The Qungrat khan who ruled Khiva from 1864 to 1910, a poet and composer who wrote as Feruz. His reign saw translation, book production and music flourish in Khorezm, and the opening of Central Asia's first lithographic press.
Sayyid Muhammad Rahim Bahadur Khan II was born in Khiva in 1845 (some sources say 1847) and studied at the Arab Muhammad Khan madrasa, where one of his teachers was the poet and historian Ogahiy. He succeeded his father, Said Muhammad Khan, in 1864. When Russian troops under General Kaufman took Khiva in 1873, the Treaty of Gandimian made the khanate a Russian protectorate and stripped the khan of an independent foreign policy; at Russia's demand slavery and the slave trade were abolished. The khan later received senior Russian military ranks while keeping control of internal affairs. He died in 1910 and was succeeded by his son Isfandiyar Khan.
Feruz the poet and patron
Muhammad Rahim Khan wrote ghazals under the pen name Feruz and composed music. He gathered poets, calligraphers, musicians and translators at court; according to the sources more than a hundred works, mostly Persian, were translated into Turkic in his time. In 1874, under his patronage, Otajon Abdalov opened Central Asia's first lithographic press, whose early books included Navoi's Khamsa and the divan of Munis. A special “tanbur notation” was also devised to record the Khorezmian maqom. Ogahiy, Kamil Khorezmi, Bayani and other poets belonged to his literary circle.
His traces in Khiva
The Muhammad Rahim Khan Madrasa in Itchan Kala, facing the Kunya Ark, was built in his name in 1871 and now holds an exhibition on Khiva's khans and poets. Outside the walls stands the Nurullabay Palace, built under him and his son Isfandiyar Khan in the early 20th century. Together they evoke the Khiva of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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.
