Methuen & Co. London. G. Philip & Son, 32 Fleet St. London

So effectually was Muzaffar ed-Dīn’s proud spirit crushed by adverse fortunes that he humbly received his province as a boon from his Russian suzerain. He saw the once hated and despised infidels in possession of Samarkand, the richest inheritance of his fathers, and masters of the Zarafshān, the source of Bokhāran prosperity. He knew that it was in their power to divert its life-giving waters and render his capital a prey to the ever-advancing desert sands. Thus the remainder of his days was spent in vain repentance, in indulging “sorrow’s crown of sorrow”; and the Tsar had no more obedient vassal than the man who had aspired to sit on the throne of Tīmūr. His later policy has been adopted by his son, the present Amīr `Abd ul-Ahad. With the conquest of Bokhārā and the annexation of Samarkand the fourth great stride in the Russian advance was completed. She was mistress of Central Asia, from the confines of China to the Amū Daryā, that historic river which rises in the Pamirs to empty its waters into the Sea of Aral.

These immense accessions to an empire which already rivalled that of ancient Rome served but to open up a vista of future possibilities.

“Since the reign of Peter the Great,” wrote a contemporary Russian author,[556] “we have advanced with diligence and at the price of immense sacrifices across the steppes which barred our passage. They are now left behind. Our dominion has reached the basin of two great rivers whose waters lave thickly peopled and fertile regions. We have a right to seek compensation for sacrifices and labours endured for more than a century. We have a right to attain a secure frontier by pushing our colonies up to the summit of the Himalayan range, the natural barrier between the Russian and English possessions. When this point has been reached, then only can we look calmly on the development of Great Britain’s empire.” The reduction of Khiva was a corollary of that of Bokhārā. The Khānate stretched northwards as a wedge into the newly acquired territory and dominated the lower reaches of the Amū Daryā. Its ruler and its entire population were bitterly hostile to Russian designs. A Khivan contingent had fought side by side with the hosts of Samarkand during the recent campaigns, the result of which did not intimidate them.

In the year which followed the conquest of Samarkand, Khivan bands penetrated the steppes of the Orenburg government and urged the Russian Kirghiz to revolt. Caravan trade between Western Siberia was paralysed; and in 1870 the Khān had the presumption to forbid the export of grain.[557] General Kauffman, now in supreme command in Turkestān, was compelled by his imperial master’s explicit instructions to show a degree of forbearance which ill-suited his temper. He was content to demand the release of the Russians whom the Khān still held in slavery, and an explanation of the offensive tone adopted by his ministers in their despatches. As is invariably the case in dealing with Asiatics, the Russians found that moderation was mistaken for weakness. The Khān claimed the river Emba, on the north-eastern shore of the Caspian, as the boundary of his dominions, and endeavoured to collect taxes from the tribes of the Ust Urt Desert, which had long been regarded as within the Russian sphere of influence. The Kirghiz steppes became unsafe for caravans, and postal communication between Tashkent and Orenburg was subject to continual interruptions. It was well known that the mullās had incited the Khān to proclaim a religious war, and that his forces were swollen by refugees from Bokhārā. The limits of forbearance had been reached, and the most timid adviser of the Tsar admitted that Khiva must be reduced to impotence. The story of the fall of the rebellious Khānate has been told often, and so graphically that it is needless to relate it in any detail.[558] The Russians had by this time amassed great experience in the physical conditions to be encountered, and had profited by the lessons taught by former disasters. Depôts for provisions were formed at each halting-place, and columns started severally from the eastern corner of the Caspian, Orenburg, Perovski on the Sir Daryā, and Tashkent. So carefully had the minutest detail been worked out by the Russian staff that the several divisions, after marching for nearly 900 miles through waterless deserts, reached Khiva almost simultaneously. The Khān was unable to cope with a disciplined army 14,000 strong. His capital was taken by storm, and on the 24th of March 1873 he signed a treaty of peace, acknowledging himself to be the humble vassal of Russia, and agreeing to pay an indemnity of 2,500,000 roubles, and to surrender all Russian and Persian slaves. This pact has been loyally observed on both sides. The Khān still retains a nominal sovereignty with even less independence than had been accorded to Bokhārā, and Khiva is de facto as much a part and parcel of Russia as the government of Moscow.

Kokand, the third Khānate of Central Asia, was doomed to lose all semblance of freedom. Its ruler had accepted the inevitable on the defeat of his powerful neighbours, had abolished slavery, and had striven to maintain friendly relations with Russia. But his territories were so placed that the annexation was essential to the safety of the eastern borders. They intervened between Turkestān and China, and were inhabited by a fanatical population with a strong leaven of untamed Kirghiz and Kipchāk nomads. Had Kokand possessed a firm and politic ruler, its absorption might have been indefinitely postponed. The reverse was the case; for the Khān, Khudā Yār, was detested by his subjects, and rebellions frequently recurred which kept the whole of Central Asia in a ferment.[559] A climax was reached in 1875, when, after three years of almost incessant civil war, the Russians found themselves compelled to intervene. Kokand was invaded by a strong expeditionary force under General Kauffman, among whose lieutenants was Skobeleff, destined to win imperishable glory in subsequent campaigns. Short work was made of the Kokandis, who had dethroned their Khān and marched under his son’s banner. They were routed with prodigious slaughter at Makhram, and the holy city of Marghilān was occupied without resistance. Defeats were afterwards administered to the native levies at Andijān and Nāmangān, and on 20th February the capital was seized by a force under Skobeleff. On the 20th March 1876 the Tsar, Alexander II., formally authorised the annexation of Kokand as a province of Turkestān under its ancient name, Farghāna. Skobeleff, the ardent soldier who had so greatly contributed to the reduction of the Khānate, became its first governor. Farghāna has a temperate climate, and has bred a hardy and warlike population. Owing to its remoteness from the centres served by the Transcaspian Railway, the Russian officials were not till lately subjected to the vigorous surveillance which is exercised over their colleagues in other provinces, and the reins of administration were slackly held. In the spring of 1898 the discontent inspired by alien rule, which had been sedulously fanned by the priesthood, burst into a flame. The ringleader of the movement was a Mohammedan monk named Ishān Mohammad `Alī Khalīfa, who claimed the hereditary dignity of Imām, or descendant of the Prophet. He announced that on himself had devolved the task of fulfilling a prophecy widely received, that during the last decade of our century an Imām would proclaim a Holy War against the infidel. As had been the case on the eve of the Indian Mutiny, a general rising had been planned, and a simultaneous massacre of the Russian troops throughout the province. History repeated itself in the result of their deeply laid conspiracy. India was saved by the premature outbreak at Mirat; and Farghāna by the impatience of the Ishān, who on 29th May attacked a Russian camp near Andijān before his sympathisers were ready for concerted action. The rising was quelled with much bloodshed on either side; 18 of the leaders were executed, and 350 were deported to North-Eastern Siberia. The recent opening of railway lines connecting the cities of Farghāna with Tashkent and Samarkand will render a recrudescence of the spirit of revolt well-nigh impossible.

CHAPTER IV
Turkomania and the Turkomans

The reduction of Khiva marks a new era in the history of the Russian advance. The last semblance of organised opposition to the movement had disappeared, and the Tsar saw himself the unquestioned suzerain of the great Khānates. Westwards, his base was planted securely on the Caspian, where the port of Krasnovodsk, founded in 1869 by General Stolietoff,[560] was connected with the Russian colonies in the Mangishlāk peninsula by a chain of strong places. The Amū Daryā, that ancient boundary of nations, marked the limits of the new empire in the west. But the vast tract between sea and river was still unsubdued, and Russia’s boundary marched with that of no organised state. Here lay the habitat of the Turkomans, a race with whom no peace or truce was possible, and the story of their subjection forms the final chapter in the history of the heart of Asia. The haunt of these untamed tribes may be described as a triangle, with Khiva as its apex; its sides the Caspian and the Amū Daryā; and its base formed by a line drawn from the city of Balkh in Afghanistān to the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea. The area thus enclosed is not far short of 240,000 square miles, more than twice as great as that of the United Kingdom. The north portion is a trackless waste; but it is by no means a desert of the Sahara type, made familiar to us by so many records of African travel. Variety is its most salient characteristic. In some parts so firm is the surface that a horse’s hoof rings on it as on a macadamised road. In others, again, the loose sand forms ridges like petrified waves.[561] After the spring rains the expanse of dull white is carpeted, as if by miracle, with gorgeous lilies, tulips, and other bulbous plants, long grass and tufts of reed. Water is, indeed, required to clothe the arid sand with perennial verdure, and render it a breeding-ground for countless flocks and herds. It is found at depths rarely exceeding thirty feet below the surface, and wells are of frequent recurrence.[562] The only rivers of importance are the Murghāb and the Tajand, which rise in the mountains of Afghanistān and lose themselves in the sand; but streams innumerable descend their flanks. In times beyond the range of history the western portion of the Turkoman Desert was watered by the Amū Daryā, which discharged itself into the Caspian at the head of the Bay of Michaelovsk. Owing to some convulsion of nature, or to interference with its course by an attempt to employ it for irrigation, the bed of the mighty stream shifted and now discharges into the Sea of Aral. Vegetation is scanty, except during the brief spring-time. The soil is covered, in some parts, with the camel’s thorn, a forbidding plant which can be masticated only by the “ship of the desert.” The perennial flora are completed by the stunted tamarisk, a root like the stem of a rose called takh, and a shrub termed saxaul (haloxylon ammodendron). The latter is full of knots, and has a grain most difficult to cut or split, but it is precious as fuel, and still more valuable as a means of binding the billowy sands. These steppes contain few traces of animal life. Herds of beautiful wild asses are sometimes seen in the distance, and a species of antelope is oftener met with.[563] Wells are beset with a variety of birds, which fly down to their depths in search of water. But the stillness of the waste is intense, and the boundless horizon is seen through the clear pure air shimmering with the heat or broken only by a mirage. The climate of the Turkoman Desert is one of extremes. In December and January the cold is intense. Moser, who traversed the Kārakūm in the depth of winter, encountered a temperature of 15 degrees below freezing-point, with squalls, snow, and glacial cold.[564] In the summer months the heat is equally trying, and it is sometimes accompanied by sand-storms which render respiration almost impossible. But the Turkomans are not confined to regions so inhospitable. They have long been established in the south-east of the Caspian, a tract watered by the rivers Gargan and Atrak, which is swampy towards the embouchure, but farther inland is broken by valleys as rich and full of charm as any on the flanks of the Pyrenees.[565] The streams descending from the Kopet Dāgh, a mountain range which separates Persia from the Turkoman Desert, has produced a fertile belt of fifteen to twenty-five miles wide, extending from Kizil Arvat to Giaour, a distance of 187 miles. This is the Akkal oasis. Where the Murghāb enters the desert it forms the great Merv oasis, a land which, even in its decadence, is one of the most fertile in the world. This ancient seat of empire, which fell into Turkoman hands after its invasion in 1784 by the forces of the Amīr Murād of Bokhārā, has other advantages precious to a predatory race. It is within striking distance of Northern Persia, and is separated from Herāt by a low range of rolling hills which offer no obstacle to an invading horde.[566] Such is the land which, from time immemorial, has been the haunt of one of the most interesting races in the world. Like the Red Indians, with whom they have many characteristics in common, they have succumbed to the ruthless force of Western civilisation; and a study of their traditions and usages possesses the greater interest because both will soon disappear under the process of Russification to which Central Asia is being subjected. In the opinion of a well-known living authority,[567] the Turkomans belong to a branch of the Turkish race inhabiting the Altaī Mountains and the upper regions of the Yenesei and Irtish in Mid-Siberia. Long before the Christian era the pressure of population led them to migrate southwards and eastwards, and, following in all probability the old course of the Oxus, their hordes spread over the great steppes extending from the Caspian to the Hindu Kush. The appellation by which the race has for centuries been known is considered by Vambéry to be derived from “Turk,” a proper name which the nomads always employ when speaking of themselves, and “men,” a suffix equivalent to the English “ship” or “dom.” That the Turkomans were identical with the Parthians, who were so long a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire, admits of little doubt, and the supposition derived from identity of racial character finds corroboration in the fact that the Dahæ,[568] a famous Parthian tribe, dwelt in ancient days in the region between the Balkans and the river Atrak, which is still called Dehistān. But the strangers from the icy north were not long contented to roam over steppes which were well-nigh as hospitable as those of Siberia. They smelt booty in the richly watered slopes of the Kopet Dāgh and the populous cities of Northern Persia. The era of the Sāmānides (A.D. 218–639) was one of constant struggles between these unwelcome immigrants and the settled Iranians of Northern Persia, and history repeated itself in the ruin and desolation which befell the latter. Towards the end of the Middle Ages the northern portion of the old empire of Darius was given up to Turkoman tribes bent on war and pillage. At this date we find them divided into many tribes. The most famous were the Salors, who possessed some at least of the traits of the noble savage of fiction. They dwelt at the edge of the hills on the oasis formed by the Murghāb and Tajand. In the twelfth century the Sultan Sanjar, the greatest of the Seljūkides, was defeated by the Kara and Alieli Turkomans at Andakhūy and Maymena, where both are still to be found. The Balkan Mountains in the sixteenth century looked down on Ersari encampments, and at an earlier date the peninsula of Mangishlāk was roamed over by various tribes. For centuries unnumbered the Turkomans were free from foreign influence, and maintained the primitive ferocity and power for aggression unleavened by intercourse with civilisation. They found their master in rare exceptions to the long succession of debauchees who filled the throne of Persia. In the seventeenth century Shāh `Abbās the Great (1585–1626) drove them from the rich valleys of the Kopet Dāgh and planted colonies of 15,000 Kurds along the crest, in the not altogether vain hope that these scourges of Asia Minor would hold their neighbours in check. Nādir Shāh, infamous for the bloodshed attending his capture of Delhi, was himself a Turkoman, and proved more than a match for his kinsmen. In 1796 Āghā Mohammad, the first sovereign of the reigning dynasty, who was also of Turkoman origin, took effectual measures to protect his frontier, and, had his brief career not been brought to a close by the assassin’s dagger, he would doubtless have tamed these fierce children of the desert. His successor, Fath `Alī Shāh, attempted the process, and in 1813 the Turkoman tribes appealed to the Tsar of Russia for assistance against him. Alexander I., however, was then engaged in rolling back the tide of Napoleon’s invasion, and was powerless to help them, thus exciting an intense irritation. We obtain a glimpse of the position occupied by the Turkoman tribes in 1831 in the pages of Burnes.[569] At that date the Tekkes were second to no tribe in numbers, though they had not reached the commanding position which they attained at the eve of the Russian conquest. This section of the Turkoman race is found at the dawn of their history occupying the Isthmus of Mangishlāk, on the north-eastern coast of the Caspian. Driven thence in 1718 by the Kalmaks, they dislodged the Yamuds from Kizil Arvat, and the Kurds and Alielis from the strip of fertile land at the basis of the Kopet Dāgh, known as the Akkal oasis. Their name, which in our tongue signifies “Mountain Goat,” is said to be derived from the agility with which they urged their horses over the ravines on the mountain side. The Tekkes proclaimed their allegiance to the Khān of Khiva, and each village paid a tribute of a camel, but they were forced to recognise the supremacy of Nādir Shāh. Until the commencement of the present century they were confined to the limits of the oasis; but population began to press too heavily on the means of subsistence, which, in Central Asia, is synonymous with water. The cultivation spread to such an extent that the arīks, or small irrigation canals, proved unequal to its necessities. Hence, about 1830, 10,000 families migrated eastwards and established themselves on the banks of the Tajand. Here they built a fort, called after their chief, Oraz Khān Kal`a. The total number of Tekke tents or kibitkas[570] is put by Burnes at 40,000.