478 `Abd ul-Kerīm (p. 151) gives the date as Friday, 14th Rajab A.H. 1214. Vambéry is apparently in error in placing it as 1802 (p. 360).

479 P. 151.

480 See Meyendorff’s Voyage d’Orenbourg à Boukhara en 1820, p. 281; Bokhara: its Amir and People, by Khanikoff, p. 248; Vambéry, History of Bokhara, p. 360.

481 Amīr Haydar was the first of the present dynasty to assume the title of Pādishāh.

482 `Abd ul-Kerīm, pp. 154–156. Vambéry gives a different version (History of Bokhara, p. 462), but we prefer to follow the native chronicler, who held high diplomatic posts in Bokhārā at the commencement of the century, and may be presumed to have had personal knowledge of the events which he records (see M. Charles Schefer’s Introduction to his Chronicle, p. iii).

483 `Abd ul-Kerīm, pp. 163, 164.

484 “He always has four legitimate wives: when he wishes to espouse a new wife he divorces one of her predecessors, giving her a house and pension corresponding with her condition. Every month he receives a young virgin, either as wife or slave. He marries the slaves who have not given him children, either to priests or soldiers” (`Abd ul-Kerīm, p. 163).

485 History of Bokhara, p. 365. A long chapter is devoted to Amīr Nasrullah by Sir H. Howorth. See his History of the Mongols, part ii. pp. 790–809.

486 “General of artillery.”

487 Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 296.

488 The Kushbegi was vehemently suspected of removing him by poison (Khanikoff, p. 298).

489 About four shillings.

490 Khanikoff, p. 301.

491 1 Vambéry, p. 366.

492 Wolff, Bokhara, p. 232.

493 Khanikoff, Bokhara, p. 304.

494 Wolff, Bokhara, p. 233.

495 Ibid. p. 233.

496 Wolff, p. 181.

497 Ibid. p. 232.

498 “Sed periit postquam cerdonibus esse timenduæs Cœperat” (Sat. IV. 153).

499 Wolff, p. 248.

500 Vambéry, p. 372.

501 Khanikoff, p. 306; Wolff, p. 152, et passim.

502 Vambéry, p. 373.

503 Under `Abd us-Samad’s advice he had organised a corps of soldiers who were drilled and accoutred in the European fashion.

504 Khanikoff, p. 313.

505 Ibid. p. 314. Wolff adds that the unfortunate Khān’s pregnant wife was also butchered (Bokhara, p. 232).

506 He published an interesting account of his wanderings in his Travels into Bokhara, being an account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and Persia in 1831–33. London, 1834–39.

507 Wolff, p. 176. It appears that he drew his sword on the court official charged with the duty of presenting him to His Majesty.

508 “He delights to hear that people tremble at his name, and laughs with violence when he hears of their apprehensions” (Wolff, p. 233).

509 The first regular Russian embassy to Bokhārā was that of M. Regni in 1820, which was described by Colonel Baron Meyendorff in his Voyage d’Orenbourg à Boukhara, Paris, 1826. The Russian reply to Burnes’ mission were those of Desmaison in 1834, and of Vitkovich in the following year (Vambéry, p. 380).

510 The issue of our first attempt to meddle in the affairs of Afghanistān is too well known for recapitulation. The British forces left Kābul on January 1842 on their homeward march, and, out of 16,500 troops and camp followers, only one man lived to carry the news of disaster to Jalālābād. See Kaye’s History of the War in Afghanistan, 1851.

511 Nasrullah was tormented by remorse to his dying day. He told the Shaykh ul-Islām of Bokhārā that “he had given himself a terrible wound by having killed Stoddart and Conolly.” And the chief-justice assured Wolff that the Amīr had more than once exclaimed, “The wounds of my heart, for having slain these English people, will never heal!” (Wolff’s Bokhara, pp. 176, 233). Even this black heart had one white spot. But we must not judge a bad man by the good he may do on impulse, nor a good one by the evil which alloys the finest nature.

512 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.

513 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).

514 Vambéry, p. 391.

515 H. Moser, p. 156.

516 It was regarded in Central Asia as a bird of ill omen, and nicknamed Kara-Kush, “black bird” (Vambéry, p. 394).

517 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.

518 Vambéry, p. 395.

519 H. Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 156.

520 Born at Pelusum in Egypt, A.D. 70, and flourished under M. Antoninus and Hadrian.

521 Our authority here is Jornandes, more properly styled Jordanes, who lived at Byzantium under Justinian II. His work, De Gothorum Origine et Rebus Gestis, is to be found in Muratori’s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab Anno 500 ad 1500, 27 vols. folio.

522 The Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg claim a Wendish origin, and are officially styled “Princes of the Wends.”

523 Slav, originally Slovene or Slovane, was, according to Miklositch, Vergleichende Grammatik den Slavischen Sprachen (Vienna, 1879), the tribal name of one of several Aryan clans, whose settlements stretched from the Arctic Ocean to the Ægæan Sea, from Kamskatka to the Elbe.

524 “God” in Sanskrit is Bhagvan. Siva was the devoted wife of the demigod Rama, who is worshipped by Hindus with a fervour like that inspired by the Virgin Mary in Catholic lands.

525 They were judges rather than jurymen of the British type. Their number was twelve, half of whom were chosen by the plaintiff and half by the defendant. See Stubbs’ Constitutional History, chap. xiii.

526 Other writers give Cherson as the scene of this historic rite. Vladimir wears a halo in monkish legend, and is commonly styled the Saint, or the Great.

527 According to Ujfalvy, the Mongols were leading a peaceful and patriarchal life round Lake Baikal in the second century before our era. Richthofen thinks that the primitive land of the Turks was not in the Altaï Mountains, as their legends would have it, but rather in the country below the Anan, the Lena, and the Seleuga (Les Aryens (Paris, 1896), p. 25).

528 Khwārazm, an old Persian word said to mean “eastwards,” comprises the embouchure of the Sir Daryā, and is now known as Khiva.

529 “Horde” is derived from the Old Turkish Urdu, meaning encampment. Hence Urdu, the lingua franca evolved in the progresses which the Mongolian emperors of India used to make yearly throughout the peninsula. The people of Samarkand still call the citadel Urda, “the encampment.”

530 A Historical Sketch of Russian Policy in Central Asia, by Professor V. Grigorieff; Schuyler’s Turkestan, App. IV. vol. ii. p. 391.

531 For further details consult Howorth’s Mongols, pt. ii. div. i. p. 507.

532 Russia in Central Asia, by Hugo Stumm, pp. 2, 3; En Asie Centrale, by N. Ney, p. 203.

533 The Cossacks have never been able to shake off the stigma imprinted by this dire necessity. They are still called “Man-eaters” in many parts of Central Asia.

534 En Asie Centrale, by N. Ney, pp. 203–5.

535 Stumm, p. 5.

536 Tradition has it that the Khān retaliated by tearing in pieces a letter, subsequently received from Peter, and giving it to his children to play with (Peter the Great, by Oscar Browning, p. 323).

537 The Kirghiz affirm that they were divided into three Hordes by an ancient chieftain named Alash. The Great Horde wander over Chinese and Russian Turkestān, near Lake Balkash; the Middle occupy the northern and eastern shores of the Sea of Aral; the Little Horde, now more numerous than the others combined, feed their flocks between the Tobol and the Aral Sea. An interesting account is given by Stumm of their manners and character. See Russia in Central Asia, pp. 227–34.

538 Stumm, pp. 20, 21.

539 Meyendorf, Voyage d’Orenburg à Boukhara, p. 285.

540 For a detailed account of the Khivan expedition, see Hugo Stumm’s Russia in Central Asia, chap. ii. p. 26.

541 It is well known that the Tsar Nicholas, on learning the disasters suffered by the allied forces during the terrible Crimean winter of 1854–55, complacently remarked that there were two generals who fought for Russia—Generals January and February.

542 Stumm, p. 50.

543 See Appendix.

544 The Cossacks numbered only 104, under Sub-Lieutenant Saroff. They made a zariba of their horses’ bodies, and, after repelling incessant attacks for two days, they cut a path through the dense masses of their foes, and joined a relief column from Turkestān. Only nine escaped unwounded, and the killed numbered fifty-seven. Such actions abound in modern Central Asian annals, and they are as glorious as any performed by our own brave troops in India (Ney, p. 213).

545 Ney, p. 214.

546 Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 214. Stumm asserts that the Bokhāran Amīr made the exiled Khān named Khudā Yār his Bey, or governor of Kokand (The Russians in Central Asia, p. 57).

547 The chief was Colonel Von Struve, who afterwards attended Kauffman in a diplomatic capacity during his campaign against Khiva in 1873, and, at a later period of his career, was envoy of Japan. Among the other members was Colonel Glukhovsky, who was an ardent pioneer for Russia in these little-known tracts (see Schuyler’s Turkestan, ii. 354, 386), and published an interesting account of his mission in the Paris Geographical Society’s Bulletin for September 1868.

548 This illustrious soldier never regained imperial favour, and died almost unnoticed in August 1898.

549 See Schuyler’s Turkestan, i. 312.

550 It is to be found in extenso in the Journal de St. Petersburg of 16th July 1867.

551 500,000 roubles; equivalent to about £53,000. This ultimatum is omitted in Vambéry’s admirable description of the Samarkand campaign in the Monatsschrift für deutsche Litteratur, 1896. He alleges that Kauffman ignored the Amīr’s embassies, and fell unexpectedly on Samarkand when the preparation for the campaign was complete.

552 Schuyler denies that this affair was really a battle. Judged by his standard, Plassey was a mere skirmish. The two battles closely resemble one another. See his Turkestan, i. 242.

553 Sarts, as we shall presently see, is the Russian term for the sedentary inhabitants of Central Asia.

554 Schuyler denies that the attack on a small isolated garrison was an act of treachery. It may not have been so on the part of the people of Shahrisabz; but the inhabitants of Samarkand were undoubtedly guilty of the basest dissimulation in welcoming the Russians and then secretly conspiring their destruction (Turkestan, i. 246).

555 This is now a Russian cantonment.

556 Quoted by Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 221.

557 Hugo Stumm, Russia in Central Asia, p. 104.

558 The best account is one compiled by the Russian staff,—The Khivan Campaign, St. Petersburg, 1873.

559 Schuyler, who visited the capital just before the annexation, mentions that 500 prisoners taken in one of these emeutes had their throats cut in the bazaar, which literally streamed with blood (Turkestan, ii. 16).

560 Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 314.

561 Moser, A Travers l’Asie Centrale, p. 298.

562 The desert wells are termed urpa when shallow, and kuduk or kuyu when they are deep and afford a constant supply. The only sign of their existence is the tracks converging on them from every quarter. They are mere holes, without kerb or fencing, and the sides are roughly shored up by the branches of desert shrubs (ibid. p. 299).

563 “In the Turkoman Desert is a species of antelope almost as numerous as the wild ass. It is smaller than a sheep, which it resembles in body, neck, and head, and has the delicate limbs, horns, and hair of the antelope; the horn, however, is not opaque but white, and like a cow’s horn. The nostrils are directly in front, and are closed by a muscle acting vertically. The nose is greatly arched, and provided with an integument which can be inflated at pleasure. The head is extremely ugly. The animal ... is called by the natives kaigh” (Abbott, Narrative of a Journey to Khiva, 1856).

564 Moser, p. 309. The Kārakūm is the portion of the Turkoman Desert lying between Khiva and the Akkal and Merv oases.

565 “Our path lay through fields and natural meadows of the richest verdure, among groves of oak clothed in young leaves of the most delicate hues, broken into glades and lawns of velvet” (Narrative of a Journey through Khorasan in the Years 1821–1822, by James Baillie Fraser; London, 1825).

566 M. P. Lessar, whose knowledge of Central Asian geography is profound, affirms that the Paropamisus, as the range was anciently called, offers no difficulty to the engineer. The summit is reached by an almost imperceptible incline. In fact, the traveller crosses the range almost without perceiving that he has done so.

567 Vambéry, in a lecture delivered in London on 10th April 1880.

568 See Rawlinson’s History of Parthia, 1873.

569 Travels in Bokhārā, 1834.

570 Kibitka is the Russian term for the nomads’ tent. It is composed of portable felt carpets secured by strips of raw hide to a circular collapsible wooden frame. An old tent, black with age and smoke, is called by the Turkomans “kara ev”; a new one, still whitish-grey, “ak ev.” The kibitka is the Russian administrative unit, and is supposed to connote five inhabitants. A group of kibitkas ranging between twenty-five and fifty is called aul, “portable village.”

571 The subsequent history of this once powerful tribe is a curious example of the process of agglomeration which raised the Tekkes to supremacy. In 1871 the remnant of the Salors were forcibly deported by the former tribe to Merv, and incorporated with themselves. Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin (Merv, p. 80).

572 O’Donovan, who visited these works in 1880, describes them as follows: “For twenty yards on either side the river-bank was revetted with stout fascines of giant reeds, solidly lashed to stakes planted on the bank to prevent the friction of the current, as it neared the dam, from washing away the earth surface. Huge masses of earthwork closed the narrow gorge by which the stream found exit in the lower level by a passage scarce ten feet wide. The waters rushed thunderously through this narrow gap to a level eight feet below their upper surface. The passage was some fifty yards in length, and, like its approaches, was lined with reed fascines” (The Story of Merv, p. 210). Petrusevitch states that the repairs of distributories were provided for by the labour of a contingent of one man in every twenty-four families (Marvin’s Merv, p. 80).

573 O’Donovan saw them in 1881. One was an eighteen, the others six-pounders; all were bronze smooth-bores (The Story of Merv, p. 198).

574 Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, Merv, p. 81.

575 Grodekoff found the burial-places full of murdered victims, the villages in ruins, and the fields out of cultivation (Marvin’s Merv, p. 207).

576 O’Donovan, p. 182; Moser, p. 319.

577 Petrusevitch, quoted by Marvin, pp. 82, 83. For an enumeration of the Turkoman clans the reader is referred to Marvin’s Merv, which is a mosaic of quotations from writers of different value. Petrusevitch is by far the most trustworthy.

578 “Residence among these lawless tribes convinces me more than ever that there cannot be a worse despotism than the despotism of a mob. There is nothing, in my eyes, more pregnant with fatal consequences than the sway and power of an ignorant and uncivilised multitude governed by no other motives than its own maddening impulses” (Wolff’s Bokhara, p. 262).

579 O’Donovan, Story of Merv, p. 220.

580 Nūr Verdi Khān was one of those exceptional men, to be found in widely divergent societies, who acquire the commanding influence which all strong personalities must attain. His death, at the comparatively early age of fifty, just before the Russian invasion, was the death-knell of Tekke independence (Moser, p. 319).

581 Wolff found a “Calipha,” or high priest, named `Abd er-Rahmān enjoying great influence at Merv in 1843. This was another case of force of character leading to the attainment of greatness (Bokhara, pp. 114, 115).

582 Sardār is a Persian word signifying “head-man.” Tokma Sardār, who had commanded the garrison of Geok Teppe during the memorable siege by the Russians, visited O’Donovan at Merv soon after that event. “He was slightly under middle height, very quiet, almost subdued in manner, his small grey eyes lighting up with a humorous twinkle” (The Story of Merv, p. 178).

583 The weapons were a long flintlock, laboriously loaded with the contents of a powder-horn and leather bullet bag, but the Tekke trusted chiefly to his sabre and a long murderous dagger, called pshak (Moser, p. 296).

584 Moser, p. 324.

585 Ibid. p. 300.

586 Moser, p. 247.

587 Ibid. p. 320.

588 Ibid.; also O’Donovan, p. 298.

589 O’Donovan, p. 297. The training consisted in a gradual reduction of the rations of food and water. Dry lucern gave place to chopped straw; barley and juwārī (sorghum), to a mixture of flour and matter-fat.

590 Moser, p. 322. It is remarkable that the Tekke seat is precisely the same as that in use among the nomads of the Mongolian plateau north of the Great Wall, who, according to Mr. E. H. Parker in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette, “always ride with very short stirrups, the knee bent forward almost to the withers, the reins grasped short, and (when there is any speed) the body well over the horse’s neck. Possibly this is the reason why the Mongol saddle always has a high peak, for it prevents the rider being chucked over the horse’s neck.” This method is also identical with that adopted by the jockey Tod Sloan.

591 The felt blankets were worked by the cavaliers’ women-folk. “The finer the courser’s felt,” ran a Turkoman proverb, “the greater the love of the maker for the horseman” (Moser, p. 331).

592 Moser, p. 274.

593 Ibid. p. 319.

594 See chapter iv. of Marvin’s Merv, which is a translation of Petrusevitch’s account of the Turkomans.

595 “The eyes of a cat, with the extremity raised towards the temple” (Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 193).

596 A Turkoman, while travelling in the desert with Wolff, said, “I smell a caravan of Uzbegs”; and in a few hours one was met with. They can hear conversation at a great distance by flinging themselves on the ground and listening intently (Wolff, Bokhara, p. 242). They can name the tribe and even the individual cavalier by his traces on the sand (Moser, p. 300).

597 “The Tekke is the only woman in Central Asia who knows how to walk. Nothing is more graceful than a girl of this race going to fetch water from a well and carrying the tall amphora on her shoulder.” (Moser, p. 330).

598 O’Donovan, p. 193.

599 Moser, p. 330.

600 O’Donovan, p. 254.

601 It is generally admitted that these rules are slowly evolved by the community to which the individual who adopts them belongs. There are some still amongst us who looked with complacency at the cruelties once perpetrated in this Christian country in the name of justice. We see our own manners at earlier stages of our growth reflected in those of contemporary savages.

602 Pilaw, a dish which has now spread over the Eastern world, had its origin in Central Asia. It is a stew composed of hot mutton-fat into which meat has been shredded, carrots and rice, and, cooked as only a Turkoman knows how to prepare it, is a dish fit for a royal table.

603 Moser, p. 332.

604 The efforts of Tekke musicians can only be described as grotesque. They perform on long bamboo trumpets, called twidak, with an accompaniment of bowings and contortions which is in ridiculous contrast to the bird-like notes emitted.

605 No Turkoman troubled his head about the ordinary business of life after fifty. His work was then done by the women and younger men; and his attitude was one of ease with dignity. In raids, however, and warfare, he was always ready to take an active part up to an advanced age (O’Donovan, p. 306).

606 O’Donovan, pp. 307, 308; Moser, pp. 330, 331.