In the late 1450s, Timur’s great-grandson Abu Said attempted to restore the empire once again, but after some initial success he was defeated by the Turkmens, captured and put to death in 1469. After his death, the only significant Timurid principality was Khorassan, which, under Sultan Husayn Baykara in Herat, enjoyed a period of unrivalled prosperity and cultural progress (1469–1506).
In Transoxania, history was marked by the growing influence of the Uzbeks, who were now firmly entrenched along the whole Syr Darya, from the Aral Sea to Ferghana. At the end of the century, a young Timurid prince, Babur, had to abandon his fief in Ferghana and flee to India, where later he became the founder of the famous Moghul dynasty (he died in 1530).
Fig. 3 The empire of Timur (Tamerlane)
In 1500 the situation in Transoxania was ripe for Uzbek intervention. Their khan, Muhammad Sheybani, a Chingizkhanid from the house of Jochi, crossed the Syr Darya, occupied Bukhara and Samarkand, and proclaimed himself ruler of Transoxania. His capital was to be Bukhara, and as soon as he consolidated his power, he pushed further south. In 1507, he entered Herat, thus completing the victory of the house of Chingiz-Khan over that of Tamerlane.
In the second half of the fifteenth century, several important events took place that exerted a profound and in a way permanent influence on the history of Central Asia in the century to follow. The fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire not only made the Ottoman Turks a world power; it was also the beginning of the end of all Venetian and Genoese trading posts in the Black Sea area, Transcaucasia, western Persia, and subsequently in the Levant. Coupled with the destruction of the northern trade route, this meant that all East–West trade had to pass through Turkey. This in itself provided a powerful incentive for the West European countries to seek new ways of circumventing this Turkish monopoly, and indeed was a driving force behind the Portuguese and Spanish seafaring explorations of that time. The discovery of a maritime route to India, with a further link, also by sea, to China, led to a considerable transfer of trade from land to sea. Sea transport was becoming more economical, in view of the increasing cost of land transportation due to Turkish tolls and duties, and the safety of maritime transport being greatly improved by progress in shipbuilding and navigation. But alongside these encouraging developments, security on land deteriorated when strong and centralised powers disappeared both from Transoxania and from Xinjiang. None of the petty local rulers was able to guarantee the security of the caravans, and the cost of armed escort contributed heavily to the increased cost of land transport. This is why Central Asian oases began to lose their main source of revenue, and the most important factor in their economy.
Tamerlane’s concept of bringing, by force if necessary, all trade to Samarkand proved, on the whole, to be disastrous. The Uzbek Empire, as created in the early sixteenth century, had no economic viability in itself, nor was any one of the Uzbek khans capable of stimulating it. There was not enough work for craftsmen and not enough money to maintain irrigation. The cultivated areas shrank and the revenue of the state dwindled even more. This in turn proved a strain on the khan’s finances and resulted, on the one hand, in the debasement of coinage, and on the other, in increased taxes and labour duties.
In the north-west, the Golden Horde, seriously weakened by Timur’s blows, was faced with the growing power of Russian princes. Its border regions, the Crimea and Kazan, became independent under local dynasties, thus giving the Russians, namely the able Grand Duke Ivan III, the opportunity to play them off against the khan and further weaken his authority. Finally, in 1480, Ivan ceased to pay tribute to the Golden Horde completely, and a campaign by the Crimean khan in 1502 provided the death blow. Saray, the capital on the Volga, was sacked, and the Golden Horde ceased to exist. Its territory was divided among three khanates: Crimea, Kazan and Astrakhan. Crimea soon fell under the suzerainty of the Turks, and in the eighteenth century it passed over to the Russians, and was finally annexed by them in 1783. Kazan was stormed by Tsar Ivan the Terrible in 1552; Astrakhan suffered the same fate four years later. Under the same tsar the Russian advance continued eastwards across the Urals and into Siberia. Here a branch of the Sheybani family ruled the Siberian khanate, which resisted the Cossacks for twenty years, until the last khan, Kutchum, was killed in 1600.
For almost a century Bukhara was ruled by the Sheybani dynasty. (Sheyban was a grandson of Chingiz-Khan and a younger brother of Batu.) Muhammad Sheybani succeeded in bringing under his control the whole of western Turkestan, and also Khorassan, but was defeated and killed in 1510 when he challenged the new Persian dynasty, the Safavids. The Uzbeks had to retreat behind the Syr Darya, and for the time being Babur, allied to the Persians, managed to restore Timurid power in Transoxania. But two years later the Uzbeks returned and reoccupied the country as far as the Amu Darya, which henceforth remained the frontier between Iran and Turan, as it had been 1,000 years before in the time of the Sasanians. Sheybanid rule then continued uninterrupted until 1599, with Samarkand and Bukhara alternating as capitals. Tashkent belonged to one branch of the family, the head of another branch established himself as an independent ruler in Khorezm, where he founded what became known as the khanate of Khiva; here the Sheybanids continued to rule until 1920. In the eighteenth century, yet another branch of the family wrested Ferghana from the local rulers and founded the khanate of Kokand, staying in power until 1876.
In Transoxania, or, as it was known then, the khanate of Bukhara, the Sheybanids were succeeded by their relatives the Astrakhanids. This dynasty ruled over Bukhara until 1785 and Ferghana until about 1700, when the khanate of Kokand was formed. One notable event of this period came in 1740. The Persian conqueror Nadir Shah invaded the country and, being the first to use artillery in these parts, easily defeated the Uzbeks.
The three khanates, Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand, formed the political pattern of the region throughout the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth centuries. This was an uneventful period in the life of the khanates, brought to an end by the mounting pressure from the Russians upon all three. With the Russian Empire consolidated under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, Central Asia naturally became the target of Russian colonial expansion. Russian goods appeared on Central Asian bazaars and the old northern route from the Volga to the lower Amu Darya was partly revived. The traders were followed by soldiers and, as early as the 1830s, the khanate of Khiva was the target of an abortive Russian expedition. At the same time, the Russians established a bridgehead on the east coast of the Caspian, in Turkmenistan, and from there pushed eastwards along the Kopet-Dagh mountains. Here, of course, they came rather close to Afghan territory on the left bank of the Amu Darya. Afghanistan was by then regarded by the British as a stepping stone to India, and the Russian advance caused some anxiety. Meanwhile, the Russians, pushing south from Siberia, established themselves on the Syr Darya, and the three khantes became a contested area between the two great powers. This was when Alexander Burnes visited Bukhara, and two British emissaries, Stoddart and Connolly, were executed here in 1842.
In the north, the Russians captured Tashkent in 1865 and created the Governorate-General of Turkestan in 1867. In 1868, they took Samarkand, and the Emir of Bukhara accepted the suzerainty of the tsar. Kokand was taken three years later, Khiva two years after that. In 1876, the Khan of Kokand was deposed and Ferghana incorporated into the governorate. The conquest of the whole area was completed by the defeat of the Turkmens in 1881 and the occupation of the Merv oasis in 1884; the Amu Darya was, once again, recognised as a dividing line between the two interested powers –Russia and Britain. In 1916, there was a brief but violent uprising when the Russian authorities tried to impose conscription on the population, which had hitherto been exempted. The Emir of Bukhara and the Khan of Khiva were driven out in January and September 1920 respectively. The so-called ‘People’s Republic of Khorezm’ and ‘People’s Republic of Bukhara’ were proclaimed, nominally independent at this time. They were in fact under
close Soviet control and were incorporated into the USSR in 1923 and 1924 respectively.
According to the Soviet nationalities policy the whole area of Central Asia was divided in 1924 into five Soviet Socialist Republics, with the Karakalpak Autonomous Region as part of the Uzbek SSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, all five republics became independent, allied, more or less nominally, with Russia as members of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). The most (if not the only) visible sign of continuing Russian influence is the right of the Russian army to guard the external frontiers of the Commonwealth.
However, on the political side, the Soviet heritage has not been discarded very easily, if at all. The giant dictatorship of Moscow was merely replaced by petty dictatorships with a strong nationalist tinge, but still no less authoritarian. State capitalism is the dominant doctrine. Religion is playing a more important role, although most regimes are secular; the only exception is Tajikistan where Islam is a powerful political source. It is through Tajik territory that the Taliban from Afghanistan penetrate into the Ferghana valley of Uzbekistan, causing friction with the local authorities. Another exception, of the opposite character, may be Kyrgyzstan, where President Akayev was ousted by a popular movement and his successor, Ms Otunbayeva, was democratically elected, becoming the first woman elected to this post in this area. Elsewhere, as in Turkmenistan, the regime culminated in a personality cult reminiscent of, and even exceeding, Stalinism.
Nor is the area free from occasional clashes between nationalities and/or tribes. In the Ferghana valley, the Uzbeks and the Kirghiz clashed violently near the city of Andijan and many Kirghiz fled over the border to Kyrgyzstan. A massive influx of Chinese workers and businessmen, mainly to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, who came in search of gold, oil, natural gas, uranium, but also of cotton etc., does not add to the stability in the area. As an example, when China started building a road from Kashgar to Osh, reciprocity from the Kirghiz side was not forthcoming.
For more detailed history of the Xinjiang and Afghanistan, see chapters XII and XV respectively.
* * *
NOTES ON CHAPTER II
Full details of abbreviations and publications are in the Bibliography
1 Others, however, hold different views: see Abstracts of Papers, Dushanbe, 1968
2 See, for instance, E.Y. Zeymal, in Abstracts of Papers
3 On problems of Kushan chronology, see several contributions in Abstracts of Papers
4 Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, p.182.
5 Barthold, Turkestan, p.226.
6 Barthold, Turkestan, p.268.
7 The Secret History of the Mongols admits that the Muslims of Khorezm were indeed a fifth column working for Chingiz-Khan, and after the conquest of the country those who remained were rewarded with high administrative offices alongside Mongol officials.
8 Grousset, L’Empire des steppes, p.297.
III
CIVILISATION
We may, for the purpose of this chapter, forgo the earliest stages of civilisation – the hunters and fishermen of the so-called Kelteminar culture and, later on, the first farmers and stockbreeders of the Tabagayah culture, as they were christened by Tolstov. The real diversification began much later, some time in the Achaemenid period, with the development of trade and the origins of the towns. Yet the roots of a basic duality between the nomad and the sedentary ways of life existed here from the earliest times – indeed, from the first introduction of farming techniques in the naturally fertile areas of the country. Farming, according to one theory, began at the mouths of the rivers where regular silt provided for natural irrigation; it meant the beginning of sedentary life. The transformation of the nomad into a farmer led to the building of more or less permanent homes, villages and marketplaces, which, when trade began to flow along established caravan routes, gradually grew into towns and cities. It also meant the transformation of the primitive economy producing solely for domestic consumption into a more elaborate one, producing specialised goods for the market. This, of course, is not a special feature of Central Asian evolution. It has happened elsewhere in very much the same pattern, but Central Asia has added one particular feature: the mixing, for centuries and in fact until very recent times, of two different civilisations, existing alongside each other without ever amalgamating completely.
Sedentary civilisations flourished in the oases, which became in some periods cultural centres of world importance. But they were surrounded by vast stretches of steppe and desert, by empty spaces where the nomads continued to live their primitive lives as hunters and stockbreeders. Of course, the luxuries of the cities and the riches of the villages, with abundant food, lush greenery and an apparently easy and safe life, represented a permanent lure for the warlike horsemen of the steppes. There was not, and there could not be, real peace between these two social formations, and what is equally important, there was not a fixed frontier, a clear-cut dividing line, which could separate them. Every now and then the nomads would join forces and, feeling strong enough, invade the settled areas. They rarely had the strength to break the defences, but, as a rule, the irrigation network suffered and those villages in border areas frequently had to be abandoned. To pacify the nomads, or to defeat them once and for all, was impossible. The empty space could not be conquered simply because it was empty. Only very strong empires succeeded in establishing a safe limes between the nomad lands and their own territories. Even this tended to break up as soon as the central power weakened.
More dangerous still were the migrations to which the nomads were periodically susceptible. They were usually provoked by distant causes – wars or droughts – which pushed one nomad people or tribe out of its grazing grounds and against its neighbours, thus creating a chain reaction that resulted, perhaps a generation later, in overwhelming pressure being brought to bear on the settled lands. In such cases ‘civilisation’ gave way and the ‘barbarians’ took over. However, nomads, once overlords, have never preserved their way of life very long. Gradually they have learned to appreciate the advantages of their subjects’ life and, after a time, have become absorbed, and ceased their nomadic way of life.
One thing should be made clear: the nomads, in spite of being called ‘barbarians’, possessed a distinct civilisation of their own. It was different, certainly more primitive in many ways, but it had a clearly defined pattern. Their social organisation, laws, discipline, and above all their military skill, both tactical and strategic, led them to some spectacular successes and sometimes, as in the time of Chingiz-Khan, they showed signs of real statesmanship and an ability to organise vast empires efficiently. However, they never possessed a capacity to develop this civilisation. In spite of their mobility, or perhaps because of it, their civilisation was always static. The lack of permanent homes never encouraged the nomads to create things of a permanent nature. This prevented them from exploiting the achievements and experiences of the previous generations, forcing them to learn all the basic skills again and again from the very beginning. Apart from the simplest personal belongings, they never developed a sense of property. There was very little to own, therefore practical communism was natural and easy and there was no individualism; discipline was the accepted way of life. Because there was nothing to own and nothing to accumulate, there was also no inducement towards progress. The skills of the nomads were exclusively physical, not intellectual. Their spiritual ambitions never reached beyond primitive shamanism, and when they needed a script for administering their empires they had, like the Mongols, to borrow it from their subjects.
Having no individual land possession, the organisation of nomadic life – and taxation – could not be based on land ownership or fiefs. The only effective way of assessment was by heads, which implied an organisation by units, similar to that of modern armies, with chiefs being, quite naturally, military commanders at the same time. Grousset quotes the Chinese historian Sseu-ma Tsien, who describes the organisation of the Huns in the third
century BC as follows:
The Khan, or the Son of Heaven, had two viceroys, one on the left and one on the right hand. The one on the left was his successor designate. Each one of these two had again a ‘king’ (Ku-li), on his right and left, each ‘king’ had two generals, and so on, down to the commanders of a thousand, of a hundred and of ten men. The whole organisation was that of an army and indicated also the position of each unit in the field. The general orientation was taken facing south.1
The same system may be found with all the nomads down to Chingiz-Khan’s Mongols 1,500 years later, and could still be traced in the organisation of Timur’s army at the end of the fourteenth century.
In the field of art, the lack of permanent dwellings again restricted the activities of the nomads. There was no architecture, monumental art, painting or sculpture. Yet there existed some astonishing creative forces in this field directed towards decorative art. The main items that could be decorated were clothes, arms and harnesses, with possibly a few luxury objects, like goblets or caskets. Jewellery (gold and silverware), and to a lesser extent weaving and embroidery, were therefore the principal outlets for their creative talent. The ‘animal style’ of the Scythians, which incorporated some elements of Assyrian and early Persian art, represented a highly stylised artistic expression, which can well be compared with that of the European nomads, the Vikings. The naturalism of that ancient art becomes transformed and stylised for purely decorative purposes. Grousset2 sees a double current in the ‘aesthetics of the steppes’: the naturalistic, with roots in Assyrian and Achaemenid, as well as Greek, art; and the decorative, which twists and transforms the naturalistic for exclusively ornamental purpose.
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