’s Mongols, pt. ii. div. i. p. 507.

[532] Russia in Central Asia, by Hugo Stumm, pp. 2, 3; En Asie Centrale, by N. Ney, p. 203.

[533] The Cossacks have never been able to shake off the stigma imprinted by this dire necessity. They are still called “Man-eaters” in many parts of Central Asia.

[534] En Asie Centrale, by N. Ney, pp. 203–5.

[535] Stumm, p. 5.

[536] Tradition has it that the Khān retaliated by tearing in pieces a letter, subsequently received from Peter, and giving it to his children to play with (Peter the Great, by Oscar Browning, p. 323).

[537] The Kirghiz affirm that they were divided into three Hordes by an ancient chieftain named Alash. The Great Horde wander over Chinese and Russian Turkestān, near Lake Balkash; the Middle occupy the northern and eastern shores of the Sea of Aral; the Little Horde, now more numerous than the others combined, feed their flocks between the Tobol and the Aral Sea. An interesting account is given by Stumm of their manners and character. See Russia in Central Asia, pp. 227–34.

[538] Stumm, pp. 20, 21.

[539] Meyendorf, Voyage d’Orenburg à Boukhara, p. 285.

[540] For a detailed account of the Khivan expedition, see Hugo Stumm’s Russia in Central Asia, chap. ii. p. 26.

[541] It is well known that the Tsar Nicholas, on learning the disasters suffered by the allied forces during the terrible Crimean winter of 1854–55, complacently remarked that there were two generals who fought for Russia—Generals January and February.

[542] Stumm, p. 50.

[543] See Appendix.

[544] The Cossacks numbered only 104, under Sub-Lieutenant Saroff. They made a zariba of their horses’ bodies, and, after repelling incessant attacks for two days, they cut a path through the dense masses of their foes, and joined a relief column from Turkestān. Only nine escaped unwounded, and the killed numbered fifty-seven. Such actions abound in modern Central Asian annals, and they are as glorious as any performed by our own brave troops in India (Ney, p. 213).

[545] Ney, p. 214.

[546] Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 214. Stumm asserts that the Bokhāran Amīr made the exiled Khān named Khudā Yār his Bey, or governor of Kokand (The Russians in Central Asia, p. 57).

[547] The chief was Colonel Von Struve, who afterwards attended Kauffman in a diplomatic capacity during his campaign against Khiva in 1873, and, at a later period of his career, was envoy of Japan. Among the other members was Colonel Glukhovsky, who was an ardent pioneer for Russia in these little-known tracts (see Schuyler’s Turkestan, ii. 354, 386), and published an interesting account of his mission in the Paris Geographical Society’s Bulletin for September 1868.

[548] This illustrious soldier never regained imperial favour, and died almost unnoticed in August 1898.

[549] See Schuyler’s Turkestan, i. 312.

[550] It is to be found in extenso in the Journal de St. Petersburg of 16th July 1867.

[551] 500,000 roubles; equivalent to about £53,000. This ultimatum is omitted in Vambéry’s admirable description of the Samarkand campaign in the Monatsschrift für deutsche Litteratur, 1896. He alleges that Kauffman ignored the Amīr’s embassies, and fell unexpectedly on Samarkand when the preparation for the campaign was complete.

[552] Schuyler denies that this affair was really a battle. Judged by his standard, Plassey was a mere skirmish. The two battles closely resemble one another. See his Turkestan, i. 242.

[553] Sarts, as we shall presently see, is the Russian term for the sedentary inhabitants of Central Asia.

[554] Schuyler denies that the attack on a small isolated garrison was an act of treachery. It may not have been so on the part of the people of Shahrisabz; but the inhabitants of Samarkand were undoubtedly guilty of the basest dissimulation in welcoming the Russians and then secretly conspiring their destruction (Turkestan, i. 246).

[555] This is now a Russian cantonment.

[556] Quoted by Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 221.

[557] Hugo Stumm, Russia in Central Asia, p. 104.

[558] The best account is one compiled by the Russian staff,—The Khivan Campaign, St. Petersburg, 1873.

[559] Schuyler, who visited the capital just before the annexation, mentions that 500 prisoners taken in one of these emeutes had their throats cut in the bazaar, which literally streamed with blood (Turkestan, ii. 16).

[560] Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 314.

[561] Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 298.

[562] The desert wells are termed urpa when shallow, and kuduk or kuyu when they are deep and afford a constant supply. The only sign of their existence is the tracks converging on them from every quarter. They are mere holes, without kerb or fencing, and the sides are roughly shored up by the branches of desert shrubs (ibid. p. 299).

[563] “In the Turkoman Desert is a species of antelope almost as numerous as the wild ass. It is smaller than a sheep, which it resembles in body, neck, and head, and has the delicate limbs, horns, and hair of the antelope; the horn, however, is not opaque but white, and like a cow’s horn. The nostrils are directly in front, and are closed by a muscle acting vertically. The nose is greatly arched, and provided with an integument which can be inflated at pleasure. The head is extremely ugly. The animal ... is called by the natives kaigh” (Abbott, Narrative of a Journey to Khiva, 1856).

[564] Moser, p. 309. The Kārakūm is the portion of the Turkoman Desert lying between Khiva and the Akkal and Merv oases.

[565] “Our path lay through fields and natural meadows of the richest verdure, among groves of oak clothed in young leaves of the most delicate hues, broken into glades and lawns of velvet” (Narrative of a Journey through Khorasan in the Years 1821–1822, by James Baillie Fraser; London, 1825).

[566] M. P. Lessar, whose knowledge of Central Asian geography is profound, affirms that the Paropamisus, as the range was anciently called, offers no difficulty to the engineer. The summit is reached by an almost imperceptible incline. In fact, the traveller crosses the range almost without perceiving that he has done so.

[567] Vambéry, in a lecture delivered in London on 10th April 1880.

[568] See Rawlinson’s History of Parthia, 1873.

[569] Travels in Bokhārā, 1834.

[570] Kibitka is the Russian term for the nomads’ tent. It is composed of portable felt carpets secured by strips of raw hide to a circular collapsible wooden frame. An old tent, black with age and smoke, is called by the Turkomans “kara ev”; a new one, still whitish-grey, “ak ev.” The kibitka is the Russian administrative unit, and is supposed to connote five inhabitants. A group of kibitkas ranging between twenty-five and fifty is called aul, “portable village.”

[571] The subsequent history of this once powerful tribe is a curious example of the process of agglomeration which raised the Tekkes to supremacy. In 1871 the remnant of the Salors were forcibly deported by the former tribe to Merv, and incorporated with themselves. Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin (Merv, p. 80).

[572] O’Donovan, who visited these works in 1880, describes them as follows: “For twenty yards on either side the river-bank was revetted with stout fascines of giant reeds, solidly lashed to stakes planted on the bank to prevent the friction of the current, as it neared the dam, from washing away the earth surface. Huge masses of earthwork closed the narrow gorge by which the stream found exit in the lower level by a passage scarce ten feet wide. The waters rushed thunderously through this narrow gap to a level eight feet below their upper surface. The passage was some fifty yards in length, and, like its approaches, was lined with reed fascines” (The Story of Merv, p. 210). Petrusevitch states that the repairs of distributories were provided for by the labour of a contingent of one man in every twenty-four families (Marvin’s Merv, p. 80).

[573] O’Donovan saw them in 1881. One was an eighteen, the others six-pounders; all were bronze smooth-bores (The Story of Merv, p. 198).

[574] Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 81.

[575] Grodekoff found the burial-places full of murdered victims, the villages in ruins, and the fields out of cultivation (Marvin’s Merv, p. 207).

[576] O’Donovan, p. 182; Moser, p. 319.

[577] Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, pp. 82, 83. For an enumeration of the Turkoman clans the reader is referred to Marvin’s Merv, which is a mosaic of quotations from writers of different value. Petrusevitch is by far the most trustworthy.

[578] “Residence among these lawless tribes convinces me more than ever that there cannot be a worse despotism than the despotism of a mob. There is nothing, in my eyes, more pregnant with fatal consequences than the sway and power of an ignorant and uncivilised multitude governed by no other motives than its own maddening impulses” (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 262).

[579] O’Donovan, Story of Merv, p. 220.

[580] Nūr Verdi Khān was one of those exceptional men, to be found in widely divergent societies, who acquire the commanding influence which all strong personalities must attain. His death, at the comparatively early age of fifty, just before the Russian invasion, was the death-knell of Tekke independence (Moser, p. 319).

[581] Wolff found a “Calipha,” or high priest, named `Abd er-Rahmān enjoying great influence at Merv in 1843. This was another case of force of character leading to the attainment of greatness (Bokhara, pp. 114, 115).

[582] Sardār is a Persian word signifying “head-man.” Tokma Sardār, who had commanded the garrison of Geok Teppe during the memorable siege by the Russians, visited O’Donovan at Merv soon after that event. “He was slightly under middle height, very quiet, almost subdued in manner, his small grey eyes lighting up with a humorous twinkle” (The Story of Merv, p. 178).

[583] The weapons were a long flintlock, laboriously loaded with the contents of a powder-horn and leather bullet bag, but the Tekke trusted chiefly to his sabre and a long murderous dagger, called pshak (Moser, p. 296).

[584] Moser, p. 324.

[585] Ibid. p. 300.

[586] Moser, p. 247.

[587] Ibid. p. 320.

[588] Ibid.; also O’Donovan, p. 298.

[589] O’Donovan, p. 297. The training consisted in a gradual reduction of the rations of food and water. Dry lucern gave place to chopped straw; barley and juwārī (sorghum), to a mixture of flour and matter-fat.

[590] Moser, p. 322. It is remarkable that the Tekke seat is precisely the same as that in use among the nomads of the Mongolian plateau north of the Great Wall, who, according to Mr. E. H. Parker in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette, “always ride with very short stirrups, the knee bent forward almost to the withers, the reins grasped short, and (when there is any speed) the body well over the horse’s neck. Possibly this is the reason why the Mongol saddle always has a high peak, for it prevents the rider being chucked over the horse’s neck.” This method is also identical with that adopted by the jockey Tod Sloan.

[591] The felt blankets were worked by the cavaliers’ women-folk. “The finer the courser’s felt,” ran a Turkoman proverb, “the greater the love of the maker for the horseman” (Moser, p. 331).

[592] Moser, p. 274.

[593] Ibid. p. 319.

[594] See chapter iv. of Marvin’s Merv, which is a translation of Petrusevitch’s account of the Turkomans.

[595] “The eyes of a cat, with the extremity raised towards the temple” (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 193).

[596] A Turkoman, while travelling in the desert with Wolff, said, “I smell a caravan of Uzbegs”; and in a few hours one was met with. They can hear conversation at a great distance by flinging themselves on the ground and listening intently (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 242). They can name the tribe and even the individual cavalier by his traces on the sand (Moser, p. 300).

[597] “The Tekke is the only woman in Central Asia who knows how to walk. Nothing is more graceful than a girl of this race going to fetch water from a well and carrying the tall amphora on her shoulder.” (Moser, p. 330).

[598] O’Donovan, p. 193.

[599] Moser, p. 330.

[600] O’Donovan, p. 254.

[601] It is generally admitted that these rules are slowly evolved by the community to which the individual who adopts them belongs. There are some still amongst us who looked with complacency at the cruelties once perpetrated in this Christian country in the name of justice. We see our own manners at earlier stages of our growth reflected in those of contemporary savages.

[602] Pilaw, a dish which has now spread over the Eastern world, had its origin in Central Asia. It is a stew composed of hot mutton-fat into which meat has been shredded, carrots and rice, and, cooked as only a Turkoman knows how to prepare it, is a dish fit for a royal table.

[603] Moser, p. 332.

[604] The efforts of Tekke musicians can only be described as grotesque. They perform on long bamboo trumpets, called twidak, with an accompaniment of bowings and contortions which is in ridiculous contrast to the bird-like notes emitted.

[605] No Turkoman troubled his head about the ordinary business of life after fifty. His work was then done by the women and younger men; and his attitude was one of ease with dignity. In raids, however, and warfare, he was always ready to take an active part up to an advanced age (O’Donovan, p. 306).

[606] O’Donovan, pp. 307, 308; Moser, pp. 330, 331.

[607] A small mat costs £40, and a work of larger size sometimes as much as £400 (Moser, p. 331). The ordinary kinds were made of sheep’s wool and camel’s hair, with a little cotton; the better, wholly of silk. O’Donovan saw one, eight feet square, priced at £50 (p. 308). Carpets of the highest quality are now not procurable. They are cherished as heirlooms, and all are essential parts of a Turkoman maiden’s dowry. Those of the second grade, but coloured with honest native dyes, fetch 13s. a square yard.

[608] Marvin, quoting Vambéry and Conolly, mentions more ancient forms of marriage customs—the simulated abduction of the bride and the pursuit of her on horseback. These, however, are obsolete. For a considerable time after the fall of Geok Teppe the price of Tekke spouses sank to a low ebb, owing to the fearful slaughter of eligible males.

[609] The Merv oasis is a wedge driven between Persia and Afghanistān. Meshed is only 150 miles from the centre, Herāt about 240; and the Paropamisus range which intervenes was no deterrent in the eyes of Tekke horsemen.

[610] According to the agents employed by a London relief committee, a fifth of the population perished (Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 326).

[611] Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 321.

[612] Astrabad Consular Report for 1879.

[613] Provisory Ordinance of the 21st March 1874, quoted by Ney, p. 225.

[614] Ney, p. 225.

[615] In 1875 a caravan, fitted out by the energetic Colonel Glukhovsky, was destroyed between Krasnovodsk and Khiva. In 1877 the Turkomans looted one proceeding northwards from the Atrak; and a little later they cut up, near Krasnovodsk, some of their brethren who had accepted Russian rule, and intercepted many postal couriers (Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 331).

[616] Ney, p. 226. It is now the site of a great railway workshop.

[617] In 1878, when Russia was within an ace of going to war with England on the Eastern question, it was arranged that columns from Turkestān and the Caspian should meet at Merv and subdue that almost unknown region; but the Congress of Berlin rendered the measure unnecessary (Ney, p. 227).

[618] Geok Teppe, which will for ever be associated with the final struggle for independence, is the name of a district; Dangil Teppe, that of the famous entrenched camp. It was originally that of a mound at the north-western angle.

[619] Ney, p. 240.

[620] Skobeleff was in politics an Anglophobe, though his relations with our countrymen individually were cordial. There is not an iota of truth in his belief that Lomakin’s failure was due to British intrigue. It is fully accounted for by his incapacity. The result was only what might have been expected. Russian authority in Central Asia was ill cemented, and it needed but the news of a crushing reverse to produce the wildest hopes in the Khānates.

[621] He was born in 1841.

[622] General Lomakin started from his base with 12,000 camels, and had lost the whole of them by the twentieth day of his march (Ney, p. 315).

[623] He wrote from Krasnovodsk in June: “If we wish to recoup our immense expenditure in Asia we must popularise the desert journey between the Caspian and the basin of the Amū Daryā; and, after rendering the steppes safe for transit, we must make a railway to Askabad and on to the Amū Daryā” (Ney, p. 286).

[624] Moser, p. 315.

[625] According to the official accounts, the artillery taken by the Turkomans included six mountain guns and three mortars, two of which were actually dragged within the entrenchment. General Kurapatkine, however, has stated the number of cannon captured by the Tekkes as fourteen. All of them, save one, were recaptured by the reserves. The fourteenth remained in the enemy’s hands until the final assault, when it was retaken, decked with green boughs, and paraded through the lines, accompanied by music and the frantic cheers of the troops.

[626] Skobeleff relates that, during one of his nightly rounds, he heard a private soldier remark to another that the Russians were at a great disadvantage, for they were huddled in the trenches, while the enemy hacked and stabbed them from above. He suggested that the trenches should be left empty, and the troops be posted ten paces to the rear. The hint was acted on with brilliant results, for the Turkomans on the following night sallied out in force and leapt into the trenches, where they were shot and bayoneted with ease (Moser, p. 315).

[627] He was much impressed by the punctilio with which the Tekkes had observed an armistice agreed on for the purpose of burying the dead on the 19th January. Skobeleff’s appreciation of the really noble qualities elicited by severe trial is shared by General Kurapatkine, who humorously alludes to Tokma Sardār, the commander of the entrenchment, as mon vainqueur, and styles him un magnifique soldat. An account of a visit paid by this leader to O’Donovan shortly after the siege will be found at p. 274.

[628] The Story of Merv, p. 155.

[629] The official list admits only 937 casualties during the siege, including 268 killed (Marvin, Merv, p. 401). An iron tablet on a white-washed mound in the little cemetery behind the site of the Russian camp substantiates these figures, but the extent of the three burial-places which lie to the east of the entrenchment, including separate ones for the Cossacks and the Stavropol Regiment, would imply a much greater sacrifice of life. General Kurapatkine states the total casualties to have been 1200, including 400 killed. The Russians in Central Asia have adopted Napoleon’s system of minimising losses.

[630] Telegram quoted by Marvin, p. 399.

[631] Ney, p. 249.

[632] Moser, p. 343.

[633] See Moser, p. 344. M. Paul Lessar, who was charged by the Russian authorities with the duty of surveying the debatable land in 1884, was the first to dissipate the “Paropamisus myth,” which made these insignificant hills an impenetrable barrier to the passage of troops.

[634] The meaning of Bādghīs is “windy.” It was suggested by the storms which sweep over the plateau in winter.

[635] Moser, p. 345.

[636] This very distinguished officer had been educated at the Petersburg Military Academy. He had seen much service in the Caucasus, when he had been governor of Southern Dāghistan, and afterwards of Darbend. He had gained eminence in the fields of archaeology and ethnology. As an administrator he was equally successful; and Askabad, the present capital of Transcaspia, owes much to his genius.

[637] It was composed of four companies of Transcaspian Chasseurs, three squadrons of Cossacks from the Kuban, one of Turkoman militia, and four guns (Ney, p. 252, note).

[638] Four of them now adorn a monument on the Askabad parade-ground commemorating Geok Teppe.

[639] The Englishmen were particularly struck by the eagerness shown by their rivals to support the national sports of the nomads, the liberal prizes awarded and the careful observance of ceremony in their official intercourse with Asiatics,—a policy which inspired the latter with a sense of their liberality and power. This is an attitude which would do much to consolidate our own power in India (Report of the Pamirs Boundary Commission).

[640] The late Major-General L. M. Annenkoff was then in the prime of life. He had won his spurs as a railway engineer by the rapid construction of a strategic line in Lithuania, and was afterwards appointed chief of the mobilisation department in the Ministry of War. At the outbreak of the Tekke campaign he volunteered for service under General Skobeleff, and was wounded at Geok Teppe. On returning to Russia he was appointed superintendent of transport throughout the empire (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 283).

[641] The rails were steel, flat-footed, weighing 68 pounds to the yard, and cost £16 a ton. The sleepers came from the Baltic and Caucasus. The rolling stock consisted of 80 locomotives on the Siegl system, and 1400 cars and waggons. Everything was produced in Russian workshops.

[642] They earned rather less than £2 per mensem. They were allowed to work in their own fashion, just as if they were repairing their arīks, or irrigation canals. It is said that in India, when the contractors insisted on the use of wheelbarrows, the native labourers carried the vehicles and their contents on their heads.

[643] Ney, p. 321.

[644] It cost 6½ d. per cubic yard.

[645] The moral effect produced by the spanning of the Amū Daryā was immense and far reaching. General Annenkoff told the members of the St. Petersburg Technical Society that when the first locomotive, draped with the imperial flag, crossed the river, loud cheers echoed from the hosts that lined the banks (Ney, p. 304).

[646] It is interesting to compare the cost of the Russian Asiatic railways with that of Indian lines constructed under similar conditions. It averaged £6144 per mile. The report of the Director of Indian Railways for 1872–1873 gives that of the earlier lines as £18,000 to £20,000. It is probable that the cost of the three railway battalions has not been taken into account. But, allowing for that item, we must admit that the Russian railways were far cheaper than our Indian trunk lines.

[647] Ney, p. 305.

[648] The following statistics for 1897 have been furnished by Colonel Brunelli, the much respected commandant of the railway battalion stationed at Merv:—

Revenue, gross	£751,000
” nett	615,000
Train mileage		2,402,625
Exports.
Raw cotton	81,000	tons
Wool	8,000	”
Dried fruit	5,000	”
Barley	2,000	”
Skins and hides	5,000	”
Salt	3,000	”
Miscellaneous	5,000	”
Grand total	109,000	tons
Imports.
Manufactures	15,000	tons
Sugar	12,000	”
Tea	6,192,000	lbs.
Metals	5,000	tons
Kerosene oil	5,000	”
Wool	8,000	”
Miscellaneous, including tan, naphtha, rice, spices, wine, brandy, beer, and thread	22,000	”
Grand total	70,000	tons
Intermediate traffic	70,000	tons
Total movement of goods	249,000	”

[649] Phasis, Φᾶσις, a river of Colchis emptying itself into the Euxine. Its banks are clothed with forests whence pheasants were brought to delight Roman epicures (Mart. Ep. xiii. 45, 72).

[650] See an interesting paper read before the London Chamber of Commerce in 1866, by Colonel C. Stewart, C. B., H. B. M. Consul-General at Odessa. Sir W. W. Hunter, K.C.S.I., the brilliant historian of India, has also pointed out the striking correspondence between the former paths of trade and those mapped out by Russian engineers. It is, he explains, a question of correspondence rather than identity of work, but the section between the Black Sea and the Caspian follows the ancient ways very closely (History of British India, p. 32).

[651] Extensive additions to the station accommodation and rolling stock are contemplated. Estimates have received sanction which place the cost at two millions sterling. The question will shortly be studied by a committee of experts.

[652] An officer in command of the post at Kushk told one of the writers that the friendliest relations prevailed between the Russians and Afghans. On one occasion the staff of the Amīr’s Regiment, invited to a banquet by their brethren in arms, arrived in a grande tenue of second-hand railway uniforms. Thus the colonel’s collar exhibited the magic words “Ticket collector,” and a major strutted proudly with a label of “Guard.” The Russians were under the impression that a portion of our ally’s subsidy was taken out in cast-off accoutrements, but the fact is that His Highness, being a prince of frugal mind, is a bidder by proxy at the periodical sales of unserviceable railway stores held in Upper India.

[653] M. P. Lessar, who surveyed these hills in 1884–1885, states their height above sea-level as 3140 feet.

[654] Colonel Arandarenko, district chief of Merv, states that only two assassinations of Russian officials had occurred during the last thirty years. General Kurapatkine, too, gives numerous instances of kindness and respect shown to disabled Russians by Turkomans (see Appendix II.).

[655] Messrs. Nobel have works there which produce a thick ropy petroleum. The out-turn in 1890 was nearly 3000 tons, but had fallen in 1895 to 1300.

[656] The movement by rail in 1896 was upwards of 60,000 tons. Transcaspian cotton is rapidly ousting the American product, thanks to protective tariff. It is a remarkable fact that the market price of cotton is higher in Transcaspia than at Manchester.

[657] The value of exported carpets and rugs in 1891 was 160,000 roubles. In 1894 it had fallen to 60,000, and is now probably 25,000 only.

[658] The official statistics for 1896 give the following percentages:—Persians, 39.2; Armenians, 32.2; Tartars, 11.7; Russians, 6.8; Jews, 5.0; Turkomans, 3; and “others,” 2.1.

[659] Mr. E. C. Ringler Thomson, late assistant agent to the Governor-General of India in Khorāsān, who knows General Kurapatkine well, wrote thus of him in the National Review for February 1898: “He is still in the prime of life, not yet fifty years of age, has served from the commencement of his career in Central Asia, has taken a leading part in its conquest, and has made some important contributions towards its literature. He thoroughly knows the various countries, and thoroughly understands the people inhabiting them, and their modes of diplomacy and warfare. He was chief of the Staff to the great Skobeleff during the Russo-Turkish War, and greatly distinguished himself in it. Indeed there is little doubt that some of Skobeleff’s laurels were won by him. Skobeleff was the dashing, impetuous, reckless leader; Kurapatkine the cool, patient, calculating corrective who restrained him. He is a man of indomitable will, of untiring industry, master of his profession as a soldier, a great civil administrator, deliberate of speech, exceedingly gentle and modest in manner, and with a temper always under control. He wears the first class of the Order of Saint George (equivalent to our Victoria Cross), and his courage is of the type which does not comprehend fear. He is the strictest of disciplinarians, but beloved and respected by all, and his own good qualities are perforce in a great measure reflected in those serving under him. He is, indeed, the equal in every respect of any commander we could place in the field to oppose him. General Kurapatkine has brought Transcaspia in all matters, both civil and military, to a high state of perfection. He works from sunrise till late into the night, inquires personally into the minutest details, and finds time to be constantly making long and fatiguing journeys of inspection throughout his extensive command. This man, if he took the field against us, would be hard to beat. He has told me more than once that he has seen too much of war not to hate it, that neither he nor his Government have the least desire to fight us, and to suggest that they wish to invade India is absurd. I believe him. But all the same, he is a Russian of Russians, and, if he thought there was just cause for it, would delight in trying conclusions with us. In diplomacy, of course, General Kurapatkine is a thoroughbred Russian.”

[660] Krasnovodsk has two. They are administered by subordinate executive officers called pristavs.

[661] The Russian equivalent for mayor.

[662] The statistics for 1890–1895 are given below:—

District.	Crimes against		Percentage of Crime to Population.
	the Person.	Property.
Mangishlāk	273	239	23
Krasnovodsk	147	315	14
Askabad	213	206	27
Tajand	104	416	41
Merv	537	913	22
Total	1271	2089	25

[663] Murderers are sometimes sent to serve their term of imprisonment at Chikisliar, a dismal place on the south-eastern Caspian shore, made to enhance the penalty and also to lessen the opportunity for vendetta, to which the Turkomans are greatly given.

[664] They numbered, in 1895, 161,618 souls. It is curious to compare these figures with former calculations. Burnes, in 1832, estimated the number of Tekkes as 200,000; Vambéry, in 1863, as 180,000; and Petrusevitch, writing in 1878 on the eve of the Russian conquest, at 240,000. But these figures are mere guesswork. They are based on an average of five persons to each kibitka, or tent, while experience shows that four is nearer the mark (chap. iii. Marvin’s Merv).

[665] The families of the operatives of the Kizil Arvat Railway workshops, especially the children, are pallid, anæmic, and a prey to skin diseases.

[666] The percentages in 1895 were—in Mangishlāk, 11 per cent.; Krasnovodsk, 11 per cent.; Askabad, 11 per cent.; Tajand, 30 per cent.; and Merv, 85 per cent. It is a remarkable fact that the hospitals and dispensaries maintained so generously by Russia at the administrative centres have conquered the prejudice entertained at first for European treatment. The applicants for medical and surgical relief in 1890 were only 6000. In 1895 the number had risen to 34,950.

[667] This would be an object-lesson for the “Conscientious objector,” were it not that fanaticism is impervious to teaching or argument.

[668] For the system of irrigation before the Russian conquest, the reader is referred to chap. xviii. of O’Donovan’s Story of Merv, and p. 81 of Marvin’s Merv.

[669] Mīrāb, lord of water, an old Persian title.

[670] Sū is a Turkish word for water. It is met with in the nomenclature of many streams near Constantinople.

[671] A Persian word meaning, primarily, government; secondarily, an estate or property.

[672] Marvin’s Merv, p. 263. The date is there given as 1787; as a matter of fact, the invasion of Murād, alias Ma´sūm, commonly styled “Begi Jān,” took place three years earlier.

[673] Maktab, an Arabic word meaning school.

[674] The income from posts and telegraphs is increasing, though the statistics are still insignificant. It was 82,832 roubles in 1890, and 133,005 roubles in 1895.

[675] Three steamer companies ply on the Caspian; the oldest is the “Caucasus Mercury,” and the others are termed the “Caspian” and “Eastern.” The steamers are better suited for goods than passengers.

[676] A verbatim reproduction of this remarkable utterance is to be found in the Appendix. General Kurapatkine’s great master, Skobeleff, was equally explicit in a proclamation issued to his troops on the day after his victory at Geok Teppe. “A new era,” he said, “has opened for the Tekkes—an era of equality and of a guaranteed possession of property for all, without distinction. Our Central Asian policy recognises no pariahs. Herein lies our superiority over the English” (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 248).

[677] This is a by-product of petroleum distillation, and termed, in Russian, astatki. After the more volatile illuminants have passed over, a residue remains in the shape of a ropy greenish-brown fluid, which in former days was considered valueless. It is now rapidly superseding coal as a steam raiser, and the recent rise in the market price of crude petroleum is in great measure due to the constantly extending use of astatki on steamers and railways.

[678] This ancient piece, a prize taken from the cowardly Persians, very nearly cost Skobeleff his life. Moser relates that the general, while reconnoitring the defences, became a mark for a brisk fusilade which wounded several of his staff. He was implored not to expose himself unnecessarily; but his only reply was to call for a chair and a glass of tea. There he sat indulging calmly in a cigarette while the bullets whistled round him. When, however, the cannon spoke, and its projectile plunged deeply into the soil close to his chair, Skobeleff adopted the “best part of valour.” He rose, saluted the Tekke gunners, and walked slowly back to his quarters (A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 315).

[679] This little ceremony is of ancient date in the Russian army. There is no hard-and-fast rule as to the wording of the general’s greeting. In some favoured corps, such as the Nijni Dragoons, etiquette ordains that it shall be followed by the name of the regiment.

[680] The Story of Merv, p. 194.

[681] The Central Asian tiger has a shaggier coat than his Bengal relative, and his disposition is less truculent. He never molests human beings or shows fight unless attacked. About a year ago one strayed during the noonday heat into a kibitka near the Sir Daryā, pushed aside the occupant, a woman who was spinning at the door, and coiled himself up in a dark corner for a nap. Alas for outraged hospitality! Information was given at the nearest post, and a party of riflemen soon arrived and did the poor beast to death.

[682] Three have been identified—Giaur Kal`a, Sultan Sanjar, and Bahrām `Alī. Some entrenchments are fabled to represent a fourth, older than the rest, built by Alexander the Great. But, as is well known, Iskandar Zū-l-Karnayn, “Alexander the Two-horned,” shares with Tīmūr and the Amīr `Abdullah the credit of having built nearly everything worth seeing in Central Asia.

[683] Moore’s Veiled Prophet of Khorasan.

[684] A description of the difficulties encountered has already been given.

[685] Khanikoff’s Bokhara, p. 18; Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 8th June 1840.

[686] “Mémoire sur l’ancien cours de l’Oxus,” par M. Jaubert, Nouveau Journal Asiatique, Dec. 1833.

[687] Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 300.

[688] The Zarafshān, called by the ancients Polytimætus, takes its rise in a tremendous glacier of the Kharlatau Mountains, 270 miles due east of Samarkand. Its upper reaches are little but a succession of cataracts, and it is too rapid and shallow for navigation. The average width is 210 feet. More than 100 canals are supplied by this source of Bokhārā’s prosperity, some of which are 140 feet broad. The capital is watered by one of them, called the Shari Rūd, which is 35 feet wide, and supplies innumerable smaller distributories (Khanikoff’s Bokhara, p. 39; Meyendorff’s Bokhara (Paris, 1820), p. 148).

[689] Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 120.

[690] Khanikoff, p. 188.

[691] Throughout Central Asia the unit of surface measure is the tanap, which is equivalent to 44,100 square feet. This pest is termed reh in India, and is fought in a very half-hearted way by the ryots.

[692] Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 9. This author, who wrote in 1845, gives as the average price of good land a sum equivalent to £20 of our currency (p. 154). Forty years later the Russians paid £16 per acre for land required for their railway (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 311).

[693] According to Wolff, it numbered 180,000 in 1843 (Bokhara, p. 163).

[694] They are named Imām, Samarkand, Mazār, Kārshi, Salahkhānā, Namāziyya, Shaykh Jalāl, Kārākul, Shīr-Gīrān, Talipash, and Oghlān.

[695] For the ethnology of Bokhārā the reader should consult Meyendorff, p. 189; Khanikoff, chaps. vii., viii., and ix.; and Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 68.

[696] The etymology of Bokhārā is also a moot point. There can be little doubt, however, that the word is derived from the Sanskrit vihára, or hermit-cell, which was adopted by the Buddhists and became búhára in Mongolian. The city clustered round the retreat of an early ascetic.

[697] Ujfalvy states that the Tājiks of the plains, as distinguished from their brethren of the hills, and the branch called Galchas inhabiting the Pamirs, have a triple origin. They are (a) descendants from the Iranian aborigines of Bactriana and Soghdiana, who remained in the level country throughout the successive invasions of Turko-Tartars, Mongols, and Arabs; they accepted the domination of each new-comer, and were compelled to give their daughters in marriage to the conquerors; (b) immigrants who from time to time arrived in Bokhārā from Khorāsān; (c) mixed alliances between the wealthier inhabitants of the Khānate and Persian slaves brought thither during many centuries by Turkoman freebooters. This author adds that many Tājiks show signs of Arab blood in their aquiline noses and brilliant eyes (Les Aryens, Paris, 1896).

[698] An Uzbeg proverb has it: “When a Tājik tells the truth he has a fit of colic!”

[699] The Kirghiz style themselves Kazāk, “warriors.” They roam over the Khānates, and love to shelter themselves from the icy blasts in the long reeds lining the banks of the Sir Daryā. They are cruel, treacherous, and given to rapine. Government is exercised by hereditary Khāns, but the personal equation is everything, and the Khān who derogates is lost. Fighting men are called Bahādurs; the relatives of the tribal Khān, Sultāns.

[700] A native chronicle called “Nassed Nameti Uzbekia,” giving a catalogue of these clans, is quoted by Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 74.

[701] Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 163. The doctor states that their synagogue possesses an ancient version of the Prophet Daniel, giving the variant “2400” in the place of “2300” in chap. viii. ver. 14.

[702] As is well known, the Mohammedans everywhere are ranged into two sections. The Sunnis are the orthodox, and owe their name to their adhesion to the traditionary teaching, Sunna, of the Prophet. The Shī`as reject it; and are also champions of the claim to succeed Mohammed of `Alī, his cousin and son-in-law, and of his sons in their turn, Hasan and Husayn. With the exception of the Persians, who are Shī`as, almost the whole of the Mohammedan world is Sunni. The two sects hate each other with the true odium theologium.

[703] These unhappy victims were British officers sent to Bokhārā on diplomatic service. After a long imprisonment they were cruelly beheaded by order of the Amīr Nasrullah in 1843. See Wolff’s Bokhara, passim.

[704] This neglect of one of the chief duties of government—the protection of its subjects abroad—is universal in Central Asia. We have no consul farther east than Baku. The Russians excuse their persistent refusal to grant an exequatur to a consul at Tiflis by the allegation that we would not permit them to establish such agencies on our Indian frontiers.

[705] The local phrase for turban is “salla.” A Russian-made one costs 1½ roubles; the cheapest Manchester turban being 3½, and the dearest 15 roubles.

[706] Called “paranji.” It has balloon sleeves meeting at the shoulders.

[707] Bokhārā stands in lat. 39° 46′ N., in the same parallel as Northern Spain, Naples, and Philadelphia. It is 1200 feet above sea-level, and exposed to Siberian blasts which make the winter climate very severe. The average winter temperature of London is nearly twice that of Bokhārā. In February heavy rains usher in a springtime as glorious as that which clothes our English woods, but suffocating summer heats follow which are broken by a fortnight’s rain in October. The climate is one of extremes (Khanikoff, Bokhara, chap. v).

[708] Bacha, a Persian word signifying the young of any animal.

[709] It is a curious fact that M. P. Lessar, while Resident at Bokhārā, anticipated Sir D. Barbour’s financial policy in India by inducing the Amīr to close his mint. The stiffening effect which might have been expected was not attained. Before the great recoinage of 1834 Indian silver underwent similar oscillations. The difference in weight and intrinsic value between rupees of different descriptions gave native brokers an opportunity of feathering their nests. They met in secret conclave periodically, and decided how many copper coins should be exchanged against each species of rupee. A recoinage, or adoption of the Russian monetary system, is the only possible remedy.

[710] In 1872 M. Petrofsky, agent of the Minister of Finance, visited Bokhārā in order to study the commercial system. He stated, in the European Messenger for March 1873, that the city was then an entrepôt for English and Afghan wares. Green tea in those days arrived by way of Afghanistān, and was distributed throughout the Khānates from Bokhārā. “Who can guarantee,” he asks plaintively, “that with our carelessness with regard to the Bokhāran market, all the trade with Central Asia will not pass into the hands of the English and Afghans?” This fearful contingency has been obviated by protective tariffs and the Transcaspian Railway.

[711] Schuyler, Turkestan, vol ii. p. 90.

[712] Schuyler, p. 92.

[713] For a detailed account of the curriculum the reader is referred to Khanikoff, chap. xxix.

[714] The leader in the serious rising in Farghāna last spring was named Ishān Mohammed `Alī Khalīfa. In July 1898 a Russian was murdered at New Bokhārā, and the life of another was attempted by one of these fanatics.

[715] Schuyler retails an old scandal to the effect that the 40,000 roubles which the Madrasas cost were bestowed by the empress on a Bokhāran envoy at her Court after a liaison with him (Turkestan, ii. p. 93).

[716] Moser, p. 151; Khanikoff, pp. 101–2.

[717] Meyendorff writes: “The lot of slaves in Bokhārā is terrible. Nearly all the Russians complain of being badly fed and severely beaten. I met one whose master had cut off his ears, driven nails through his palms, flayed his back, and poured boiling oil on his arms” (p. 286).

[718] “Amīr ul Mu´minīn,” the title adopted by the Caliphs.

[719] Fath `Alī, Shāh of Persia, asked a European, who told him that his sovereign’s acts were subject to public approbation: “Wherein lies the pleasure of ruling if one can’t do exactly as one pleases?”

[720] Moser, p. 160.

[721] A very elaborate description of the old Court régime is given in chaps. xxiv. and xxv. of Khanikoff’s Bokhara.

[722] Khanikoff, p. 233.

[723] Since the opening of the Transcaspian Railway this has become a staple export, and it has ousted the produce of the United States. The term for unripe cotton is gūza; that for pods ready for export is pakhta.

[724] The genealogy of the reigning house is not quite so clear as such matters usually are in Eastern countries. The founder was an Uzbeg general of the tribe of Mangit, named Mahammad Rahīm Bi. He was succeeded by his nephew, Dāniyāl Bi, whose son, Shāh Murād, alias Ma´sūm, commonly styled “Begi Jān,” was a soldier of the type of Chingiz Khān. He conquered Merv in 1784, and raised Bokhārā to a pinnacle of glory to which it had never attained since the spacious days of the Amīr `Abdullah, a contemporary of our own Elizabeth. Murād attained sovereignty in 1796, and died about 1801. His successor, Mīr Haydar, was a capable soldier, and the military caste had things entirely their own way during his reign, which ended in 1826. His successor was Nasrullah, a moody and treacherous tyrant, who gained an infamous reputation in England by the cruel slaughter of our envoys Stoddart and Conolly. His son Muzaffar resembled his father in cruelty and fanaticism. The story of his overthrow by the Russians has already been told.

[725] The official figures for each district in 1896 were—

District	Dessiatines of 2½ acres under cotton.
Samarkand	5,252
Katta Kurgan	8,920
Jizāk	1,188
Khojend	2,784
Total	18,144

In round figures, 45,000 acres. This is about 5 per cent. of the entire cultivated area of the province of Samarkand, which is officially stated as 364,200 dessiatines.

[726] There were, in 1896, twenty, nine of which were worked by steam or oil engines, ten by water, and one by horse-power. Three hydraulic and seventeen hand-screw presses were at work.

[727] The exact measurements of this stone are 6′ 4¼″ × 1′ 3¾″ × 1′ 5½″ deep. Round the edge is an Arabic inscription giving Tīmūr’s style and title, his genealogy, and the date of his death,—807 A.H., or 1405 of our era.

[728] M. Schuyler states this man’s name as Mir Seid Belki Shaikh, and the date of his death as two years after Tīmūr’s, i.e. 1407 (ii. p. 253).

[729] Schuyler, ii. p. 252. Tilā = gold.

[730] Khanikoff, p. 134. In a note he adds that a Russian named Efremoff, who visited Samarkand in 1770, saw this gigantic book.

[731] Schuyler’s Turkestan, i. p. 250.

[732] This Philistinism has its parallel in India. We believe it to be a fact that a Viceroy proposed the sale of the Tāj Mahāl at Agra to serve as a quarry for marble. The same Vandal had a vast number of seventeenth-century cannon at Allahabad broken up and disposed of as old metal.

[733] Not, however, in 1323, as Schuyler asserts (i. p. 247), for he was not born till fourteen years afterwards.

[734] M. Simakoff, a distinguished Russian archæologist, and the author of Central Asian Art, has arrived at the conclusion that the Persian ornamentation, which has hitherto been considered original, is but an imitation of that introduced by the Mongols into Central Asia. Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 118.

[735] Three versts and 100 sajenes in circuit (Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 131).

[736] For a detailed account of this splendid feat of arms the reader is referred to Schuyler’s Turkestan, i. p. 224.

[737] Schuyler gives a very brief biography of this excellent man at p. 267 of his Turkestan. Like Kurapatkine, he was equally great in war and in civil life, and of that very high type of officials produced only in the Panjāb and Turkestān. The earnestness and keen sympathy with the people which characterised Henry Lawrence, Montgomery, and Herbert Edwardes shine conspicuous in the “Chernaieff school,” so called from an illustrious soldier and statesman who inspired his lieutenants with his own devotion. His unmerited disgrace, which followed a display of splendid moral courage, and his old age spent in the cold shade of imperial neglect, are not the most creditable episodes in Central Asian annals.

[738] Nestorius, a Syrian priest, became Patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century; but his views as to Christ’s personality were declared heretical by a General Council held at Ephesus in 431. He was deposed from his high office, and his followers were driven from Europe.

[739] Afrāsiyāb is synonymous in Persian legend for anything of extreme antiquity.

[740] Moser was present when the Russian researches began. Every stroke of the spade, he says, revealed new treasures. Enamelled bricks of the finest designs, coins, a lamp like those exhumed at Pompeii, but covered with brilliant enamel, an urn splendidly adorned, and many other discoveries worthy to occupy a savant, were made in twenty-four hours (p. 116).

[741] No attempt has yet been made to exploit these regions; but the Russian Government is ready and willing to encourage prospectors. An Englishman is now engaged in searching for the precious metals, and has met with every possible assistance from the authorities.

[742] During Mr. Skrine’s stay at Samarkand a large gang started for this remote destination. Most of them were native bandits, who regarded their expatriation with true Oriental phlegm. But among the group who squatted on the station platform in their sheep-skin cloaks, from which their heavy manacles protruded, were several who inspired more sympathy: a young European girl, who clung piteously to her only treasure—a China teapot; a middle-aged man, evidently belonging to a higher social stratum than the rest, was deeply moved by the prospect of exile. The cause was but too apparent, for a little son clung to him, a sharer in his grief; while among the silent crowd, which was kept at a distance by a ring of soldiers with fixed bayonets, was his unhappy wife, come with her three young daughters to bid him a long farewell.

[743] Khanikoff enumerates 13 as grown in his time (Bokhara, p. 156).

[744] The local term is Chāy Kâbūd, or blue tea, a more faithful rendering of the colour. Like that drunk in Bokhārā, it is imported from China by steamer and rail; and absorbed from porcelain bowls, whence the spent leaves are deftly thrown on the floor by a practised jerk.

[745] See the description of ancient Samarkand by the Emperor Bāber in Schuyler’s Turkestan, p. 239.

[746] Colonel Kulchanoff now holds these functions. He is a Tartar from Orenburg, and is a perfect mine of information on the history and usages of the province. Though a Mohammedan, he lives in European style, and associates freely with his colleagues. Madame Kulchanoff presides at table, and converses with a charming grace with strangers who know Russian.

[747] Lord Cornwallis encountered similar difficulties in fixing the demand on which the Permanent Settlement in Bengal was based. An eminent Hindu reformer, who at that period (1793) was head native officer in the district of Rangpur, is said to have received a bribe of a lakh of rupees (£10,000) for omitting a cipher in the reported gross revenue of a single estate.

[748] By far the best work done by the Civil Service of India is that which is known as Settlement, i.e. the land valuation on a vast scale. The Russians would gain enormously could they obtain the service of a few of the younger men who have taken up this branch of executive duty.

[749] The dimensions of some of the ancient works in Samarkand are stupendous. In one case the wells attain a maximum depth of 420 feet, and are connected by a tunnel in which a man can walk upright.

[750] See a very interesting note at pp. 258–9, vol. ii. of Schuyler’s Turkestan.

[751] Lord Curzon’s great work on Central Asia is considered by the Russians themselves as a text-book, though they vigorously combat his views on their policy.

[752] See Appendix, p. 425.