CHAPTER XXIX

AMĪR NASRULLAH, A BOKHĀRAN NERO

In writing of the monkish Haydar’s successor, Vambéry appositely quotes an old Uïghūr proverb, “The princes of an age are its mirrors.”[485] Nasrullah Khān epitomised the vices which flourished unchecked in Bokhārā. The passion for low intrigue, the lust and cruelty, the self-righteousness and hypocrisy so often associated with the Mohammedan character, were found in him in their highest development.

As the third son of Haydar, he had small chance of succeeding to the throne; but he kept that goal constantly in view during his father’s lifetime, and paved the way thither by pandering to the greed of the military caste. No opportunity was lost of gaining adherents among the Amīr’s courtiers. Hākim Bi, the Kushbegi, or vezīr, and his father-in-law Ayāz Topchi-bāshi,[486] who held an important military command, were devoted to his interests.[487]

On Haydar’s death, his eldest son, Husayn Khān, took possession of the citadel of Bokhārā and was proclaimed Amīr. He received fervent assurances of loyalty from Nasrullah, who was the while actively plotting to subvert his authority, and who held a council of war at Karshī, at which Mū´min Beg Dādkhāh, one of Husayn’s chief lieutenants, assisted.

At this crisis he learnt that his brother had died suddenly after a reign of barely three months, and took immediate steps to assert his claims.[488] He obtained a legal decision in his favour from the chief-justice of Karshī, who also invited the clergy of Samarkand to espouse his cause. In the meantime another brother named `Omar Khān seized the reins of power at Bokhārā, and sent orders to the governor of Samarkand on no account to surrender his charge. But on Nasrullah’s arrival the gates were flung open to him by the influence of the mullās, and he was enthroned on the famous Blue Stone, or Kok-tāsh, whereon nearly every Amīr since Tīmūr’s reign had received investiture. Then began a triumphant progress throughout the realm. Katti-Kurgān, Kerminé, and other cities surrendered to the pretender, who replaced their governors by creatures of his own, and bade the former swell his train. Thus attended, he arrived before Bokhārā and closely invested the city. Starvation soon decimated its swarming population. A pound of meat sold for seven _tangas_,[489] flour was introduced through Nasrullah’s trenches in coffins, and the stench of stagnant water in the irrigation canals grew intolerable. The Kushbegi and his father-in-law Ayāz took advantage of the people’s agony to proffer their submission, and undertook to give the signal of capitulation by blowing up an ancient cannon, said to have weighed nearly thirteen tons.[490] On hearing the muffled roar of the explosion, Nasrullah immediately attacked the city from two quarters, and entered it in triumph on the 22nd March 1826. `Omar saved his life by instant flight, but three of his brothers, with many of their adherents, were butchered in cold blood.[491]

The policy with which Nasrullah inaugurated his reign partook of the ingrained cunning which was his chief characteristic. He seemed to prefer amusements to affairs of state, and thus induced the Kushbegi to believe that his own lease of power would be indefinitely prolonged. Meantime no occasion was lost of strengthening his hold on the lower classes by acts of apparent generosity and justice. The motto on his seal was that adopted by the noble-hearted Tīmūr, whom he affected to regard as his prototype. It was “Truth and Equity”![492] When he felt himself strong enough to throw off the mask, he banished his benefactor to Karshī, and afterwards to Samarkand. Ayāz Topchi-bāshi’s suspicions were lulled by ardent asseverations of friendship, lest he should make away with the vast possessions which Nasrullah had long marked as his own. He summoned the old man to his presence, gave him a beautiful horse, and aided him to vault into the saddle with his own royal hands.[493] The victim set out for Samarkand, of which he had been appointed governor, in the assurance that he had not participated in his son-in-law’s disgrace; but he was soon ordered back to Bokhārā, and thrown into prison with the Kushbegi. To Nasrullah’s eternal disgrace, he put both of these early friends to death in the spring of 1840. Then he turned his attention to the military class, which had attained preponderance in an empire won and kept together by the sword. They were butchered in large numbers without any form of trial, or banished to a distance from the capital. The clergy had been permitted by his bigoted predecessor to meddle in the affairs of state, and even the warrior-prince Ma´sūm had not ventured to thwart them. Nasrullah overturned their authority, and substituted his royal commands for the hitherto sacred injunctions of law and custom.[494]

His evil passions gained a complete mastery as he grew older. He gave full rein to the foulest lust, and neither rank nor sex were sacred in his eyes. His temper became utterly ungovernable. “When angry,” writes one who knew him well,[495] “the blood comes into his face and creates a convulsive action of his muscles; and in such fits he gives the most outrageous orders, reckless of consequences.” These spells of madness alternated with periods when he became a prey to the wildest suspicion. To gratify it, an army of spies was maintained, who were paid to report the most trivial words of those whom he believed to be disaffected.[496]

Our readers may well wonder why a tyrant of his mould was allowed to reign for more than a generation and to die in his bed. The key to the mystery is to be found in his attitude towards the populace, by whom he was idolised as their protector against the violence of the military class.[497] Juvenal, in lamenting the atrocities of a monster of the like nature, remarks that he did not perish until he came to be feared by the dregs of the people.[498]

His foreign policy was as perfidious as his domestic. He attacked Shahrisabz, a little state enclosed in his dominions, which had, like Holland, preserved its independence by the bravery of its people and their ability to lay the environs of their capital under water at an invader’s approach.[499] He was baffled, and Shahrisabz continued to be a thorn in his side during his long reign,--albeit that he endeavoured to gain a footing there by espousing the ruler’s sister. With Kokand he was more successful. That state was governed by Khān Mohammad `Alī, a prince descended in the female line from the great Baber, emperor of Hindustān, who had won glory by successes against the Chinese on his western frontier.[500] Thus he incurred Nasrullah’s jealousy, and his ruin was determined on. It was compassed by the aid of a Persian soldier of fortune named `Abd us-Samad Khān, who had fled his country after attempting to assassinate his master.[501] He knew how to cast and work cannon--engines of war which exercise an overwhelming influence on the Oriental mind; and commended himself to Nasrullah by military knowledge and an eagerness to pander to his worst vices. He became his _âme damnée_, even as the infamous “Azimulla” prompted every atrocity committed by Nana Sahib during the Indian Mutiny. The excuse for aggression was afforded by the frontier fortress of Pishagar, which Nasrullah declared had been erected by the Kokandis on his territory. Its destruction was peremptorily demanded; and, on Mohammad `Alī’s refusal to comply, it was attacked by a strong force, accompanied by a breaching battery under `Abd us-Samad’s command.[502] The mud walls of Pishagar were unable to resist the iron shower, and its surrender was followed in the succeeding year by that of Ura Teppe and of Khojend. The Khān of Kokand, seeing that the capital was in peril, sued for peace, and, by the treaty of Kohna Bādām, ceded Khojend and recognised the Bokhāran Amīr as his suzerain.

With the cunning which in the East passes for the highest manifestation of diplomacy, Nasrullah placed the newly conquered territory under the governorship of Sultan Mahmūd, a brother of the Khān of Kokand and a pretender to his throne. But hardly were these arrangements completed ere Mahmūd and his brother came to terms, and both Khojend and Ura Teppe were temporarily lost to Bokhārā. The wrath of the Amīr was unbounded. In April 1842 he took the field against Kokand with a host of 30,000 horsemen and regulars,[503] and 10,000 Turkoman mercenaries. He reached Khojend by forced marches, and captured that city without firing a shot, though it was defended by a garrison 15,000 strong.[504] Thence he moved rapidly on the capital and drove Mohammad `Alī to seek refuge in Marghilān. Here he was taken prisoner, dragged back to Kokand, and slaughtered with the greater part of his relatives.[505]

Nasrullah’s relations with Khiva were bitterly hostile throughout his reign; and he played into the hands of the common enemy, Russia, by harrying the Khān’s territory at a time when all his force was needed to oppose an expedition under General Perovski.

The petty states of Balkh, Andakhūy, and Maymana on the southern frontier were the objects of his constant aggression, and the mutual jealousy of Persia and Afghanistān allowed him to assume suzerainty over them. Thus the weakness of his neighbours turned to his advantage. He was hailed by his obsequious courtiers as king of kings, and firmly believed himself destined to repeat the conquests of his model, Tīmūr.

This was the man at whose gates knocked the two greatest of European Powers. England had watched the constant advance of Russia towards her Indian frontier with ill-concealed alarm, and in 1832 Alexander Burnes was despatched on an unofficial mission to Bokhārā. He accomplished nothing, and was fortunate indeed to escape from the bloodthirsty tyrant’s clutches.[506]

The next attempt made by England to establish friendly relations with the leading Central Asian Powers was less fortunate. Her agent was Colonel Stoddart of the Indian Army, a man utterly unfitted by training and temperament for a diplomatic mission.[507] His rude and overbearing manners gave the deepest offence to a despot accustomed to see all around him tremble at his slightest movement.[508] He was thrown into a loathsome dungeon, and languished there, with brief intervals of comparative liberty, till death put an end to his sufferings. In 1840 he received a companion in affliction in the person of Captain Arthur Conolly, whose gentle disposition and high culture rendered him equally unfit to cope with a truculent monster such as Nasrullah. He had been charged with the duty of uniting the Central Asian Khānates in an informal alliance against Russia--a task which their common jealousies rendered absolutely impossible. Thus his overtures were politely rejected by Khiva and Kokand in succession. Enticed by Nasrullah into his camp, he was seized, robbed of all his possessions, and sent to join poor Stoddart in captivity. In the meantime the Russians had begun to compete for Nasrullah’s favour.[509] Major Batanieff was despatched to Bokhārā in 1840 by the Tsar Nicholas, with orders to conclude a treaty of commerce and amity with the Amīr. He was received with ostentatious courtesy, and his presents found especial favour in Nasrullah’s eyes. But every attempt to arrive at a _modus vivendi_ was baffled by those excuses and procrastinations in which Oriental monarchs are past masters. He left in 1841, after vainly interceding for his rivals, who languished in daily expectation of death. Their fate was sealed by his departure and by the news of our disasters in Kābul.[510]

On the 17th June 1842 the unfortunate men were brought out to die. Stoddart, who had been forced to embrace Mohammedanism, was the first to suffer. When his head had been severed from his body the executioner paused, and Conolly had an offer made of life as the price of his apostasy. He scorned the bargain, and stretched out his neck to receive the fatal blow. This atrocious crime was never avenged by the country which had sent her sons forth to perish,[511] but for many years Bokhārā was a word full of evil associations in the English mind. It was undoubtedly prompted by the fiendish `Abd us-Samad, who lost no opportunity of gratifying his hatred of Europeans. Nor were Stoddart and Conolly Nasrullah’s only victims. A lust for blood seized him, and all who professed Christianity were proscribed. The missionary Wolff, who visited Bokhārā in 1844 in order to learn the two young officers’ fate, and if possible to procure their release, gives a list of seven Englishmen who were slaughtered at `Abd us-Samad’s instigation.[512]

Nasrullah’s closing years were embittered by conspiracies amongst his nobles; and his successor Mozaffar ud-Dīn was strongly suspected of having incited one of those movements, which was put down with much bloodshed.[513] He was maddened, too, by the repeated failure of his attempts to reduce Shahrisabz. On his deathbed, in 1860, he learnt that that last stronghold of independence had fallen to his conquering arm. His last act was to order the execution of its chief, who was his brother-in-law, and all his children, and his own wife, whose only crime was her relationship to the rebel, beheaded in his presence.[514]

Sayyid Mozaffar ud-Dīn Khān, who succeeded this monster of iniquity, had attained the mature age of thirty-eight on his death. He was the son of a Persian slave-girl, and at the age of fourteen was appointed governor of Karshī, the Dauphinée of modern Bokhārā.[515] That he lived to reign in his turn was due to his extreme circumspection, for he was swayed by the same vices as his father had been. His first care was to regain the confidence of the priestly caste, which had been alienated by the insane excesses of Nasrullah. Then, inspired by those dreams of universal conquest which had been the curse of his dynasty, he turned his attention to Shahrisabz, which continued in a state of revolt. Undeterred by his failure to reduce the stubborn mountaineers to subjection, he next attacked Kokand. That Khānate had fallen into the hands of Khudā Yār, a grandson of the murdered Mohammad `Alī, who had been brought up under Nasrullah’s eye in that gilded sty, the Bokhāran Court. He attained power at a period pregnant with danger to his country. The lower reaches of the Sir Darya were enclosed in the coil of the Russian advance. In 1853 the fortress of Ak-Mechet had fallen, and eleven years later the Eagle waved over Turkestān and Chimkent.[516] The onward movement was checked in 1864 by the failure of an assault on Tashkent; but Khudā Yār was foiled in his turn in a like attempt on Turkestān, and retreated to his capital only to find that the warlike Kipchāks,[517] a tribe who, then as now, were the backbone of the population, had set up a younger brother named Mollā Khān in his stead. Khudā Yār fled to Bokhārā and implored the Amīr to aid him to regain the throne. Mozaffar ud-Dīn saw in these events an excuse for extending his own authority up to the frontier of China. As a preliminary measure, he had Mollā Khān assassinated, and, marching on Kokand, reinstated Khudā Yār. The Kipchāks, however, were far from approving his choice. They rose in rebellion, and, after a protracted struggle with the Bokhāran forces, they succeeded in wresting the eastern half of the Khānate from Mozaffar ud-Dīn’s protégé.[518] But their strength was sapped by the war raging on the northern frontier, and their trusted leader was slain by the Russians at Tashkent. Thus when in 1865 the Bokhāran Amīr invaded Kokand, in order to repress their insolence, he found the task an easy one. Khudā Yār was replaced on his tottering throne, and, had Mozaffar ud-Dīn possessed a trace of political foresight, he might have united the forces of Central Asia against the common danger. But his lust for conquest was increased by his cheaply won successes in Kokand, and, spurred to his ruin by a fanatical priesthood, he flung the gauntlet of defiance in the teeth of Russia. Though General Chernaieff had made himself master of Tashkent, and had Kokand at his mercy, he received a haughty summons to evacuate his conquests, accompanied by a threat of a Holy War.[519] His reply was couched in language equally peremptory, and a struggle began which closed in the deep humiliation of the proud Amīr.

It remains for us to trace the origin of a Power which was destined to play a part of the first importance in the history of Central Asia, and to repeat the conquests of Chingiz and Tīmūr.