Early history of Bokhara.
I procured five manuscripts on the history of Bokhara during my residence in that country. It would be foreign to my design to give the voluminous contents of these works; nor do I feel impressed with a belief that the interest of their contents would reward the notice of a general reader: I have handed them over to that flourishing society the Oriental Translation Fund, from whom I have an assurance that it will use every means to make them known to Oriental scholars. Bokhara, in early ages, is described under the name of Bykune, a city still to be traced in its vicinity, and connected by fable or truth with the well-known name of Afrasiab. The country is there stated to have been a marsh overgrown with reeds, and fed by the ice and snow which melted in the hills of Samarcand. It is said to have been a hunting thicket, and so marshy in many places, that a camel could not pass it. Such is the language of the native historians. An intercourse was then kept up with the Emperor of China, who gave his daughter to the ruler of Bokhara: but with this fair partner followed the inroads of the Toorks, which appear to have always desolated this country. We are next brought to the age of Islam and the inroads of the Arabs, who contended with a Queen, or Khatoon, famed as an idolater, but equally for her love of justice; which is yet commemorated by popular songs. Her son embraced the religion of the Faithful, but relented, and was put to death when the Arabs finally established themselves in Toorkistan. This person built a grand mosque in the ninety-fourth year of the Hejira (A.D. 716), causing the prayers to be read in Persian, “because it was the language of the country.”[37] From that time the fame and size of the city increased; and we hear of the commerce and vast population, the deeds of the renowned Haroon ool Rusheed, and of Arslan Khan, both of whom beautified and enriched it. We are also gravely told, on the authority of the Archangel Gabriel, of the joyful procession with which its inhabitants would be blessed on the day of judgment.
From the age of Jengis to the invasion of the Uzbeks.
Such is the early history of Bokhara, till the destroying Jengis desolated it with his horde of Tartars in the 622d year of the Hejira (A.D. 1232). It then appears, by the accounts of its bazars, buildings, and aqueducts, to have been really a wealthy and fine capital; but, in common with many great cities, it was overwhelmed by the destructive hostilities of the Tartar, who swept, with unrelenting fury from the Caspian to the Indus. In its turn, the kingdom of Bokhara, ruled by its Ameer, the great Timur, a descendant of the ferocious Jengis, wreaked its vengeance on neighbouring and distant nations, and shook the bonds of sovereignty throughout Asia. The deeds of this hero belong to the history of which I now treat; but the conquests of Timour, and his enlightened institutes, his martial and political career, require only a passing notice in this literary age. His successors, after some generations, were driven from this their paternal kingdom, and founded the dominion of the Great Moguls in India, under the valiant Baber, whose present pageant successors yet live, I cannot call it reign, in Delhi. This last revolution sprang from the invasion of the Uzbek Tartars; another tribe from the seats of Jengis, and also related to that conqueror, who crossed the Jaxartes in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and retain in these times all the countries of Mawur ool nuhr, or Transoxiana, extending to the base of Hindoo Koosh. The Uzbeks achieved this great conquest under Sheibanee Khan and his son. Baber was assisted by the King of Persia; and Sheibanee Khan was defeated and slain at the battle of Merve.
Nadir Shah’s inroad to the end of Shah Moorud’s reign.
The supremacy which the Uzbek race had thus acquired was maintained in the different kingdoms of Transoxiana, till the invasion of Nadir Shah, in the early part of the last century. Aboolfuez Khan then ruled in Bokhara, as Ameer, or Governor, and was acknowledged to be the hereditary representative of the Uzbeks, who had expelled the house of Timour, as well as a male descendant of the great Jengis. His Attalik, or Vizier, Ruheem Khan, an Uzbek of the Mungut tribe, intrigued with the Persian conqueror, and brought him to the gates of the city. Nadir spared Bokhara; but the minister put the Ameer to death, and raised up a son in his stead, to whom he had given his own daughter in marriage. Him he also murdered. On the death of Ruheem Khan, this cruel and treacherous minister was succeeded by Danial Beg, an Uzbek of the same tribe (Mungut), who was distantly related, by marriage, to Aboolfuez Khan. He pretended to no higher powers than the last minister, and governed the country in the name of Aboolghazee Khan, a descendant of the late Ameer and of Jengis. On the death of Danial Beg, his son Moorad succeeded him as Vizier; and, setting aside the pageant king, in whose name his father had ruled, proclaimed himself the Ameer of Bokhara. Shah Moorad reigned seventeen years, and died about the year 1800. He was greater as a theologian than a ruler; but the name of Begee Jan, by which he was familiarly known, is much revered by the Uzbeks, and many singular stories are related regarding him. He carried on wars with the King of Cabool, and all the neighbouring and less powerful states. He destroyed the city of Merve, in the desert, and marched the greater part of its population to Bokhara; but his deeds contributed little to his fame or the aggrandisement of a kingdom, which he had usurped. From the time of Shah Moorad, the male descendants of Jengis Khan have ceased to reign in Bokhara. There are yet some members of that family in the country who live in poverty and contempt; and the last King of Bokhara was, I understand, related to them by the mother’s side.
Reign of Hyder and the present King Nussier oollah.
Shah Moorad was succeeded by his son Hyder, commonly called Saeed, or Pure. He converted his office more into that of a priest than a king, and his rigid adherence to the Koran, while it has rendered him illustrious throughout the Mahommedan world, has greatly increased bigotry and fanaticism in the country which he governed. He viewed his title as Commander of the Faithful in its literal sense, and passed the greater portion of his time in endeavouring to correct and improve the morals of his age. Had his vigils been extended to external politics, he might have, perhaps, benefited his country; but, after a long and useless reign of twenty-seven years, he bequeathed (A. D. 1825) to his children a disputed succession, and a kingdom that had been insulted and encroached upon from every side. His death was the signal of revolt and civil war among his offspring. Ameer Hoosein, his son, was proclaimed King, and perished, after a reign of fifty days, not without suspicion of poison, which was administered by the Koosh Begee, or minister, who favoured the pretensions of another brother. He was succeeded by Omar Khan, who seized the reins of government and the capital. His elder brother, Nussier oollah, or, as he is generally styled, Buhadoor Khan, had, however, secured the secret influence of the Koosh Begee, (though avowedly a partisan of Omar,) and prepared to resist his power with all determination. He seized, as a preliminary step, on the city of Samarcand, and, marching down upon Bokhara, possessed himself of the canals and aqueducts which supply it with water: these he closed, and the city fell into his hands, after a siege of fifty days; delivered to him, however, by the Koosh Begee, whom he appointed minister. Omar was placed in confinement; but he fled from his keepers, and, after wandering to Meshid and Balkh, died of cholera in Kokan; from which his remains were brought for interment to Bokhara. Nussier oollah entered on the sovereignty without further resistance. He put thirty of his brother’s partisans to death, and ordered one of the principal Bees, or chiefs, to be thrown from the palace-gate, the usual mode of execution in these countries. His treatment of three younger brothers was far less justifiable: he sent them to an estate on the banks of the Oxus, and cruelly ordered them to be murdered, lest they should cabal against him; and Nussier oollah himself, the only survivor of six children, now reigns in Bokhara. How little the practical good worked by the bigoted parent on his unhappy children! But Nussier oollah has, in some degree (if such be possible), redeemed himself from the foul and vicious acts by which he secured his throne: he now rules his subjects with a just and impartial hand, and has ceased to resort to cruelty or crime in upholding his government, since he has had no rival in the scene. He has a young and increasing family.