The Khanate of Kokand was established in 1709 when the Shaybanid emir Shahrukh, of the Ming Tribe of Uzbeks, declared independence from the Khanate of Bukhara, establishing a state in the eastern part of the Fergana Valley. He built a citadel as his capital in the small town of Kokand, thus starting the Khanate of Kokand. His son, Abdul Kahrim Bey, and grandson, Narbuta Bey, enlarged the citadel, but both were forced to submit as a protectorate, and pay tribute to, the Qing dynasty between 1774 and 1798.[3][page needed][4][page needed]
Narbuta Bey’s son Alim was both ruthless and efficient. He hired a mercenary army of Ghalcha highlanders, and conquered the western half of the Fergana Valley, including Khujand and Tashkent. He was assassinated by his brother Umar in 1811. Umar's son, Mohammed Ali (Madali Khan), ascended to the throne in 1822 at the age of 12. During his reign, the Khanate of Kokand reached its greatest territorial extent. The Kokand Khanate also housed the Khojas of Kashgar like Jahangir Khoja. In 1841, the British officer Captain Arthur Conolly failed to persuade the various khanates to put aside their differences, in an attempt to counter the growing penetration of the Russian Empire into the area. In November 1841, Captain Conolly left Kokand for Bukhara in an ill-fated attempt to rescue fellow officer Colonel Charles Stoddart, and both were executed on 24 June 1842 by the order of Emir Nasrullah Khan of Bukhara.[5][3][page needed]
Following this, Madali Khan, who had received Conolly in Kokand, and who had also sought an alliance with Russia, lost the trust of Nasrullah. The Emir, encouraged by the conspiratorial efforts of several influential figures in Kokand (including the commander in chief of its army), invaded the Khanate in 1842. Shortly thereafter he executed Madali Khan, his brother, and Omar Khan's widow, the famed poet Nodira. Madali Khan's cousin, Shir Ali, was installed as the Khan of Kokand in June 1842.[6] Over the next two decades, the khanate was weakened by a bitter civil war, which was further exacerbated by Bukharan and Russian incursions. During this period, the Kyrgyz tribes also broke away, forming the Kara-Kyrgyz Khanate under the leadership of Ormon Khan. Shir Ali's son, Khudayar Khan, ruled from 1844 to 1858, from 1862 to 1863, and from 1865 to 1875. In the meantime, Russia was continuing its advance; on 29 June 1865 Tashkent was taken by the Russian troops of General Chernyayev; the loss of Khujand followed in 1867.[7][page needed]
Shortly before the fall of Tashkent, Kokand’s best-known son, Yakub Beg, former lord of Tashkent, was sent by the then Khan of Kokand, Alimqul, to Kashgar, where the Hui Muslims were in revolt against the Chinese. When Alimqul was killed in 1865 during the battle with Russia for Tashkent, many Kokandian soldiers fled to join Yaqub Beg, helping him establish his dominion (known as Yettishar) throughout the Tarim Basin, which lasted until 1877, when Qing reconquered the region.[3][page needed]
The now powerless Khudayar Khan spent his energies improving his lavish palace. Western visitors were impressed by the city of 80,000 people, which contained some 600 mosques and 15 madrasahs. Insurrections against Russian rule and Khudayar’s oppressive taxes forced him into exile in 1875. He was succeeded by his son, Nasruddin Khan, whose anti-Russian stance provoked the annexation of Kokand[8] by generals Konstantin von Kaufman and Mikhail Skobelev. In January 1876, Tsar Alexander II stated that he had been forced to "... yield to the wishes of the Kokandi people to become Russian subjects."[citation needed] The Khanate of Kokand was declared abolished, and incorporated into the Fergana Oblast of Russian Turkestan.[9]
Population
In the 1830s, more than 5 million people lived in the Khanate of Kokand. Roughly 3 million of them were sedentary residents with Turkic and Iranian roots, while the remaining population of 2.0–2.5 million were nomadic tribes, spread across 400,000 households, consisting of various Turko-Mongolian groups such as Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Karakalpaks, Kalmyks, and Farghani Kipchaks.[10]
Rulers of Kokand
Muslim couple from Kokand (霍罕回人). Huang Qing Zhigong Tu, 1769Seyid Muhammad Khudayar Khan, the 1860s
^Roy, p. 3. "...the court language was Persian at Bukhara and Kokand, which at the time was seen as the main cultured language. The idea of associating a territory with an ethnic group defined by language was alien to the political ideas of the Muslims of Central Asia. These populations were, and still are widely intermingled, so that infra-ethnic identitics (tribal, clan, locality, family, etc) were more important in determining loyalties than strictly ethnic origin."
^Roy, p. 4, "Persian was the language of civilisation par excellence from Delhi to Samarkand, passing via Lahore and Kabul, and this remained the case until the early twentieth century. The emirates of Kokand and Bukhara had Persian as their official language right up to their dissolution (in 1876 and 1920 respectively)"
^Levi, The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709 - 1876, p. XIX.
Sources
Beisembiev, T. K. Kokandskaia istoriografiia : Issledovanie po istochnikovedeniiu Srednei Azii XVIII-XIX vekov. Almaty, TOO "PrintS", 2009.ISBN978-9965-482-84-7.
Beisembiev, T. K. "Annotated indices to the Kokand Chronicles". Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Studia Culturae Islamica. № 91, 2008.ISBN978-4-86337-001-2.
Beisembiev, T. K. "The Life of Alimqul: A Native Chronicle of Nineteenth Century Central Asia". Published 2003. Routledge ISBN978-0-7007-1114-7.
Beisembiev, T. K. "Ta'rikh-i SHakhrukhi" kak istoricheskii istochnik. Alma Ata: Nauka, 1987.
Beisembiev, T. K. "Legenda o proiskhozhdenii kokandskikh khanov kak istochnik po istorii ideologii v Srednei Azii (na materialakh sochinenii kokandskoi istoriografii)". Kazakhstan, Srednjaja i Tsentralnaia Azia v XVI-XVIII vv. Alma-ata, 1983.
Bosworth, Clifford Edmund (2004). The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual. Edinburgh University Press.
Dubavitski, Victor and Bababekov, Khaydarbek, in S. Frederick Starr, ed., Ferghana Valley: The Heart of Central Asia.
Erkinov, Aftandil S. "Les timourides, modeles de legitimite et les recueils poetiques de Kokand". Ecrit et culture en Asie centrale et dans le monde Turko-iranien, XIVe-XIXe siècles // Writing and Culture in Central Asia and in the Turko-Iranian World, 14th-19th Centuries. F.Richard, M.Szuppe (eds.), [Cahiers de Studia Iranica. 40]. Paris: AAEI, 2009.
"The Muslim World"; Part III, "The Last Great Muslim Empires": Translation and Adaptations by F.R.C. Bagley. (Originally published 1969). Brill Academic Publishers, ISBN978-90-04-02104-4.
Nalivkine, V. P. Histoire du Khanat de Khokand. Trad. A.Dozon. Paris, 1889.
Nalivkine, V. P. "Kratkaia istoria kokandskogo khanstva". Istoria Srednei Azii. A.I.Buldakov, S.A.Shumov, A.R.Andreev (eds.). Moskva, 2003.
1These are traditional areas of settlement; the Turkic group has been living in the listed country/region for centuries and should not be confused with modern diasporas. 2State with limited international recognition.
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