The Bukharans

A Dynastic, Diplomatic and Commercial History 1550-1702

Audrey Burton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136788680
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is an in-depth study of the people of Bukhara and their relations with settled peoples and nomads, from Muscovy to China, and Iran to India. By using lesserknown, or hitherto untapped sources, it corrects long-held misapprehensions fostered by historians of hostile states and champions of the Timurid dynasty. Far from being afraid of their powerful Safawid and Mughal counterparts, the Uzbeg rulers of Bukhara caused them much apprehension and even influenced their foreign policies. 'Abbas I concluded a humiliating peace with Turkey because he wanted to recover Khurasan from 'Abdallah II, Akbar could not risk leaving Punjab during 'Abdallah's reign, Safawid and Mughal attempts at conquering the khanate failed dismally. The book deals fully with dynastic, internal and external problems, trade routes, coinage policies and the khans' attempts to encourage trade.

Part One
History

Introduction

The khanate of Mā warā' al-nahr

For many people in the west the name of Samarqand is highly evocative. They associate it with the Silk Route, the spice trade and long, adventurous journeys through deserts and high mountains. Samarqand might also be known as the capital of Tamerlane the Great, but Bukhara, to most people, is merely an ancient town famous for its carpets. They would be surprised to learn that from the 1560s and for three hundred years Bukhara was the capital of an independent state - the khanate, later the emirate of Bukhara - situated astride the Silk Route, whose rulers exchanged embassies with the tsars and the Mughal emperors, and whose merchants dealt with China, India, Iran, Turkey, Russia and many other nations, east and west.

In 1559 the name of Boghar was of particular interest to the shareholders of the London-based Muscovy company, for they were perusing the detailed report of one of their factors, Anthony Jenkinson, sent to investigate the trading potential of the town. And by 1600 Bukhara and its most outstanding ruler, 'Abdallāh II, were certainly known to Queen Elizabeth. In that year the ambassador of the ill-fated and unpopular Tsar, Boris Godunov, told her that the armies of Muscovy had helped Iran to retake the province of Khurasan from 'Abdallah of Bukhara.¹ The reason for such a misleading piece of information - the Russian armies had not been involved and the recapture of Khurasan was only attempted after 'Abdallàh's death - can only be guessed at. Perhaps it was thought that Boris Godunov's prestige would be increased if his name was associated with the defeat of a ruler generally feared and respected.

¹ Likhachev, 188, Khurasan was a large and fertile province which at one time included Balkh. It extended westward just beyond Jajarm, northwards beyond Marw and southwards beyond Sabzawar,

Yet in the days when it was part of the Soviet Union Bukhara seemed to have little to recommend it to the casual tourist, despite such architectural gems as the ninth century Samanid tomb, the twelth century Kalān minaret, the seventeenth century Lābī Haud ensemble and the nineteenth century Chār Manār. Too many of its magnificent medressehs and mosques, made of burnt clay and straw, were in a state of decay, as much because they were not properly finished at the time, as because they were too numerous to be restored and maintained by the state.² Bukhara therefore made a poorer first impression than Samarqand, where the fewer architectural ensembles of note had all been well preserved. Only Bukhara's solid multi-domed trading structures could give the visitor some idea of the trading importance of this town in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it was the capital of an independent country. Nowadays at last it is beginning to flourish again arid its historic importance is again valued and recognised.

² Meyendorff, 187-8, attributed the tumbled-down look of the town in 1820 either to earthquakes or to lack of architectural skill.

In 1550 Bukhara was just one of the towns of the khanate of Mā warā' al-nahr or Transoxiana, situated between the Oxus/Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya, east of the Caspian Sea. The khanate stretched from Hazarasp on the Oxus, where the small state of Khwārazm began, to the Tien Shan mountains in the east. A large strip of land on the right bank of the Syr-Darya, reaching towards the river Chu, included the towns of Tashkent and Turkestan. There was also some territory south of the Amu-Darya, now in Afghanistan, which was administered from Balkh, a town revered in the Islamic world because of its profusion of shrines and its proximity to the alleged tomb of the fourth Caliph, 'Alī, at Mazār al-Sharīf.

The soil of the khanate was fertile and richly productive, despite the severity of the climate. The great heat and droughts of its summers contrasted greatly with the bitterly cold winters, during which a warrior might find his beard covered with hoarfrost, and fast-flowing rivers would freeze, although not usually hard enough to allow safe passage,³ as the armies of the khanate found, more than once, to their cost.

³ Khwājah Samandar, 137. Fadlallāh b.Ruzbikhān, 86-7,118-9,131-2.

The water of the rivers was skilfully used for irrigation purposes through innumerable reservoirs (haud) and through two networks of canals, one of which was situated underground at a depth of two metres, linking wells 7 to 10 metres apart. The canals were carefully maintained by the authorities. Taxes and maintenance corvées were extracted for this purpose from the inhabitants. Armies of special officials (mīrāb) supervised the daily allocation of water to the peasants (ra'ya) and landowners, but such was the importance of regulating the water supply that every official in the khanate was also connected with water distribution in some capacity or other.⁴ Infringement of the water allocation rules was not tolerated. Those found guilty were punished by losing their water rights.

⁴ See further in Burton, Bukharans in trade, 21.

The irrigation methods used were very successful: enormous varieties of crops, from grapes and melons to cotton, sugar-cane and rice, were grown all over the khanate, and within the boundaries of most towns. Fruit and cottons were high on the list of exports from the khanate, the 'Alī Kak grapes of Bukhara and the melons of Bokharz and Zamin being sent, either fresh, dried or as seeds, as far away as India and China.

From the early sixteenth century the khanate was ruled by the 'Uzbegs', a group of Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes originating in the Qipchāq steppes whose rulers claimed descent from the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan through his son Jūchī.⁵ Before he died in 1469 the ancestor of the ruling family, Abū `l-Khair Khān, carved an enormous empire which stretched from Tara in the Siberian north to the Amu-Darya and from Khwārazm in the west to the Qipchap steppes and Farghāna in the east. But although he married one of Tamerlane's descendants, a Princess from Samarqand, and fought a son of Tamerlane who was based in Herat, he was not interested in conquering, or settling in, any of the main towns of the area - Bukhara, Samarqand, Balkh or Herat. He much preferred the nomadic way of life.

⁵ See Akhmedov, Gosudarstvo, 14, for the Qipchāq steppes being known as 'Uzbeg steppes' in the late fourteenth century; Yakubovskii, 3, for the origin of the word 'Uzbeg'; Semenov A.A., "K voprosu o proiskhozhdenii", for the common origin of Uzbegs, Qazaqs and Noghays.

It was his grandson, Muhammad Shaibāni, who brought the Uzbeg tribes to the khanate and who decided to settle there. Muhammad Shaibāni did not share Abū `l Khair's love of the nomadic life. Having fled the steppes for safety in his early childhood and having lived for some years in Bukhara and Astrakhan, he had taken a liking to the sedentary life. Ambitious and energetic, he decided to emulate Tamerlane (Timur Lang), who in the early 15th century had ruled a vast empire centred on Samarqand and stretching from Syria to the Ganges, and he began by ousting Tamerlane's descendants (the Timurids) from both Mā warā' al-nahr and Khurasan.

He started by seizing Otrar, as well as Yassi (also known as Turkestan), Bukhara and Shahr-i sabz in the late 1490s, then in 1500 he took Samarqand from the Timurid Bābur. He went on to conquer the remainder of Transoxiana, starting with Tashkent in the east, then he ousted the remaining Timurid princes and governors from Qunduz, Balkh and Khurasan in the south and south-west, and even from Khwārazm in the north. Unfortunately, his plans for aggrandisement clashed with those of the Iranian ruler, the Safawid Shäh Ismā'il, who was anxious to annex the lands of the Timurids for himself and who hated Shaibānī for his known hostility to the 'heresy' of Shī'ism. Shāh Ismā'īl marched into Khurasan and managed to trick Shaibānī into leaving the safety of Marw, where he was entrenched, to pursue what he thought was a retreating army. Shaibānī was killed outside Marw in 1510 and in a gesture of contempt Shāh Ismā'īl sent his skull, stuffed with hay, to the Ottoman Sultan Bāyāzid.⁶ Not content with thus insulting the dead man and his ally, the Shī'a ruler then put to the sword Shaibani's supporters and savagely persecuted the Sunnis of Khurasan. These measures fostered an abiding hatred for the Safawids in the people of the khanate and their Abūlkhairid rulers.

⁶ Seinenov A.A., 'Shaibani khan i zavoevanie im imperii Timuridov', pp. 39-85 in Materialy po istori tadzhikov as above.

In the years that followed Shaibäni's death Khurasan and Khwārazm were taken by Iran and even Samarqand was briefly lost to Bäbur in 1512-3.⁷ But the Timurids were not able to re-establish themselves in Transoxiana and, after Bābur left the area, in order to found what became the Mughal Empire of India, the Uzbegs remained in control. Soon their various tribes or clans, said to number 92 or even 100,⁸ merged with the local Persian-speaking population, learning their language and the arts of agriculture and trade, but retaining their interest in cattle-raising and in military pursuits. Although Persian became the language of literature, Chaghatai Turkish did not disappear, for the khans, who were bilingual, used it in official letters and poetical compositions.

⁷ Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, text, 116-22, 130-3, 204-26, 232-6.

⁸ Sultanov, Kochevye plemena, 29-33, 40-44. Chardin, Voyages, II, 121. 'Yuz-bec, c'est-à-dire Cent Seigneurs, du grand nombre des Principautés en quoi ce Païs-là est partagé'. Savinov, 49, says that there were 32 main tribes of Uzbegs, which were subdivided into 92 ethnic groups.

The system of government in the khanate was based on the Mongol pattern, but with a significant difference: the senior member of the Abūlkhairid/Shaibānid ruling family was always chosen as khāqān (overall ruler) or khān, irrespective of his suitability for the post. During the consecration ceremony he was raised in the air several times, seated on a piece of white felt held at each corner by Abūlkhairids, tribal leaders, or members of the Muslim ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Transliteration scheme
• Glossary
• Abbreviated table of rulers
• Preface
• Illustrations
• Part One: History
• Introduction: the khanate of Mā warā' al-nahr
• 1 A new capital, Bukhara. 1550-61
• 2 Iskandar's reign and the struggle for control. 1561-83
• 3 Foreign expansion under 'Abdallāh and 'Abd al-Mu'min. 1583-98
• 4 Birthpangs of the Ashtarkhānid dynasty. 1598-1605
• 5 Wālī Muḥammad's inglorious reign. 1605-11
• 6 Imām Qulī's long reign. 1611-41
• 7 Nadir Muḥammad and his problems. 1641-51
• 8 'Abd al-'Aziz alone at the helm. 1651-81
• 9 Subḥān Qulī, the last great Ashtarkhānid. 1681-1705
• Part Two: Trade
• 10 Merchandise
• 11 Routes
• 12 The khan's contribution
• 13 Trade with Asia
• 14 Trade with Muscovy
• 15 Trade with Siberia
• Genealogical tables
• Annotated tables of rules
• Bibliography
• Index