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From The Quarterly Review. |
CENTRAL ASIA.*

THE first two works on our list were issued before the late revival of excitement about Central Asian questions. The publication must, in each case, have been inspired by a happy prescience, or guided by singular good fortune.

Bokhara seems not to have been of much antiquity at the Mahommedan conquest. Moslem writers, cited by Vámbéry as asserting that the city's name meant in the language of the idolaters "a place of study," indicate its true origin. The site is said to have been a hollow covered with marshy jungle. Here, then, amid the reeds and wild-fowl, some pious Buddhist ascetics established their Vihára, just as the early monks of our own lands sat down amidst the fens of Ely or Glastonbury. It is interesting thus to trace in the name of Holy Bokhara a flood-mark, in the extreme north-west, of that strange influence of Hindu religion which has spread in an opposite quarter to far Japan and the Moluccas.

Of Professor Vámbéry's book, we cannot speak at such length as it might justly claim. It is the only history of Bokhara in existence; the narrative is maintained with surprising spirit; and the proportions assigned to each period are adjusted with great judgment, and free from prolixity. The author uses a variety of new Oriental sources, and introduces us to dynasties now named in an European book for the first time. They, indeed, as might be expected, are not the dynasties whose history affords the most attractive episodes. The attention must flag over the barren wars and bigotries of the later Uzbeg rule, till that rule reaches a climax of degradation in Nasrullah Khan, best identified to English readers as the unpunished murderer of Conolly and Stoddart, father of the present Amír Mozaffar, on whose unhappy head, as Professor Vámbéry re-space affords but one extract, which we marks, the ancient Hebrew proverb, that "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge," has found a rare and rapid completeness of verification. In the base reign of Nasrullah a new and vast power rises luridly on the horizon of Bokhara.

1. History of Bokhara, from the Earliest Period down to the Present. By Arminius Vámbéry. Lon

don, 1873.

2. A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. By Captain John Wood, Indian Navy. New Edition, edited by his Son. With an Essay on the Geography of the Valley of the Oxus. By Colonel Henry Yule, C.B. 1872.

3. Correspondence with Russia respecting Central Asia. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. 1873. Nos. 1 and 2. (Quoted below as A and B.)

4. Die Russen in Centralasien. Von F. v. Hellwald. Wien, 1869.

5. A General Report on the Yusufzais. By H. W. Bellew, Assistant Surgeon, Corps of Guides. Lahore, 1864.

6. Report on Peshawar District. By Major H. James, C.B. Lahore, 1871.

7. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Vol. XXVIII.: Notes on Kafiristan; and Vol. XXXI.: Account of Suwat, &c. By Captain H. G. Raverty.

We had selected for extract passages treating of the accession of the Amír Maasum (1784), and his invasion of Merv, because they touch characteristics of Central Asia; the pharisaic Islamism of Bokhara; the slaving raids, which are the scourge of the whole Khorasan frontier; the processes by which tracts of Asia, once fertile and populous, become the irretrievable prey of barrenness. But

take from a letter addressed to the Amír by Aga Mahommed Shah in 1797, and which contains a remarkable recognition of the national unity of the Turkish races :

Dost thou perchance wish to renew the old wars between Iran and Turan? For such a task thou art verily not sufficient. To play with the tail of the lion, to tickle the tiger in the ear, is not the part of a prudent man. Yet all men are descended from Adam and Eve, and if thou art proud of thy relationship to Turanian princes, know that my descent is also from the same. . We all of us owe thanks to God, the Almighty, that he hath given the dominion over Turan and Iran, over Rúm, Rús, China, and India, to the exalted family of Turk. Let each be content. . . . I also will dwell in peace within the ancient boundaries of Iran, and none of us will pass over the Oxus. - P. 355.

...

It is indeed a notable fact that for more than eight centuries at least, unless the anarchy that followed the death of Nadir Shah show a kind of exception, no dyInasty of other than Turanian blood has

reigned in Iran; nor, during that time, has any dynasty of Iranian blood held high power anywhere in Asia.

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disguises of the familiar Balkh and B1dakhshán; whilst we hardly recognize the Lion of the Panjáb under the form of Rendjit, or Naoshera (more strictly Nohshaira), the scene of his triumph over the Afghans, under that of Nutcherov.

The last chapter of the "History of Bokhara" is headed "Emir Mozafareddin and the House of Romanof." This gives a spirited sketch of Russian progress in Turkestan. Vámbéry, it need not be said, is no friend to Russian aggrandizement, but in this history he writes impartially and does full justice to Russian valour and enterprise.

The English of Vámbéry's work is far above the ordinary run of anonymous translations. There are some odd mistakes in it, but they evidently spring from the translator's want of familiarity with Oriental subjects, and not from defective knowledge of either German or English. Dr. Vámbéry gives us incidentally many curious etymologies. We are glad to believe him when he tells us that Mankbarni, the cognomen of Jalaluddín, the gallant king of Chorasmia, meaning "the Sniveller," is an error for Mangbardi, "the Heaven-sent." Still the meanings which he assigns to the names of the Tartar tribes are trivial enough. He considers the name of the great tribe of Kerait to have been a corruption of Kirit, Grey Dog." Manghit, the tribe to which the reigning house of Bokhara belongs, he interprets as "Sick Dog"! Kungrat, the race from which the Khans of Cathay used to select their handmaidens, according to that strange system of competitive marks described by Marco Polo, and still surviving as an Uzbeg clan, is "Chestnut Horse;" and Oirat, another tribe of great fame in the Mongol wars, is "Grey Horse." We hesitate when our author asserts the surname of Timour, Gurgán, as commonly written, to be properly Körcken, meaning "Handsome," and to be merely the name fo the particular family from which the conqueror was sprung. We have always understood the title Gurgán, to be a Mon- Afghanistan, as well as to the jaws of the gol term, meaning "Son-in-law," which was applied formally to chiefs espoused to ladies of the Great Khan's family, and which was bestowed on Timour because one of his wives was a daughter of the last Mongol emperor at Cambaluc. Hence he is called by the Chinese Timour Fuma, a term having the same application.

In General Duhamel's memorandum on a diversion against British India, recently published by the "Allgemeine Zeitung," on nothing is so much stress laid as on the necessity of Afghan alliance. And it was a just perception of this that led to our fatal enterprise of 1838. The importance attached to the Russian agency in that quarter was perfectly well founded, however disastrous the shape that our rulers gave to their consequent action. The third part of a centurythe measure of a generation — has passed since then, and great indeed has been the approximation of the two empires. The advance has not been all on the Russian side. In 1838 our frontier posts were on the left bank of the Sutlej, and of these Ferozpore alone was within 300 miles of the Indus. In 1873 the Indus and all its Indian tributaries are within our frontier, which practically extends to the foot of ' the Bolan Pass leading to Southern

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Khyber leading to Kábul. Russia was then at Orenburg; she is now at Samarkand; and her troops have been at Shahr Sabz. Roundly speaking the direct interval between Ferozpore and Orenburg was more than 1800 miles, that between Peshawar and Samarkand is less than 500.

We bow to Professor Vámbéry's Ozbeg, The history of the Russian advance without adopting a symbol that only puz-from the old frontier has been sketched zles an English reader; and we doubt in former numbers of this Review by the not he has reasons for writing Belkh and hand of a master. The last of these Bedakhshan (though why in the name of consistency not Bedekhshan?), but in an English book we protest against these

*See "Quarterly Review" for October, 1865, and October, 1863.

brought the narrative to the battle of Irjár and the capture of Khojand.

the territory from the Aral to the Thianshan and the Zungarian frontier. GenThe battle of Irjár, fought May 20th eral Kaufmann was selected for the new 1866, at a spot near the left bank of the government. The Amír in this interval Jaxartes between Tashkand and Khojand, made some half-hearted and futile atwas won by the Russians at very small tempts at negotiation, followed by recost; their friendly historian von Hell-newed hostilities. In May, 1868, the wald says, "Some dozens of wounded Russian advanced posts were at Tashwere the loss spoken of; "* but it was an Kopruk, or "the Stone Bridge," on one important day in the history of Central of the branches of the Zarafshán, or RivAsia. er of Samarkand. On the 13th the force The Amír of Bokhara there first came (about 8000 men and 16 guns) went forinto personal contact with Russian disci- ward. A vain attempt was made to stop pline, courage, and artillery; he had to them by a pretence of negotiations; but flee for his life, leaving his whole camp General Kaufmann paid no attention, equipage, guns, and material. It was dif- and the Zarafshán was crossed in the ficult to maintain illusions when Russian face of the Uzbeg batteries. The Amír's round-shot were bowling by him, and troops, amounting to some 40,000 men, Cossack spears pressing upon his crup- and posted most favourably, left their per; and, for the first time, the hard shell of arrogance and ignorance was pierced by some perception of his own ineffable weakness before the power that he had provoked. Vámbéry calls Irjár the Canna of Turkestan, but perhaps Plassey would be a happier parallel, not only in the results of the victory, but in the disparity of the victor's force and the insignificance of his losses. Khojand was stormed a fortnight later (6th June). The half of Khokand, with two out of its three most important cities, had now passed into the Russian empire, and the Khan held what was left him at the pleasure of the Czar; the Russians, therefore, had nothing to dread in rear of their advance to Bokhara. The Amír looked far and near for help in vain.

Count Dashkoff, who had succeeded to the command, advanced. The fortress of Uratippa was stormed on the 2nd October, 1866; and Jizzakh on the 18th. A pause followed, during which an imperial ukase [16th (28th) July, 1867] reconstructed the Russian administration in Central Asia, placing under one general government of Turkestan the whole of

* Yet this Austrian writer speaks of the "murderous fire" of the Amir's artillery, and says he was provided through English aid with excellent rifled cannon and Minié small-arms. It is strange that so intelligent a writer can be so credulous. He is surpassed, however, by the Petersburg Mir, which states that England is organizing Chinese troops in Western China to use against the Russians!- Times, March 29th.

guns and ran as soon as the Russians drew near. The gates of Samarkand were closed against the fugitives, but opened to the enemy.

The Amir's last attempt at resistance against the invaders was made (June 14) at Sirpúl, about sixty miles on the Bokhara side of Samarkand, ending, as usual, in the complete rout and dispersion of the Amír's forces and capture of their guns, and was followed by the peace which transferred to Russia all the Bokhara territory from Katte-Kurghán eastward, accompanied by a war indemnity and the fullest concession of commercial privileges.*

Simultaneously an episode occurred at Samarkand which reads like a repetition of events in India. Major von Stempel had been left behind in the old citadel with detachments amounting to 658 men including sick. A force brought by Jura and Baba Beg, the chiefs of Kitáb and Shahr Sabz, to the aid of Bokhara, and consisting of many thousands, after an attempt to decoy the garrison to a distance from the walls, with the treacherous connivance of the native officials, entered the city, and for eight days continued their assaults, by day and night, upon the very imperfect defences of the citadel. These were maintained in the most heroic and

We nowhere find a trustworthy statement of the

terms.

indefatigable manner, with heavy loss indeed (221 killed and wounded), but without parting with an inch of ground; and on the 20th June the return of General Kaufmann brought relief to this illustrious garrison.

in the jaws of Dis. Bokhara, already more than half devoured,

Che 'l capo ha dentro e fuor le gambe mena; Khokand, mutilated and still, but his head yet spared,

We may mistrust the objects of the Vedi come si storce, e non fa motto. conquering Russian, or feel that his interest and ours are hard to reconcile; Khiva, "che par sì membruto," the most but it is impossible to feel much compas-feels the "maciulla," the heckle of the bloated sinner of the three, even as he sion for the conquered Uzbeg. The memory of Conolly and Stoddart is mighty grinders closing upon him, calls enough to bar that. Nor surely can any up a show of the old insolence. Englishman read the details of Russian feats like this defence of Samarkand without a glow of sympathy, and the remembrance of many a parallel story on

Indian soil.

Not long afterwards the Amír had to seal his humiliation by calling in Russian aid to put down a rebellion which his heir, Abdul Malik Mirza, had raised, with the assistance of the chiefs of Shahr Sabz on the south of the Aksai mountains, which bound the valley of the Zarafshán. Karshi (November 1868), and, on a renewed occasion two years later, Shahr Sabz itself, the cradle of Timour,* were occupied by General Abramoff, but faithfully made

There is one particular name which haunts the geographical utterances of some of our daily teachers, as the case of King Charles I. hauated the memorials

of one of Mr. Dickens's eccentrics — it is the Bolor Dágh. At one time conviction dawns of the fact that this Bolor Dága belongs, like phlogiston or the primion mobile, to an obsolete system. But it is only for a moment; a few days pass, and we find our old friend the Bolor Dágh revived, like the "De'il that was deal in the old Scotch rhyme, and playing as important a part as ever.

The reality represented in some measure by this name of Bolor Dágh, conover to the Amír of Bokhara. demned to geographical oblivion by the Evidently, however, it rests with Rus-error and fiction with which it has got sia to advance her boundary to the Oxus inextricably connected, is the mountain when she thinks it for her advantage. mass on which lies the great plateau of M. Severtzoff and some other And in the recent correspondence be- Pamir. tween Lord Granville and Prince Gort- geographers give this mass the name of chakoff the probability of that advance Tsung-ling, applied to it by the Chinese seems almost frankly implied. from time immemorial, and which has That correspondence and the discus- perhaps as fair a claim to adoption as sions on it have brought up many names those of Kuen-lun and Thian-shan, which destined perhaps to be better known, but have long acquired all the rights of citheretofore little familiar. Nor has this izenship. But we shall adhere to the sudden revival of the Central Asian ques- name of Pamir as less outlandish. This tion in a new phase found some of our seems to be the "Mountain Parnassus most potent authorities of the press well of Aristotle, "the greatest of all that exup in their geography. To quote exam-ist towards the winter sunrise," from ples would be invidious, though it would be the best justification of our desire to devote the remainder of this paper to an attempt, aided by free use of the works before us, to sketch some of the main facts of the geography of the countries between the two empires, and especially of the tracts named in the recent correspondence.

We must limit our field, and do not intend to touch on the three great northern Khanates. Their fate seems fixed as that of the three sinners whom Dante beheld

This is the Sherri Yebst taken possession of by the Russians according to B. p. 51. One fancies at first that they had secured a butt of some famous dry vintage.

which flowed down Indus, Bactrus, Choaspes, Araxes, and other rivers of the largest size. To this the old Parsi traditions seem to point as the origin and nucleus of the Aryan migrations. And to this day it is a centre round which cluster in a very remarkable manner fragments of old Aryan nations. On this central boss of Asia the oldest Manommedan invaders would seem, by their identification with Gihon and Phison of the great rivers which descend from its sides, to have believed that the terresrial paradise was to be sought. This is the northern Imaus of Ptolemy, over which caravans passed to Serica for sik. And our most modern geographers con

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cur with Ptolemy in regarding this great | neutral name which our Indian travellers physical and political watershed as but a had already given it of Kizil Yart. prolongation of the great Himalya. To this day, thirty-five years after Captain it, the Pamir Steppe may be reckoned to Taking this sierra as the northern limWood's winter journey to one of the chief have a length of about 180 miles from sources of the Oxus on the Pamir pla- north to south, with a breadth of about teau, no second European has stood half. It rises at the highest part to 15,upon that upper story of the world; 600 feet above the sea, and seems to conand though native explorers have round-sist in the main of stretches of tolerably ed his data and extended route-measure-level ground, broken and divided by low ments across the whole breadth of the rounded hills, and in many places whitengreat watershed, it is still to that officer ed with salts, but interspersed with that we are indebted for the core and patches of willow and thorny shrubs, and spine of our geography of the Upper in summer with tracts of luxuriant grass, Oxus. We regret that Captain Alexan- the fattening properties of which have der Wood, in republishing his father's been extolled by various travellers from narrative, did not give us a regular biog- Marco Polo downwards. Many lakes, raphy of the author.* The slight sketch apparently shallow and varying in extent that he does present of his history, the with the season, are scattered over the charm of character which shines from surface. Deer (or some animal so called the narrative itself, and the high import-by native travellers) are numerous near ance and interest of his exploration mark him as one entitled to a permanent place among English worthies.

If we look to the Pamir plateau, properly so called, the whole drainage of its surface flows by various branches either to the Oxus, or to that great central drain of Eastern Turkestan which our maps call Tarim Gol, terminating in Lake Lob, a basin without outlet, of which we know but the name. The old tradition of the Chinese, based perhaps upon the apparent disproportion of this recipient to the vast amount of drainage directed towards it, has always regarded the Tarim as the veritable origin of the Hoang-ho, which was supposed to dive underground like a colossal Arethusa, and to reappear near the Chinese frontier. Neither Indus nor Jaxartes draws any supplies from the proper surface of the plateau, though the former is fed from its southern spurs, and the latter also may be regarded as receiving contributions from its northern counterforts in the upper valleys of Khokand. Strictly speaking, however, Pamir is divided from the Khokand mountains by another and lower plateau, called the Steppe of Alai. A vast sierra runs like a barrier wall from east to west between these two Steppes, rising in some glorious peaks to 25,000 feet above the sea. To this the eminent traveller Fedchenko, who first descried it from the north, has given from the Russian standpoint the name of Trans-Alai. To us, looking from India, it would be Cis-Alai or TransPamir, and it seems better to retain the

And surely a portrait of him in the good old fashion would have formed an apter and more valuable frontispiece than the horrid crocodiles that usurp that place.

the waters, and the great sheep to which Mr. Blyth gave the name of Ovis Poli, afseems to be found all over the plateau. ter the traveller who first mentioned it, According to one native traveller the wild yak, a characteristic animal of the higher Himalya, is also found on Pamir.

of Pamir rise high into the regions of To the eastward some of the offshoots eternal snow before dropping into the plains of Kashgar or the valleys of the Yarkand river and its tributa.ies. On these upper waters State, spoken of already as ancient in the a small secluded seventh century, had maintained itself in essential independence from time immemorial. Latterly it bore the name of Sarikol, or of Tashkurghán ("Stone Fort") from the wall of massive stone that girds its old capital. Much interest attaches to it as having been till the other day the one surviving community of Aryan race to the eastward of Imaus. In 1869 it was annexed by the present ruler of Kashgar; the representative of its ancient Tajik lords was driven out,* and the whole of his people were swept away to be replaced by Kirghiz herdsmen.

It

country which till very recently had been
Below this is Eastern Turkestan, a
for centuries rigidly inaccessible.
forms a great elevated basin, encircled,
except on the east, where the Great Gobi
shuts it in, by mountains among the high-
est in the world.
western parts of the basin, where the
The southern and
cities of Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar,
have existed from unknown dates, stand

*He appears, from an allusion in the Russian papers, to have found his way to Tashkand.

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