The Life of Yakoob Beg; Athalik Ghazi, and Badaulet; Ameer of Kashgar

by Demetrius Charles Boulger

Khudayar Khan had an elder brother, Mullah Khan, who had been passed over by Mussulman Kuli, when the state was put in order after the dissensions that arose on the death of the great ruler, Mahomed Ali. Now, on the death of Mussulman Kuli, who had given vitality to the régime of Khudayar, Mullah Khan and his partisans began to intrigue once more. Several Kipchak and Kirghiz leaders joined his cause, and Yakoob Beg at once became one of his most active supporters. Khudayar Khan was deposed, and retired into temporary seclusion. For his services to the new ruler Yakoob Beg was made Shahawal, an officer corresponding to a chamberlain or court intendant. He was soon restored to his old rank of Kooshbege, and appointed governor of the frontier fort of Kurama, the same place of which his father had been Kazi. And in 1860 he came still more to the front, when he was summoned to Tashkent to assist Kanaát Shah, the Nahib of Khokand, in making preparations in case the Russians, who had for some time seemed to be threatening Khokand, should cross the frontier. Mullah Khan was murdered at this time, having held the reins of power but for the brief space of two years, and Khudayar Khan emerged from his hiding place. He was welcomed both by Kanaát Shah and Yakoob Beg; and in return for their support he consented to forget the past. Yakoob Beg, as his reward, received the governorship of Kurama. It was during these troubles that Alim Kuli, a Kirghiz chieftain, appeared upon the scene. He possessed many of the attributes that distinguished his predecessor Mussulman Kuli, and his successor, in the eyes of the people, Yakoob Beg. He had undoubtedly a great capacity for intrigue, but was inferior to the former in administrative capacity, and to the latter in military skill. He now set Shah Murad, grandson of Shere Ali Khan, up as a claimant to the throne, and was speedily joined by Yakoob Beg, who once more abandoned the cause of Khudayar Khan, who, it must be remembered, had always treated Yakoob Beg in a friendly way, and who in their early days had been his boon companion. This conspiracy was unsuccessful, and Yakoob Beg, who had yielded up Khodjent, with the defence of which he had been entrusted by Alim Kuli, on the approach of the forces of Khudayar Khan, took refuge in Bokhara. Here he was favourably received, and resided as a noble attached to the court. In 1863 the Ameer of Bokhara, Muzaffur Eddin, marched a large army into Khokand for the purpose of restoring his brother-in-law, Khudayar, to the throne, for he had again been deposed by the intrigues of Alim Kuli; Yakoob Beg accompanied this force, and once more appears, for the last time, on the troubled arena of Khokandian politics. The Bokhariot army was soon recalled, and Khudayar Khan was left to face the difficulties of his position unaided. In a few months an arrangement was come to between Alim Kuli and Yakoob Beg and other leading nobles against Khudayar. Sultan Murad, who had first been supported and then murdered by Alim Kuli, having been thus effectually removed, this king-maker had set up Sultan Seyyid in his place. Yakoob Beg so far profited by this new confederacy that he was restored to his old offices and perquisites, and sent once more to hold his former post as governor of Kurama. He collected as many allies as he was able, and brought them with him to assist in the capture of Khodjent. On this important town being secured the regent Alim Kuli passed through Kurama on his way to seize and settle the capital, Tashkent. He appointed a connection of his own, Hydar Kuli, with the title of Hudaychi, as governor of Kurama, and took Yakoob Beg in his train to Tashkent. Shortly after their arrival at Tashkent, news came of the Russian occupation of Tchimkent, and the survivors of the force driven out by Tchernaief soon appeared with a confirmation of the intelligence. This was in April, 1864, and until October of that year, when the Russians appeared before the town, Yakoob Beg was engaged in strengthening the fortifications of the capital. When the army of General Tchernaief did appear in the neighbourhood, Yakoob Beg, with a rashness that cannot be too strongly condemned, went forth to encounter it in the open. As might have been expected, the Russians were victorious, and Yakoob Beg was compelled to seek refuge with his shattered forces within the walls of Tashkent. The Russians themselves had suffered some loss, and either awed by the bold demeanour of their old antagonist, or, as is more probable, encountering some difficulty in bringing up supplies, and being unprovided with a siege train, thought the more prudent policy would be to retire to Tchimkent until reinforcements and other necessaries should arrive. Alim Kuli, in the course of a few days after this reverse, arrived at Tashkent in person with a large body of troops, and employed all his energies in strengthening the defences before the return of the Russians. It is very certain that on this occasion, the first on which Yakoob Beg had a command of any consequence, he permitted his natural impetuosity to get the better of his discretion, and that it was the height of madness on his part to enter into an engagement in the open with the disciplined and formidable forces of Tchernaief, when, by leaving that general to undertake the siege of Tashkent, he might have had it in his power to inflict a serious, and for the time conclusive, blow against the Russians when the reinforcing army of Alim Kuli came up. With half his army discouraged by defeat, Alim Kuli found himself restricted to a policy of inaction, through the over-hastiness of his lieutenant. The Russians did not return until after the departure of Yakoob Beg for Kashgar, but when they did they found that Alim Kuli had made every preparation in his power to receive them. On the first occasion they were again forced to retreat after a skirmish which the Khokandians claim as a victory; but in 1865 they appeared before the walls in greater force. Alim Kuli, with a gathering vastly superior in numbers to the Russians, attacked them a few miles to the north of Tashkent, and the fortunes of the day hung in the balance, until the fall of Alim Kuli, who, whilst boldly leading a charge of Kirghiz cavalry, was pierced in the chest by a musket ball. He was carried from the field by a faithful officer, and expired that night in Tashkent. Alim Kuli appears to have been actuated to some extent by a disinterested patriotism, as much as by more personal motives. With his fall, and the departure of Yakoob Beg for another sphere of operations, all hope of a continued state of independence for Khokand was dissipated. After this severe defeat the Russians laid close siege to Tashkent. The Khokandians in their distress applied to Bokhara for aid, and the Russians hastened to occupy Chinaz to intercept it. The Bokhariot army was routed by the Russian army under General Romanoffski at the battle of Irjar, in May, 1866, eleven months after Tashkent had been occupied by Tchernaief. It was during this period of anarchy, with a hostile Russian and an allied Bokhariot force on his soil, that Khudayar Khan once more supplanted the nominee of Alim Kuli, Sultan Seyyid, and at the close of the campaign Khudayar was left in possession of the southern portion of Khokand. This Khan appears to have been of an unambitious nature, for, during his various exiles, he devoted himself to private business with an energy he had never shown in the management of the public affairs, and when he at last sank into private life and became a pensioner of the Russian Court, on the complete annexation of his state, he is said to have acquired not only a happiness, but many virtues unknown to him in his more elevated lot. The unfortunate Sultan Seyyid, after wandering for some years out of Khokand, was, when he ventured to return in 1871, executed. Many of the partisans of Seyyid on the defeat by the Russians, and on the overthrow of his rivals by Khudayar, sought refuge in the mountains of the Kizilyart, whence they proceeded to join Yakoob Beg in Kashgar, where they arrived at a most opportune moment as will be seen.

To return to Yakoob Beg. After his defeat before Tashkent he was employed under Alim Kuli in repairing the defences of that town and collecting troops from the whole district, but his reputation had been lowered by that reverse. There was a certain jealousy between the Kirghiz chief and the Tajik soldier of fortune. Yakoob Beg saw in Alim Kuli an obstacle to his further promotion, and Alim Kuli recognized in the Kooshbege a possible rival and successor. Any excuse therefore to keep Yakoob Beg in the background, or indeed to get rid of him altogether, would be very welcome to Alim Kuli. We hear little more of the unsuccessful general until his departure for Kashgar a few months afterwards. He had to wipe out in other regions and against other foes the stain he had incurred in his encounters with the Russians.

While these events were in progress at Tashkent, an envoy arrived there from Sadic Beg, a Kirghiz prince on the frontiers of Ili and Kashgar. He brought intelligence that his master had availed himself of the dissensions among the Chinese, to seize the city of Kashgar, and he requested the Khan of Khokand to send him the heir of the Khojas, in order that he might place him on the throne. As the facts really stood, Sadic Beg had only laid siege to Kashgar, and, finding that he was met with a strenuous resistance, had recourse to the plan of setting up a Khoja king to strengthen his failing efforts, but of the true state of affairs in Kashgar it is evident that everybody in Tashkent was primarily ignorant. The Khokandian policy had always been, however, to maintain their interests intact in Eastern Turkestan, and to weaken in every possible way the credit of the Chinese. An envoy bringing news of a fresh revolt in Kashgar was, therefore, sure of a friendly reception at Tashkent, even if he did not return with some more striking tokens of amity. But on this occasion the danger from Russian movements was so close at hand, and all the efforts of the state were so concentrated in preparations for defence, that Alim Kuli, whatever he may have thought of its prospects, and however much he may have sympathized with its object, was unable to give the Kirghiz emissary any aid in his enterprise. When, however, Buzurg Khan, the only surviving son of Jehangir Khan, either of his own free will, or instigated, as some say, by Yakoob Beg, offered to assert his claims on Kashgar, Alim Kuli expressed his approval of the design, and gave his moral assistance so far as was compatible with no active participation therein. He, however, gave Buzurg Khan the services of Kooshbege Mahomed Yakoob to act as his commander-in-chief, or Baturbashi. Thus did Alim Kuli free himself from his troublesome subordinate, and despatched on an errand which seemed likely to end in disgrace and defeat, but which really led to empire, the only native whom he dreaded as being capable of supplanting him.

Yakoob Beg had up to this point given little promise of future distinction. He had, indeed, earned the reputation of being a gallant soldier, if a not very prudent one; and in the intrigues that had marked the history of his state for twenty years, he had borne his fair share. But no one would have dreamt of prognosticating that he possessed the ability necessary to win campaigns against superior forces, and then to erect a powerful state on the ruins that fell into his possession. The most favourable opinion would have been, that he would have died manfully as a soldier, and as a true Mussulman. When he embarked in the enterprise of conquering Kashgar, he was no longer in the first flush of youth, but was a man who covered his fiery spirit and great ambition with a cloak of religious zeal and diplomatic apathy. Twenty years' experience in the most intriguing court in Central Asia had placed every muscle at his complete command, and even in the most disastrous moments in his career, he is always represented as being calm and collected—calm in his belief in Kismut, and collected in a persuasion of his own resources. One fact that will account for the slowness with which he advanced into notoriety is that he was entirely dependent on his own capacity for promotion. He had no wealth, no large following, and in the two leaders, Kipchak and Kirghiz, Mussulman and Alim Kuli, he had competitors of almost equal merit with himself, while they each possessed personal power and family connections that placed them far beyond the reach of the hardy soldier and court chamberlain. Some of his detractors had availed themselves of his impecuniosity to circulate stories of his having had dealings with the Russians; but these, although invested with circumstances originating in non-Russian quarters, are probably without any truth. The chief charge, to be taken for what it is worth, is, that the weakness of his defence of the Ak Musjid district, after the fall of the fort, was owing to his having received a large bribe from the Russians. Another is, that in 1863, after his return from Bokhara, he neglected to retard the Russian movements for a pecuniary consideration. In both cases the sum mentioned is very large; and besides the apparent falseness of these rumours, we have only to consider that he was not worth a bribe, and that his opposition to the Russians was marked by all the want of foresight of religious zeal. All these considerations make such rumours appear in their true light; and although we are aware that a follower of Yakoob Beg confirmed, if he did not originate, these charges, it seems to us that the Russians, if there had been truth in the report, would long ago have placed the fact before the peoples of Asia, and required Yakoob Beg when Ameer of Kashgar to have acted in a more friendly way towards his former employers. But the simple reason that Yakoob Beg could not have rendered any service to the Russians worth the thousands of pounds he is said to have received, ought to demolish the whole fabrication. If Yakoob Beg's life proves one thing more than another, it was that he was a most fanatical Mussulman, and as such hating the Russians, as the most formidable enemy of Islam, with the most intense hate his fiery nature was capable of. This man's whole life must have been the greatest hypocrisy if he was not genuine in his religious intolerance, and that intolerance rendered any connivance with Russian measures an impossibility. Owing to his early connection with the church, and his maternal grandfather's high position therein, Yakoob Beg was always distinguished for the strict orthodoxy of his views. Through all his life he seems to have made it his chief object to keep the church on his side. When he was reduced to the most desperate straits in his after life in Kashgar, when some of the most faithful of his followers fell off from him, and when even Buzurg Khan, the man whom he had placed upon a throne, declared him a rebel and a traitor, he never lost heart so long as the ministers of the church held by him; and, on the other hand, they, recognizing the fidelity of their champion, supported him through good and ill repute. Whilst residing at Bokhara "the holy" he had attached to his person several of the most distinguished preachers of Islam throughout Asia, and he had taken all the vows that give a peculiar sanctity to the relations that connect the layman with his priest. It was here that he publicly announced his intention of going on pilgrimage to Mecca; an intention which he repeated on several occasions during his rule of Kashgar, but was obliged, by the position and precarious existence of that state, always to perform by deputy. When he had established himself as ruler, his first measure was to re-enforce the Shariàt and to endow several shrines that had been erected to the memory of the chief Khoja saints. It was by such means that he at every crisis of his life had striven to make his interests identical with those of his religion, and when he became a responsible and successful prince his past life stood him in such good stead, that he easily came to be regarded throughout Asia as the most faithful and redoubtable supporter of Islam.

At this period of his life he is described by one who knew him as being of a short but stoutish build, with a keenly intelligent and handsome countenance. He had, during the vicissitudes of his career in Khokand, been so often near assassination, or execution, that the result of the morrow had, to all external appearance, become a matter of secondary consideration to him, and his features, schooled to immobility by a long career of court intrigue, appeared to the casual observer dull and uninteresting. When, however, the conversation turned on subjects that specially interested him, such as the advance of Russia, the future of Islam, or the policy of England, he threw aside his mask, and became at once a man whose views, with some merit in themselves, were rendered almost convincing by the singular charm of his voice and manner. He was honourably distinguished at all times by the simplicity of his dress, and his freedom from the pretension and love of show characteristic of most Asiatics; and at the very highest point of his power he was only a soldier, occupying a palace. As was well said of Timour, the Athalik Ghazi placed the "foot of courage in the stirrup of patience," and he evidently set himself to copy the great lessons of military success that might be learnt from the careers of Genghis Khan, Timour, and Baber. Such is some account of the commander-in-chief to the expedition of Buzurg Khan. The Khoja, himself, was a man about the same age as his lieutenant, but in every other respect as different as he well could be. Personally a coward, fond of show and every kind of luxury, and of the treacherous, fickle nature that marked his race, he had done nothing during his past life to compensate for the want of the most ordinary virtues. Although he participated in the expedition of Wali Khan, he showed no possession of merit, and in the subsequent occupation that the Khojas maintained in Kashgar during a few weeks, he, perhaps more than any other of his kinsmen, disgusted the people by his open and unbridled licentiousness. Such were the two men who, in the latter days of 1864, set out from Tashkent for the recovery of a kingdom. Of their chances of success few would have ventured then to predict a settlement in their favour; none, certainly, such as was obtained by Yakoob Beg. It is now time for us to relate how they fared in Eastern Turkestan.

CHAPTER VII. THE INVASION OF KASHGAR BY BUZURG KHAN AND YAKOOB BEG.

The Chinese were on several occasions, as we have seen, threatened in Eastern Turkestan by the pretensions of the Khojas, and the secret or open machinations of Khokand. But they had at all times triumphed over every combination of circumstances, so long as they themselves were united. The temporary success of Jehangir Khan was obliterated by the excesses which characterized his occupation of the country, and by the energy and large display of force, with which the Chinese pacified the state on his flight; and the last, under Wali Khan, can scarcely be dignified by any other appellation than that of a marauding incursion. But a great and important change had occurred in the few years that had elapsed since 1859. The Chinese no longer presented a collected force to the onslaught of an assailant. In every quarter of their empire, victorious rebels had established themselves, and had detracted in an immeasurable degree from the effective strength of the Government. A Mahomedan ruler swayed over the Panthays, in Yunnan, from his capital at Ta-li-foo; the Taepings round Nankin were at the summit of their career, just before the appearance of Colonel Gordon, when, in 1862, a fresh danger broke out in the provinces of Kansuh and Shensi. From a remote period there had been extensive Mussulman settlements in these provinces, and so early as the seventeenth century they had been the cause of trouble to the great Kanghi. The Emperor Keen-Lung, indeed, at one time attempted to settle the question for ever by ordering the massacre of every Mahomedan over fifteen years of age. Even this sweeping measure did not have the desired effect, and whether persecution was the means or not of giving vitality to the cause, it is certain that they had become more numerous, more resolute, and more confident in their own superiority to the other Chinese by the middle of the present century. These Mahomedans were known as Tungani, Dungani, or Dungans, while the Buddhist Chinese are spoken of as Khitay. Many writers are not satisfied with this simple explanation of the name Tungani, and will have it that they were a distinct race, who were either transported to China at some period of Chinese conquest, or were compelled to seek refuge there by some advancing barbarian horde. They even assert that they can trace the name and origin of this people to a tribe dwelling in the country of the lower waters of the Amoor; but while there is complete uncertainty on the subject it seems simpler to accept the signification that the word Tungani conveys to the Chinese, and that is Mahomedan. We know, for certain, that these people had resided in Kansuh and its neighbouring province for centuries—that they were remarkable for a superiority in strength and activity over the Khitay, and that they possessed the virtues of sobriety and honesty. They were also not infected by the disease of opium smoking, and we should imagine them to have been a quiet, contented, and agreeable people at their most prosperous period. Their physical superiority to the Khitay would probably be owing to their abstention from "bang" and opium, and we need not suppose that they were the descendants of a stronger race, who had issued from the frigid north, when we have an explanation so much simpler and more natural at hand. They were found by their Khitay rulers to form excellent soldiers, policemen, and other Government servants, such as carriers, &c. In this last employment many found their way to Hamil, thence to Turfan and Urumtsi, and their numbers were increased by discharged soldiers, who remained as military settlers sooner than return to Kansuh. In the course of a few generations their numbers became much greater, until, at last, in the cities we have named, they formed the majority of the inhabitants. In Kuldja, too, they were very numerous, but south of the Tian Shan they do not seem to have advanced westward of Kucha in any great force. At Aksu the Andijan influence, supreme in Western Kashgar, presented an impassable barrier to the Tungani, who, it must be remembered, had no sympathy with Khokand. The Tungani were, therefore, Mahomedan subjects of China, originating in Kansuh, but who had also, in the course of time, spread westward into Chinese Turkestan and Jungaria. They were employed in the service of the country without restriction, nor can we find that they were subjected to any unfair usage, after the measures taken against them in the earlier days of Keen-Lung. They may not have been as highly favoured as the Sobo tribes, and they may have been subjected to some ridicule in Kansuh; but in Jungaria they were on an equality with all the other Chinese, and immeasurably better placed in the political scale than the Andijanis or Tarantchis. The Chinese had just grounds for believing that no danger to their rule in Eastern Turkestan or Jungaria would ever be caused by the Tungani, and it is not easy to explain how their reasonable anticipations were falsified. The Tungani were fervent, if not the most orthodox in form of, Mahomedans, and it would appear that they were not free from a belief in their own superiority to the Khitay. This feeling was fostered by the "mollahs," or priests, who became very active within the Chinese dominions, when these had been extended by conquest into the heart of Asia. As if in retaliation for a Khitay conquest the Mahomedan religion was undermining the outworks of its rival's power slowly, but surely. The impulse given to trade by the security and patronage that accompanied Chinese rule was, at least from a purely Chinese point of view, neutralized as an advantage by the admission into the empire of energetic and eloquent preachers of the superior merits of Mahomedanism. It required many generations before the effect of their efforts became perceptible, and it was not until the power of China fell into an extraordinary decline—a decline which many thought, with some show of reason, was to herald the fall, but which later events have seemed to make but the prelude to a more vigorous life than ever—that these Mahomedan missionaries among the Tungani knew that the time to reap what they had sown with patience and persistency was at hand. It is impossible not to connect this event in some degree with that unaccountable revival of fanaticism among Mahomedans, which has produced so many important events during the last thirty years, and of which we are now witnessing some of the most striking results.

In 1862, a riot occurred in a small village of Kansuh; it was suppressed with some loss of life, and people were beginning to suppose that it possessed no significance, when a disturbance broke out on a large scale at Houchow, or Salara. The Tungani had risen, and the unfortunate unarmed Khitay were massacred right and left. The rising soon assumed the proportions of a civil war, and the infection spread to the neighbouring province of Shensi. Then ensued scenes of the most atrocious barbarity. The Khitay, who all their lives had lived at peace and as neighbours with the Tungani, were butchered without mercy. The Mahomedan priests seized all the governing power into their own hands, and set their followers the example of unscrupulous ferocity. The movement, even if we make allowance for the difficulties besetting the government in other regions, must be considered to have been attended by unexpected success. It can only be accounted for by the supposition that the Khitay were taken completely by surprise, and realized neither the extent nor the nature of the danger to which they were exposed. Before the end of 1862, a Tungan government was established in Kansuh, and its jurisdiction was for a time acknowledged in Shensi. The priests formed an administration amongst themselves, and set themselves to the task of consolidating what they had won, and of preparing for the time when the Chinese should come for vengeance. The events happening in Kansuh were naturally of interest to the Tungani in the country lying beyond it, and it was not long before the example set them was followed in Hamil, Turfan, Urumtsi, Manas, and other cities of that district. The same success attended the movement here as in Kansuh. The Chinese power was subverted, the Khitay massacred with greater circumstances of cruelty, if possible, and a new Tungan state was formed in those cities. Each district retained a nominal independence, under the headship of a priest, or body of priests, or of one of the native Tungan princes, and then the movement spread with irresistible strides to Karashar, Kucha, and Aksu. There it stopped, and south of the Tian Shan the Tungan revolt proper never extended west of Aksu.

In Altyshahr and Kuldja for some months longer the Chinese maintained the external show of power, but all their communications with China were cut off, and neither in numbers nor resources had they sufficient means to cope with the Tungani unaided. They would have accomplished as much as could have been expected from them if they succeeded in keeping possession of that which they still occupied. The Tungan element in Kucha and Aksu was not predominant. It had to share power with the Khojas, and, as we shall see later on, the Khojas of these two cities seized the governing power for themselves. It was the appearance of the Tungan sedition in these cities, which occupy a middle relation to the purely Chinese cities of Hamil and Urumtsi, and the almost totally Khokandian cities of Yarkand and Kashgar, that roused the Kashgari to a full appreciation of the importance to themselves of this movement, and the Chinese garrisons and settlers to an equally just realization of their own danger. The Kashgari, not free from the fanaticism of all their co-religionists, and naturally elated at the successes of the Tungani, forgot, with their well proved fickleness, all the benefits they had received from the Chinese, and waited eagerly for a favourable opportunity to come for them to imitate the example set them by their eastern neighbours. Nor had they long to wait, although it was not from them that came the first spark that lighted the firebrand of civil war and anarchy throughout the length and breadth of Altyshahr.