A Jadid enlightener from Turakurgan in Namangan Region, a polyglot traveller and scholar who opened one of the first printing presses in the Fergana Valley. He died in prison in 1937.
Is'hoqxon, son of Junaydullakhoja, who wrote as Ibrat, was born in 1862 in the village of Turakurgan near Namangan into an educated family: his grandfather Turakhon Makhdum was a qadi of the Kokand khanate and a poet writing as Afsus, and both his parents were literate. He studied at the local madrasa and then in Kokand, and in 1886 opened a new-method school back home. In 1887 he took his mother on the pilgrimage and then travelled for nine years — Jerusalem, Damascus, Istanbul, Sofia, Athens, Rome, Baghdad, Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Afghanistan; he lived in Bombay and Calcutta in 1892–1896 and returned home via Kashgar in 1896, having learned Arabic, Persian, Hindi, English and other languages.
Scholar and publisher
Ibrat wrote a six-language dictionary, published in 1901; “Jomi' ul-khutut” (1912), on the history of the world's scripts and calligraphy; and a “History of Fergana” (1912–1913) covering Central Asia and the Khanate of Kokand. In 1908 he bought a lithographic press in Orenburg, brought it by train to Kokand and then by camel to Turakurgan, and set up the Matbaai Is'hoqiya press in his courtyard. His poems and articles appeared in Behbudiy's journal Oyina and elsewhere. In 1937 he was arrested for “anti-Soviet propaganda” and that April, aged 75, died in prison in Andijan; his burial place is still unknown.
The memorial complex in Turakurgan
His works were republished after independence, and on 3 May 2018 a memorial complex opened in Turakurgan with a museum, garden, alley, printing workshop and his statue; a film about him followed in 2020. A few dozen kilometres from Namangan, it makes a good stop for discovering Jadid history in the Fergana Valley.
From 9 May to 17 June 1865 General Mikhail Chernyayev's troops besieged Tashkent, then part of the Khanate of Kokand. Alimqul, Kokand's de facto ruler, was killed leading the defence, and the city passed to the Russian Empire. In 1866, at war with the Emirate of Bukhara, Russian forces took Khujand, Ura-Tyube and Jizzakh. In 1867 the Governorate-General of Turkestan was created with its seat in Tashkent, headed first by General Konstantin von Kaufman. A new European-style Russian town grew up beside the old city, and Tashkent became the region's administrative centre.
Samarkand falls and Bukhara becomes a protectorate
In May 1868 Kaufman's troops defeated the army of Emir Muzaffar of Bukhara on the Chupan-Ata heights and entered Samarkand. In June, while the main force crushed the emir again at Zirabulak, the small garrison left in Samarkand's citadel was besieged by townspeople and the forces of the Shakhrisabz begs; among the defenders was the painter Vasily Vereshchagin. Under the peace signed at the end of June, Samarkand and Kattakurgan passed to Russia as the Zeravshan District, and the Emirate of Bukhara became a Russian protectorate. Vereshchagin's Turkestan series, including scenes of the siege, hangs in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery.
In spring 1873 several Russian columns under the overall command of General Kaufman crossed the deserts from different directions into Khorezm, and at the end of May Khiva surrendered without a fight. Under the Treaty of Gandimian, signed in August, Muhammad Rahim Khan II kept his throne but lost the right to conduct foreign policy without Russian consent; the slave trade and slavery were abolished and a heavy indemnity imposed. The right bank of the Amu Darya, most of today's Karakalpakstan, passed to Russia as the Amu Darya Department, administered from the fort of Petro-Alexandrovsk, now Turtkul. Khiva survived as a protectorate until 1920.
In 1873 a broad revolt against Khudayar Khan's heavy taxes swept the Fergana Valley, led by a pretender known as Pulat Khan. In 1875 Khudayar was overthrown and fled to Russian territory, and the rising turned against Russia. Troops under General Kaufman and Mikhail Skobelev occupied the valley, and in February 1876 an imperial decree abolished the khanate, replacing it with Fergana Oblast. A new administrative centre, New Margelan, was built — later renamed Skobelev and, from 1924, Fergana. Khudayar Khan's palace in Kokand now houses the regional museum.
Built eastward from the Caspian shore under General Mikhail Annenkov, the Trans-Caspian Railway reached Samarkand via Bukhara (Kagan) in 1888. Trains first crossed the Amu Darya on a wooden bridge; a permanent one was completed only in 1901. In 1898 the line was extended to Tashkent and Andijan, and the opening of the Tashkent–Orenburg railway in 1906 linked Central Asia directly with central Russia. The railway boosted cotton exports dramatically, and new settlements grew around stations such as Kagan and Khavast and in the Russian quarters of towns like Jizzakh. The old station buildings of Kagan and Samarkand recall the era.
On the night of 29 May 1898 some 1,500 armed men led by the Naqshbandi sheikh Muhammad Ali Madali, known as Dukchi Ishan, attacked the Russian army camp at Andijan. The rising fed on resentment of colonial rule, taxation and land policy, as well as on religious appeals. The troops quickly recovered and beat off the attack, and within days the revolt was crushed. Dukchi Ishan and other leaders were executed, many participants exiled and their villages punished. The episode pushed the authorities to tighten control over Muslim institutions in Turkestan.
