The Shaibani dynasty ruled for nearly a century when it was replaced by the dynasty of Astrakhan, a house related to the Shaibanis by marriage. Under two rulers of this family—Iman Kuli Khan and Subhankuli Khan—Bokhara recovered somewhat of its former glory, and Subhankuli ruled over Khiva also for a time. In 1740 Bokhara had been so reduced under weak rulers that it offered its submission to Nadir Shah of Persia, and after his death the Astrakhan dynasty was overthrown by the house of Mangit (1784), which is the dynasty at present ruling in the country. Under the first sovereign of this family, Mir Maasum, Bokhara enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity, although the ruler was a cruel tyrant and a bigoted ascetic. He led a curious life of pretended piety, living in filth and misery although surrounded by wealth. He conquered and almost exterminated the city of Merv and invaded and devastated Khorassan. At his death in 1802 he was succeeded by his son Saïd, a weak ruler who lived until 1826. He was succeeded by one of the worst tyrants who ever occupied a throne—the emir Nasrullah Bahuder; he was cruel, lustful, treacherous, hypocritical, ungrateful to friends, whom he rewarded for service by putting them to death—in short, he appears to have had all the vices it is possible for a human being to have. It was during his reign that England and Russia tried to acquire influence in Bokhara. Two English envoys, Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly, were executed in 1842 after several years’ imprisonment in a loathsome dungeon. The Russian envoy did indeed come away alive from the court of the tyrant but he succeeded in gaining no concessions for his country. Nasrullah died in 1860, his last act being to have his wife killed and her head brought to his bedside. He was succeeded by his son Mozaffer-eddin, during whose reign the Russian conquest took place.[a]
THE CONQUEST OF KHIVA (1873 A.D.)
[1873 A.D.]
After Khokand and Bokhara came the turn of Khiva. In the early spring of 1873 three detachments of Russian troops marched on Khiva from different sides under the command of the governor-general of Turkestan, Adjutant-general V. P. von Kaufmann. Incredible privations and difficulties had to be borne and overcome by the Russian troops during this march across the steppes. First they endured frosts and snowstorms, and then under the sun’s burning rays they courageously accomplished in the space of one month a thousand versts march across a desert, and finally reached the borders of the khanate of Khiva in the beginning of May. In three weeks’ time the entire khanate was subjugated; some of the towns were taken after a combat, others surrendered without resistance, and on the 10th of June the capital of the khanate—Khiva—fell. The Russian troops entered the town in triumph, covered with fresh glory.
After the taking of Khiva by the Russians, the khan of Khiva fled to the steppes, but he afterwards returned and declared his submission, in consequence of which he was reinstated on his throne. But in spite of this a portion of the Khivan possessions fell to Russia. Besides this, the khan had to acknowledge a partial dependence upon Russia, he was obliged to reimburse her by a considerable sum of money for the expenses incurred in the campaign, and to allow the Russian merchants to trade freely in his dominions; he was pledged to discountenance plundering, to set at liberty all prisoners and slaves, and to abolish throughout his possessions forever all traffic in slaves. Thus, through the medium of the Czar Liberator, freedom was brought into central Asia—the land of slavery and of arbitrary rule. The complete pacification of a great country was accomplished.
THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR (1877-1878 A.D.)
[1875-1877 A.D.]
Besides the wars already enumerated, Russia had, under the reign of the Czar Liberator, to carry on another war, which entailed innumerable sacrifices.
In the summer of 1875, the Slavonians of the two Turkish dependencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, inhabited by Servian races, rose against their oppressors, the Turks, and decided to take up arms in defence of their faith, freedom, and property, and the honour of their wives and daughters, and to endeavour to obtain equal rights with the Mussulman subjects of Turkey.
In the summer of 1876 the neighbouring Slavonian principalities of Montenegro and Servia came to the aid of the Bosnians and Herzegovinians, and declared war against Turkey. The Montenegrins were under the leadership of their Prince Nicholas, and the Servian troops under the command of the Russian General Tchernaiev, the hero of Tashkend, who volunteered his services to the Slavonians.