 | This article has an unclear citation style .(December 2016) |
| Russo-Khivan War of 1873 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Russian conquest of Turkestan | |||||||
 Russians forces entering Khiva, 1873 | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Russia |  Khanate of Khiva | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Alexander II K. von Kaufman | Muhammad II | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 13,000 troops | unknown | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 33 killed and 124 wounded [1] | 5,000+ killed | ||||||
In the Russo-Khivan War of 1873, Russia conquered the Khanate of Khiva, and it became a Russian protectorate.
Twice before, Russia had failed to subjugate Khiva. In 1717, Prince Bekovitch-Cherkassky marched from the Caspian and fought the Khivan army. The Khivans lulled him with diplomacy, then slaughtered his entire army, leaving almost no survivors. In the Khivan campaign of 1839, Count Perovsky marched south from Orenburg. The unusually cold winter killed most of the Russian camels, forcing them to turn back.
By 1868, the Russian conquest of Turkestan had captured Tashkent and Samarkand, and gained control over the khanates of Kokand in the eastern mountains and Bukhara along the Oxus River. This left a roughly triangular area east of the Caspian, south of the Aral Sea and north of the Persian border. The Khanate of Khiva was at the north end of this triangle.
In 1869, Fyodor Radetsky founded Krasnovodsk, which later became the headquarters of the Trans-Caspian Military District and the start of the Trans-Caspian railway. In March 1870, the decision was made to attack Khiva. Because Khiva was an oasis surrounded by several hundred miles of desert, this desert had to be mapped and waterholes found before armies could move. Mikhail Skobelev mapped a route from Krasnovodsk to the edge of the oasis, and Colonel Vasily Markozov later explored the area more thoroughly. Nikolai Lomakin explored the Mangyshlak Peninsula. In September 1872, Colonel Markozov started from Krasnovodsk and Chikishlyar; he planned to make a dash to Khiva, but was called back by the Viceroy of the Caucasus. In the east, Konstantin Kaufman sent parties into the desert south of the Syr-Darya.
In December 1872 the Czar made the final decision to attack Khiva. The force would be 61 infantry companies, 26 of Cossack cavalry, 54 guns, 4 mortars and 5 rocket detachments. Khiva would be approached from five directions. (1) General von Kaufmann, in supreme command, would march west from Tashkent and meet a second force moving south from (2) Fort Aralsk. The two would meet in the middle of the Kyzylkum Desert at Min Bulak and move southwest to the head of the Oxus delta. Meanwhile, (3) Veryovkin would go south from Orenburg along the west side of the Aral Sea and meet (4) Lomakin coming directly east from the Caspian Sea while (5) Markozov would march northeast from Krasnovodsk (later changed to Chikishlyar). The reason for this odd plan may have been bureaucratic rivalry. The governor of Orenburg had always had primary responsibility for Central Asia. Kaufmann's newly conquered Turkestan Province had many active officers, while the Viceroy of the Caucasus had by far the most troops.
The Aralsk force set out on 11 March 1873, then Kaufmann started from Jizzakh on 23 March. On 13 April, Kaufmann issued new orders: both forces would turn southwest, meet at Khala-Ata about 130 miles east of the head of the delta, then march west to the Oxus. The new route had not been mapped, a dangerous thing in the desert. On 6 May, the two forces met at Khala-ata, spent time resting and digging wells, then moved out on 12 May. On 17 May, they moved out with what they thought was a 3-day supply of water, but by nightfall the water was gone. A Kazakh found a small waterhole a few miles north, and the camels were sent back to bring a new load of water. By this time, so many camels were weak or dying that they had to abandon most of their supplies.
They reached the Oxus at Uch-Uchak on May 23. They silenced a Khivan battery at Sheik-Arik and spent three days crossing the river unopposed. Now on the populated side, Kaufmann announced that he would pay for any supplies, which he did, but if supplies did not appear he would take them by force. On June 4 he occupied the abandoned fort of Hazarasp and received a letter from the Khan offering terms and another message from Veryovkin who had just taken Kungrad. The campaign was now almost over except for the problem of the western armies. (Uch-Uchak is on the Oxus about 30 miles southeast of the start of the delta. Hazarasp is in head of the delta 50 miles northwest of Uch-Uchak. 30 miles west of Hazarasp is Khiva. Kungard is around 140 miles north-northwest of Khiva at the northwest corner of populated part of the delta, north of which there are marshes and then Lake Aral.)
Veryovkin was at the northwest corner of the delta and Kaufmann at the south corner, but it was not until June 4 and 5 that messengers brought them into contact. Veryovkin took command of Lomakin's troops and left Kungard on May 27, taking Khojali (55 miles south) and Mangit (35 miles southeast of that). Because of some firing from the village, Mangit was burned and the inhabitants slaughtered. The Khivans made a number of attempts to stop them. By June 7 he was on the outskirts of Khiva. Two days before he had learned that Kaufmann had crossed the Oxus. On June 9 an advanced party came under heavy fire and found that they had unwittingly reached the North Gate of the city. They took a barricade and called for scaling ladders, but Veryovkin called them back, intending only a bombardment. During the engagement Veryovkin was wounded in the right eye. The bombardment began and an envoy arrived at 4 p.m. offering capitulation. Because firing from the walls did not stop the bombardment was resumed and soon parts of the city were on fire. Bombardment stopped again at 11 p.m. when a message arrived from Kaufmann saying that the Khan had surrendered. The next day some Turkmen began firing from the walls, the artillery opened up and a few lucky shots smashed the gate. Skobelev and 1,000 men rushed through and were near the Khan's place when they learned that Kaufmann was peacefully entering through the West Gate. He pulled back and waited for Kaufmann.
The Khan, who had fled Veryovkin's bombardment, was called back and reinstated on June 14. On August 24, after messages were exchanged with Saint Petersburg, a treaty was signed. The Khan renounced diplomatic or military operations without Russian consent, abolished the Khivan slave trade and slavery, opened the Khanate to Russian merchants and the Oxus to Russian boats, and agreed to an indemnity of 2,200,000 rubles which would be paid in instalments until 1893. The Russians placed a garrison at Petroalexandrovsk east of Khiva. In October a strip of Khivan territory was given to Bokhara as a reward for the Amir's neutrality. In March 1874 a Trans-Caspian military district was created with its headquarters at Krasnovodsk. Khiva remained a Russian protectorate until the revolution.
The Yomud campaign: While negotiating with the Khan, Kaufmann attacked the Yomud Turkomans who lived on the southwest side of the oasis. According to MacGahan, [5] Kaufmann demanded an impossibly large tax and when the Yomuds fled he sent soldiers after them with a great deal of unnecessary slaughter. After the Yomuds were ruined other Turkoman tribes agreed to a similar large tribute.
Mikhail Dmitriyevich Skobelev, a Russian general, became famous for his conquest of Central Asia and for his heroism during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Dressed in a white uniform and mounted on a white horse, and always in the thickest of the fray, he was known and adored by his soldiers as the "White General". During a campaign in Khiva, his Turkmen opponents called him goz ganly or "Bloody Eyes".
Russian Turkestan was the western part of Turkestan within the Russian Empire’s Central Asian territories, and was administered as a Krai or Governor-Generalship. It comprised the oasis region to the south of the Kazakh Steppe, but not the protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva. It was populated by speakers of Russian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik.
Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufmann, was a military engineer and the first Governor-General of Russian Turkestan.
The Khanate of Khiva was a Central Asian polity that existed in the historical region of Khwarezm in Central Asia from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Afsharid occupation by Nader Shah between 1740 and 1746. Centred in the irrigated plains of the lower Amu Darya, south of the Aral Sea, with the capital in the city of Khiva. It covered present-day western Uzbekistan, southwestern Kazakhstan and much of Turkmenistan before the Russian arrival at the second half of the 19th century.
Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky, born Devlet-Girei-mırza, was a Russian officer of Circassian origin who led the first Russian military expedition into Central Asia.
Count Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky (1794–1857) was an Imperial Russian general and statesman.
The Chowdur or Choudor are one of the ten major groups of people who merged after 1920 to form the modern Turkmen Republic. They live primarily in and around the Khorezm Oasis.
The Uzboy was a distributary of the Amu Darya which flowed through the northwestern part of the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan until the 17th century, when it abruptly dried up, eliminating the agricultural population that had thrived along its banks..
The major modern Turkmen tribes are Teke, Yomut, Ersari, Chowdur, Gokleng and Saryk. The most numerous are the Teke.
The Yomut or Yomud is a Turkmen tribe that lives in Western and Central Asia, including Gorgan, Iran; Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan; the eastern Caspian shores; Khiva, Uzbekistan; and Dashoguz, Turkmenistan.
The First Battle of Geok Tepe was the main event in the 1879 Russian expedition against the Akhal Tekke Turkmens during the Russian conquest of Turkestan. Nikolai Lomakin marched 275 miles to the Geok Tepe fortress, but mismanaged the attack and was forced to retreat. The next year, this was reversed by Mikhail Skobelev in the second Battle of Geok Tepe.
The conquest of Central Asia by the Russian Empire took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. The land that became Russian Turkestan and later Soviet Central Asia is now divided between Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan across the center, Kyrgyzstan in the east, Tajikistan in the southeast, and Turkmenistan in the southwest. The area was called Turkestan because most of its inhabitants spoke Turkic languages with the exception of Tajikistan, which speaks an Iranian language.
The Russo-Khivan War of 1839–1840 was a failed Russian attempt to conquer the Khanate of Khiva. Vasily Perovsky set out from Orenburg with 5,000 men, met an unusually cold winter, lost most of his camels, and was forced to turn back after going halfway.
The Khivan Revolution was a communist revolution in 1917–1924 in the Khanate of Khiva, which led to the liquidation of the Khanate in Khiva, the establishment of the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic, and the subsequent inclusion of the republic into the USSR through national disengagement and the formation of the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR in 1924.
The Turkoman Revolt of 1912–1913 was a revolt by Yomud Turkomans against the Khanate of Khiva. Its causes lay in opposition to the taxation reforms of Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, which had resulted in the doubling or tripling of the amount of taxes the Yomud Turkomans needed to pay. It began on 12 December 1912 when rebels attacked and plundered a caravan heading from Tashauz to Takhta. After the revolt broke out, the Khivan government was split between pro-compromise and pro-war parties, of which the latter prevailed. The subsequent punitive expedition faced resistance from 300-500 rebel fighters led by Shammi-kel, who occupied a strongly fortified defensive position between Takhta and Ilyali and held the government forces off for 20 days. A Russian force under Colonel Lykoshin was then dispatched to Khiva to aid the government by providing munitions. Although his forces had not been defeated, Russia's support for Isfandiyar convinced Shammi-kel to seek peace with the government. In the peace agreement of 25 January 1913, mediated by Colonel Lykoshin, the Khivan government agreed to rescind the tax reforms, while the rebels agreed to pay 110,000 tillas to the Khivan government.
Isfandiyar Khan, or Asfandiyar Khan, born Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, was the Khan of Khiva between September 1910 and 1 October 1918, the 53rd Khan of Khiva, and the 12th Khongirad ruler of the Uzbeks. He was overthrown and executed by Junaid Khan in 1918.
The Turkoman Revolt of 1915 was a revolt by Yomud Turkomans against the Khanate of Khiva, which was at the time was ruled by Isfandiyar Khan. It was not supported by any of the Central Powers. Its causes laid in the arrest of a Yomut chieftain, Bakhshi Shah Murad. The revolt began in March 1915, and on 22 March a rebel army led by Djunaid-khan attacked the capital city, Khiva. An apparent pro-rebel Russian intervention to help Bakhshi Shah Murad escape arrest convinced Djunaid to renew the rebellion, and by 9 April several Khivan villages were under his control. In early June, Turkoman representatives were invited by Russia to join negotiations in a peace conference, but the distrustful chieftains halted 20 miles northwest of Khiva, where they were attacked by the Khan's forces on 7 June. The revolt ultimately ended when Russian Major General Geppener arranged a peace agreement on 30 June 1915, wherein the Khivan government promised to take steps to remove the causes of the Yomud Turkoman's discontent.
Junaid Khan ; (b.1857/62–1938) was a Turkmen tribal leader who became the Chief of the Armed Forces and later the de facto and last ruler of the Khanate of Khiva.
Fort Raim was a Russian military outpost at the mouth of the Syr Darya river with the Aral Sea, in modern-day Kazakhstan. Established in 1847 the fort was intended to form a new, fixed frontier of the Russian Empire. Its construction led to conflict with the Khanate of Khiva and the Khanate of Kokand. The fort allowed for exploration of the Aral Sea and a shipyard was built there to support a flotilla of vessels carried overland, these vessels explored the sea and nearby rivers and discovered numerous islands, previously unknown. Fort Raim proved an unhealthy and overcrowded post and was abandoned in favour of Fort No. 1, to the south-east, in 1855. The plan to fix the frontier on the barren steppe proved unworkable and Russia expanded further south and east into the fertile lands around Tashkent.
Khivan slave trade refers to the slave trade in the Khanate of Khiva, which was a major center of slave trade in Central Asia from the 17th-century until the annexation of Russian conquest of Khiva in 1873. The slave market in Khiva mainly trafficked slaves from Russia and Persia to the Islamic khanates in Central Asia.