The Bukharan Crisis

A Connected History of 18th Century Central Asia

Scott C. Levi, Scott Levi

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780822987338
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Central Asian History
• Index: History

In the first half of the eighteenth century, Central Asia's Bukharan Khanate descended into a crisis from which it would not recover. Bukharans suffered failed harvests and famine, a severe fiscal downturn, invasions from the north and the south, rebellion, and then revolution. To date, efforts to identify the cause of this crisis have focused on the assumption that the region became isolated from early modern globalizing trends. The Bukharan Crisis exposes that explanation as a flawed relic of early Orientalist scholarship on the region.

In its place, Scott Levi identifies multiple causal factors that underpinned the Bukharan crisis. Some of these were interrelated and some independent, some unfolded over long periods while others shocked the region more abruptly, but they all converged in the early eighteenth century to the detriment of the Bukharan Khanate and those dependent upon it. Levi applies an integrative framework of analysis that repositions Central Asia in recent scholarship on multiple themes in early modern Eurasian and world history

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures.

Abbas, Shah I, 77n14, 80, 136

‘Abbasid Caliphate, 56, 58–59

‘Abd al-’Aziz Khan, 22, 35–36, 131, 147, 164

‘Abd al-’Aziz Khan Madrasa, 22, 81

‘Abd al-Karim, 123–25, 127

‘Abdallah Khan, 19–20, 154

‘Abdallah Khan II, 19, 78–81

‘Abd al-Munim, 19–20, 162n127

Abu’l Fayz Khan, 24–26, 123, 132; efforts to maintain authority, 166, 170–72, 178; execution of, 27, 168, 178; rebellions against, 24–25

Abu’l Khayr Khan, 13

Adichie, Chimamanda, 173–74

Afghanistan, 14, 70, 72, 81, 93, 116, 133

Afghans, 26, 82, 135–36, 139, 168

Afsharid dynasty, 26

agriculture, 115; contribution to economy, 49, 165; decline in, 136–37, 140; effects of climate crisis on, 141–42, 149–52, 177; food crops vs. cash crops, 95, 118; increasing, 96–98; land used for, 7, 21, 88; loans by Indians for, 83, 97; plantation-style, 73–74

Akbar, Emperor, 78–81

Alam, Muzaffar, 31, 135

Altishahr, 37, 91, 91n59, 91n61, 93, 95–97, 119

Amanat, Abbas, x, 136, 146

Americas, silver from, 74–76, 118–19, 176

Andijanis, trade networks of, 92–95, 94, 118–19, 176

An Lushan rebellion, 59

Anusha Muhammad Khan, 22

appanage system, 16, 18–19, 35, 122–23, 177

Astrakhan, 20, 103–4, 110–11, 111n118

Astrakhan Khanate, 19, 92, 98

Atwell, William, 144

Aurangzeb, 75, 81, 85, 134–35, 146–47

Babur, Zahir al-Din Muhammad, 12, 17, 72–73, 78, 85, 96n71

Balkh, 16, 20, 22–24, 35, 81, 147,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Geographic Terminology
• Introduction
• One. Bukhara in Crisis
• Two. Silk Roads, Real and Imagined
• Three. The Early Modern Silk Road
• Four. The Crisis Revisited
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index