Notes on the Present State of the Khanate of Khiva by the Head of the Amu-Darya Department Colonel Nil Lykoshin, 1912 Edited, Translated and Annotated by Ulfat Abdurasulov, 2024
This book presents a textual edition and English translation of an important historical source ab... more This book presents a textual edition and English translation of an important historical source about the Khanate of Khiva. The text was written in 1912 by N.S. Lykoshin (1860–1922), a Russian colonial officer and renowned Orientalist. In his capacity as Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department (ADO), an administrative-territorial unit within the Turkestan Governor-Generalship, Lykoshin was tasked with overseeing affairs in the Khanate of Khiva, which since the Russian takeover of 1873 had been a Russian protectorate. During his tenure as ADO Commandant, Lykoshin produced a detailed administrative survey of the Khanate, comprising a rich bricolage of statistical data, ethnographic sketches, and travel notes replete with elements of novelistic playfulness. As such, the work represents one of the most detailed accounts of the Khivan Khanate to survive from the colonial era. The editor’s introduction further leads the reader through the intricate world of contemporary Khiva – from institutional history to courtly politics, and even to contract-style assassinations and backroom intrigues. The textual edition of the work has been prepared on the basis of the only known manuscript, which is held in the National Archive of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.
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tribes in a combination of structural processes and personality factors. The unclarified legal status of the Khivan Khanate under Russia’s control – neither a part of the empire nor an autonomous protectorate – produced the structural situation of strategic relativism. The unstable equilibrium was maintained by a complex balance of quid pro quo relationships among the central government in St. Petersburg, the local colonial authorities, the court of the Khiva khan, and the chiefs of various Turkmen tribes on the khanate’s territory. A compact Russian military garrison stationed not far from the khanate’s borders played rather a symbolic role. All sides tried to exploit the ambivalent situation to their advantage, while growing increasingly dissatisfied with the old system of multiple compromises.
The delicate balance was radiсally upset in 1914 with the appointment of Colonel Vladimir Kolosovskii as the official in charge of Russia’s relationships with the khanate of Khiva. He disrupted the decades-old system of imperial control in the region by introducing modern forms of administration through political mobilization of various constituencies. Striving to demote the status of the khanate to that of a formal colony in the absence of any new decisive diplomatic agreements or legal norms, he pitched the Turkmen against the khan, the khan against the Russian businessmen in Khiva, and St. Petersburg against the khanate. Pursuing personal enrichment along the way, he eventually helped the political crisis to evolve into a major disaster with a tremendous death toll.
the article is available on the following eprint link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/fz3QnxS84AmJeiGRpKCY/full
tribes in a combination of structural processes and personality factors. The unclarified legal status of the Khivan Khanate under Russia’s control – neither a part of the empire nor an autonomous protectorate – produced the structural situation of strategic relativism. The unstable equilibrium was maintained by a complex balance of quid pro quo relationships among the central government in St. Petersburg, the local colonial authorities, the court of the Khiva khan, and the chiefs of various Turkmen tribes on the khanate’s territory. A compact Russian military garrison stationed not far from the khanate’s borders played rather a symbolic role. All sides tried to exploit the ambivalent situation to their advantage, while growing increasingly dissatisfied with the old system of multiple compromises.
The delicate balance was radiсally upset in 1914 with the appointment of Colonel Vladimir Kolosovskii as the official in charge of Russia’s relationships with the khanate of Khiva. He disrupted the decades-old system of imperial control in the region by introducing modern forms of administration through political mobilization of various constituencies. Striving to demote the status of the khanate to that of a formal colony in the absence of any new decisive diplomatic agreements or legal norms, he pitched the Turkmen against the khan, the khan against the Russian businessmen in Khiva, and St. Petersburg against the khanate. Pursuing personal enrichment along the way, he eventually helped the political crisis to evolve into a major disaster with a tremendous death toll.
the article is available on the following eprint link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/fz3QnxS84AmJeiGRpKCY/full
https://seeinglikeanarchive.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/sud-v-bukhare-sudoustroistvo-i-sudoproizvodstvo-v-bukharskom-emirate.pdf
The present conference is designed to explore such a middle-ground approach by taking the Caspian Sea and its surrounding environment as point of departure for historical explorations and comparisons. In doing so, the proposed event sets out to to open up new academic vistas on the Caspian littoral as a vibrant, sprawling and very much incoherent socio-cultural unit. We welcome papers which pay sustained attention to the critical foundations of connectivity in the Caspian world and equally reflect on particularity, fragmentation, friction and resistance in the early modern and modern period.
https://authorityinislamblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/authority-in-islam-in-muslim-eurasia-workshop-program/
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/iran/german/symposium_nadir%20shah.html
In 19th-century Khorezm, the dynamics of power relations under the rule of the Qongrads brought about a unique situation in which subjects more often than not turned to the royal court to solve their conflicts. By reacting to the pleas addressed to the khan, Khivan authorities pursued a direct involvement in the settlement of disputes: the khan thus dispatched official representatives to the place of conflict and compelled the parties to reconcile (sāf).
The significant output of the Khivan chancellery in the early 20th century, i.e. in the period in which Khorezm became a Russian protectorate, allows us to shed light on such a system of conflict resolution. Besides, assessing the output of the chancellery invites us to pause to reflect on the process of bureaucratization to which legal practices in Khiva underwent in the wake of the establishment of the Russian protectorate.
In this paper I would like to tackle the following questions: what were the record-keeping practices that incarnated dispute settlement in Khiva? What documentary culture informed the production and preservation of texts reflecting practices of conflict resolution? How did such a new bureaucratic experience the institutions as well as the actors involved in the power field of conflict resolution?
В основу доклада положены материалы переписки между известными советскими иследователями-медиевистами Александром Николаевичем Болдыревым (1909-1993) и Ольгой Дмитриевной Чехович (1912-1982), затрагивающие оценку роли и личности Хваджа ‘Убайдуллаха Ахрара (ум. в 1490) - известного накшбандийского шейха второй половины XV в. в Мавераннахре, активно участвовавшего в разрешении политических конфликтов между Тимуридами и, как отмечается в некоторых источниках, активно «отстаивавшего шари‘ат при дворах султанов».
Негативная оценка фигуры и деяний Хваджа Ахрара (далее – ХА) в большинстве публикаций советского времени обязательно включали в себя такие расхожие маркеры-клише советской историографии как «шейх-магнат», «политический интриган» или «хищник-эксплуататор». Эта традиция некоторой «демонизации» фигуры ХА, в частности, была продолжена в монографии и ряде публикаций ташкентского медиевиста О.Д. Чехович, характеризующей его в качестве «мрачного гения Самарканда» и «активного пособника феодальных правителей».
В начале 80-х гг., однако, намечается «переоценка» социального, экономического и политического статуса ХА. Одним из инициаторов этой «реабилитации» стал ленинградский востоковед А.Н. Болдырев, артикулировавший свою позицию с трибун всесоюзной конференции «Бартольдовские чтения-1982», а позднее оформивший в виде публикации, вышедшей в свет в 1985 г.
Как показывают материалы многолетней личной переписки двух ученых, значительная ее часть посвящена собственно обсуждению ревизии статуса ХА в истории Мавара’ан-нахра и соседних регионов. Характер личных отношений и высокая степень доверительности авторов писем, как представляется, позволяли им быть гораздо более открытыми и решительными в изложении своих аргументов и позиций относительно личности Хваджа Ахрара. В частности, осторожные аргументы А. Болдырева о роли месте ХА и «прогрессивном характере» его деятельности, артикулируются в его письмах гораздо более однозначно. Примечательно, что несмотря на то, что оба исследователя зачастую аппелируют к одному и тому же источниковому материалу, каждый из них находит совсем иную интерпретацию и аргументацию своих позиций, благодаря чему их мнения полярно различаются.
В целом, материалы данной переписки в призме дискуссии о личности Хваджа Ахрара, именно как религиозного лидера, усложняют картину реальных взглядов и подходов «носителей идеологии» советского востоковедения. Более того, религиозность (или неоспоримый религиозный статус) исторической личности не выступают препятствием в поиске иных (или, согласно расхожему определению того времени – «объективных») определений в оценке его деятельности.
The centralization policy of the Qungrats, the dynasty that came to power in Khiva at the turn of the 18th and 19th century, brought about a number of shifts in governance of the contact zones between the oasis itself and the
steppes. This study examines the various strategies that the first Qungrat rulers developed to shape a new political landscape in the northern provinces of Khorezm (the so-called Aral region) as well as in the south- western fringes of the oasis, which were inhabited by various Тurkmen clans (Northern Khorasan). On the basis of two case-studies, the paper traces the Qungrats’ mental-mapping and illustrates their strategies to situate the geography of Khorezm in a wider spatial context which included the Turkmen deserts in the south and the Qazaq steppe in the north
Посылаю тебе, Постум, эти книги.
Что в столице? Мягко стелют? Спать не жестко?
Как там Цезарь? Чем он занят? Все интриги?
Все интриги, вероятно, да обжорство ..
(И.Бродский, «Письма римскому другу»)
Исследование основано на материалах личной переписки известных востоковедов и историков-медиевистов — Ольги Дмитриевны Чехович (1912–1982) и Елены Абрамовны Давидович (1922–2013). Знакомство Елены Давидович и Ольги Чехович, очевидно, состоялось в период жизни обеих в Ташкенте (в середине 1940-х гг.) и впоследствии, переросло в близкую дружбу, которая, судя по контексту писем, поддерживалась и после переезда Е.А. Давидович из Ташкента (первоначально в Душанбе, а позднее, в начале 1970-х гг., в Москву). Эта переписка является частью личного архива Ольги Чехович и включает 116 посланий, отправленных ей Еленой Давидович в период с 7 марта 1956 года до 2 декабря 1981 года. На ее основе я намереваюсь показать круг обсуждаемых в переписке деловых и бытовых вопросов, проследить характер выстариваемых горизонтальных взаимоотношений и нетворков в академической среде того времении и воссоздать, хотя бы в незначительной степени, контуры того интеллектуального пространства, которое формировалось советским исследователем на периферии.
In 1807 the recently enthroned Qongrat ruler of Khorezm, Muhammad Rahim Khan (r. 1806—1825), set out from Khiva on the first of a series of military campaigns to subdue and conquer his northern neighbors in the region of the Aral Sea. The results of these expeditions would set in motion a structural transformation of the Qongrat khanate of Khiva, projecting the burgeoning regional power from the middle reaches of the Amu Darya into the very different human geography of the Aral Sea littoral. In this presentation, I will consider how the Aral region functioned as a frontier zone first, and then as a newly-incorporated territory within the Qongrat state, and how the Qongrat rulers set about integrating the Aral region into their polity. This is the story of how a desert polity of modest resources embarked on an ambitious state-building project in the harshest regions of its periphery and rendered that space understandable by an aspiring imperial capital in Khiva.