Khokand, owing to the continual dissensions between the Kiptchaks, Kirghis, and Kasaks, is a prey to the same evil as Khiva. When we add to this the unexampled cowardice of its Özbeg inhabitants, it will no longer appear surprising if, in spite of its having the greatest population and the most extensive territory of the three Khanats, it has, nevertheless, been continually conquered by Bokhara.
(b.) External Relations.
In its political relations with foreign countries, Central Asia, comes only in contact with Turkey, Persia, China, and Russia.
The Sultan of Constantinople is regarded as Chief of Religion and Khalif, and as it was the practice in the middle ages for the three Khanats of Turkestan to receive, as badges of investiture from the Khalif of Bagdad, a sort of court office, this old system of etiquette has not been abandoned even at the present day; and the princes, on their accession to the throne, are wont still to solicit, through the medium of an extraordinary embassy to Stamboul, these honorary distinctions. The Khan of Khiva assumes his rank as Cupbearer, the Emir of Bokhara as Reis (guardian of religion), and the Khan of Khokand as Constable. These courtly functions have always been in high estimation, and I have been informed that the different functionaries fulfil formally once every year the corresponding duties. But the bond that unites them with Constantinople goes thus far, and no farther. The Sultans cannot exercise any political influence upon the three Khanats. The inhabitants of Central Asia, indeed, are in the habit of associating with the word Roum (as Turkey is here called) all the power and splendour of ancient Rome, [{435}] with which, in the popular opinion, it is identified; but the princes seem to have seen through this illusion, nor would they be disposed to recognise the paramount grandeur of the Sultan unless the Porte associated its 'Firman of Investiture,' or its 'Licences to Pray,' with the transmission of some hundreds or thousands of piastres. In Khiva and Khokand these Firmans from Constantinople continue to be read with some demonstration of reverence and respect. The former Khanat was represented in Constantinople during a period of ten years, by Shükrullah Bay; the latter, during the reign of Mollah Khan, had only four years ago an ambassador, Mirza Djan, at the court of the Sultan. These envoys were, in accordance with ancient usages, sometimes maintained for long periods of years at the cost of the State, a charge not altogether convenient as far as its budget for foreign affairs was concerned, but nevertheless altogether essential and necessary to the pretension to a spiritual superiority in Asia.
The Ottoman Empire could only have gained effectual political influence in these remote regions of the East when it was roused from its slumbering Oriental existence before the time of Peter the Great. In its character of Turkish dynasty, the house of Osman might, out of the different kindred elements with which it is connected by the bond of common language, religion, and history, have founded an empire extending from the shore of the Adriatic far into China, an empire mightier than that which the great Romanoff was obliged to employ not only force but cunning to put together, out of the most discordant and heterogeneous materials. [{436}] Anatolians, Azerbaydjanes, Turkomans, Özbegs, Kirghis, and Tartars are the respective members out of which a mighty Turkish Colossus might have arisen, certainly better capable of measuring itself with its greater northern competitor than Turkey such as we see it in the present days.
With Persia, its nearest neighbour, Khiva and Bokhara interchange ambassadors but rarely. The fact that Persia avows the principles of the Shiite sect, forms in itself just such a wall of separation between these two fanatical nations as Protestantism created between the two great classes of Christians in Europe three centuries ago. To this feeling of religious animosity let us add, also, the traditional enmity between the Iranian and Turanian races that has become matter of history, and we may then easily form an idea of the gulf that separates the sympathies of nations that nature has made inhabitants of adjoining countries. Persia, which, according to the natural course of events, should form the channel to convey to Turkestan the benefits of modern civilisation, is far from producing there even the slightest effect. Powerless to defend even her own frontiers from the Turkomans, the disgraceful defeat she sustained, as before mentioned, at Merv, in an expedition directed, in fact, against Bokhara, has utterly destroyed her prestige. Her power is the object of very little apprehension in the three Khanats, for the Tartars affirm that God gave the Persians head (understanding) and eyes, but no heart (courage).
With respect to China, its political relations with Central Asia are so rare and insignificant, that they scarcely merit any mention. Once, perhaps, in a century a correspondence takes place. The Emirs are in the habit of sending occasionally envoys to Kashgar, but the Chinese, on their side, never venture so far into Turkestan as Bokhara. With Khokand negotiations take place more frequently, but it sends only functionaries of inferior rank to the Musselman barbarians.
With Russia political relations are upon a very different footing. Having been for centuries in possession of the countries that border upon the deserts of Turkestan on the north, an extensive commercial intercourse has rendered Russia more observant of what is going on in the three Khanats than their other neighbours, and has caused a series of efforts of which the only possible termination seems to be their complete occupation. The very obstacles which nature has interposed have rendered, indeed, the progress of Russia slow, but perhaps her progress is only on that account the more certain. The three Khanats are the only members now wanting to that immense Tartar kingdom that Ivan Vasilyevitch (1462-1505) imagined, and which he began actually to incorporate with his Russian dominions, and which, since the time of Peter the Great, has been the earnest though silent object of his successors.