Member of the Romanov dynasty, irrigator, entrepreneur, collector
18501918
A Romanov grand duke exiled from St Petersburg to Tashkent, who dug canals in the Hungry Steppe and built a palace and theatre in Tashkent; his art collection became the core of the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan.
Nikolai Konstantinovich was born in St Petersburg on 14 February 1850, a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I and the eldest son of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. A graduate of the General Staff Academy, he took part in the 1873 Khiva campaign, leading reconnaissance on one of the hardest routes across the Kyzylkum, and was decorated. In 1874, after a scandal over diamonds missing from his mother's icon, Alexander II had him declared insane — the only Romanov ever officially pronounced incompetent. After exile in several places he settled in Tashkent in 1881, taking the surname Iskander.
Tashkent and the Hungry Steppe
In Tashkent the grand duke became an energetic entrepreneur, opening cotton gins and other businesses and building the city's first cinema, the Khiva. At his own expense he dug irrigation canals in the Hungry Steppe: the first, the Bukhar-aryk, soon silted up, but the Khiva-aryk, later extended as the Emperor Nicholas I Canal, watered twelve thousand desyatinas between Jizzakh and Tashkent, where villages of Russian settlers grew up. In 1889–1891 he built a palace in central Tashkent to house his rich art collection, and he funded scholarships for young people from Turkestan. He died of pneumonia at his country house near Tashkent on 26 January 1918 and was buried beside a cathedral that was later demolished; his grave is lost.
The Romanov Palace
His palace near Amir Temur Square is one of Tashkent's handsomest historic buildings and today serves as the Foreign Ministry's house of receptions. His collection formed the nucleus of the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan, and the first irrigated lands and Russian settlements around today's Gulistan in the Hungry Steppe owe part of their history to him.
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.
