ing his hatred of Europeans. Nor were Stoddart and Conolly Nasrullah's only victims. A lust for blood seized him, and all who professed Christianity were proscribed. The missionary Wolff, who visited Bokhārā in 1844 in order to learn the two young officers' fate, and if possible to procure their release, gives a list of seven Englishmen who were slaughtered at 'Abd us-Samad's instigation.1 Nasrullah's closing years were embittered by conspiracies amongst his nobles; and his successor Mozaffar ud-Din was strongly suspected of having incited one of those movements, which was put down with much bloodshed,2 He was maddened, too, by the repeated failure of his attempts to reduce Shahrisabz. On his deathbed, in 1860, he learnt that that last stronghold of independence had fallen to his conquering arm. His last act was to order the execution of its chief, who was his brother-in-law, and all his children, and his own wife, whose only crime was her relationship to the rebel, beheaded in his presence.3 Sayyid Mozaffar ud-Din Khan, who succeeded this monster of iniquity, had attained the mature age of thirty-eight on his death. He was the son of a Persian slave-girl,and at the age of fourteen was appointed governor of Karshi, the Dauphinée of modern Bokhārā. That he lived to reign in his turn was due to his extreme circumspection, for he was swayed by the same vices as his 1 Wolff, Bokhara, p. 231. It is not exhaustive, for Vambéry (p. 389) mentions a poor Italian watchmaker named Giovanni Orlando as one of Nasrullah's victims. Wolff's work is disfigured by its author's eccentricities, and is deficient in information of value as to the manners and economy of the country. But his courage and self-devotion are beyond all praise. 2 Vambéry, p. 391. The date which he gives tentatively, 1840, is certainly wrong: had it occurred then, details would have appeared in the works of Wolff and Khanikoff. H. Moser, who twice visited Bokhārā during his reign, says that he lived in idleness till his father's death, the date of which he inexplicably states to have been 1842 (A Travers l'Asie Centrale, p. 156). H. Moser, p. 156. 3 Vambéry, p. 391. father had been. His first care was to regain the confidence of the priestly caste, which had been alienated by the insane excesses of Nasrullah. Then, inspired by those dreams of universal conquest which had been the curse of his dynasty, he turned his attention to Shahrisabz, which continued in a state of revolt. Undeterred by his failure to reduce the stubborn mountaineers to subjection, he next attacked Kokand. That Khanate had fallen into the hands of Khudā Yār, a grandson of the murdered Mohammad 'Ali, who had been brought up under Nasrullah's eye in that gilded sty, the Bokhāran Court. He attained power at a period pregnant with danger to his country. The lower reaches of the Sir Darya were enclosed in the coil of the Russian advance. In 1853 the fortress of Ak-Mechet had fallen, and eleven years later the Eagle waved over Turkestan and Chimkent.1 The onward movement was checked in 1864 by the failure of an assault on Tashkent; but Khudā Vār was foiled in his turn in a like attempt on Turkestan, and retreated to his capital only to find that the warlike Kipchāks, a tribe who, then as now, were the backbone of the population, had set up a younger brother named Molla Khan in his stead. Khuda Yar fled to Bokhārā and implored the Amir to aid him to regain the throne. Mozaffar ud-Din saw in these events an excuse for extending his own authority up to the frontier of China. As a preliminary measure, he had Molla Khan assassinated, 1 It was regarded in Central Asia as a bird of ill omen, and nicknamed Kara-Kush, " black bird" (Vambéry, p. 394). 2 The Kipchāks are a race of Turkish origin, who, according to Howorth (History of the Mongols, part ii.), settled on the south-eastern Russian steppes, in the tenth and eleventh centuries. They afterwards split up into hordes, the "Golden" and the "Eastern,” but were united under Tīmūr's great antagonist, Tokhtamish Khān. When his power was shattered the Kipchāks dispersed over Central Asia, and large numbers found their way to Kokand, then styled by its present name, Farghāna. one. and, marching on Kokand, reinstated Khudā Yār. The Kipchāks, however, were far from approving his choice. They rose in rebellion, and, after a protracted struggle with the Bokhāran forces, they succeeded in wresting the eastern half of the Khanate from Mozaffar ud-Din's protégé.1 But their strength was sapped by the war raging on the northern frontier, and their trusted leader was slain by the Russians at Tashkent. Thus when in 1865 the Bokhāran Amir invaded Kokand, in order to repress their insolence, he found the task an easy Khudā Yār was replaced on his tottering throne, and, had Mozaffar ud-Din possessed a trace of political foresight, he might have united the forces of Central Asia against the common danger. But his lust for conquest was increased by his cheaply won successes in Kokand, and, spurred to his ruin by a fanatical priesthood, he flung the gauntlet of defiance in the teeth of Russia. Though General Chernaieff had made himself master of Tashkent, and had Kokand at his mercy, he received a haughty summons to evacuate his conquests, accompanied by a threat of a Holy War. His reply was couched in language equally peremptory, and a struggle began which closed in the deep humiliation of the proud Amir. It remains for us to trace the origin of a Power which was destined to play a part of the first importance in the history of Central Asia, and to repeat the conquests of Chingiz and Timur. 1 Vambéry, p. 395. 2 H. Moser, A Travers l'Asie Centrale, p. 156. |