Merv, the Queen of the
World;
and the Scourge of the Man-stealing Turcomans. With an
Exposition of the Khorassan Question:
By Charles Thomas Marvin, Published by W.H. Allen, 1881
CHAPTER III. THE ORIGIN OF THE Turkmen.
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE MINOR TRIBES.
Page 39
- Page
40 - Page 41
- Page
42 - Page 43
- Page
44 - Page 45 - Page 46
- Page
47 - Page 48
- Page
49 - Page 50
- Page
51 - Page 52
- Page
53 - Page 54
- Page
55 - Page 56
- Page
57 - Page 58
- Page
59 - Page 60
- Page
61 - Page 62
- Page
63 - Page 64
Page 45
SLAVES IN CENTRAL ASIA. 46
perhaps, because the nomads did not mind obeying a
sovereign springing from their own race, and partly
because he was a mighty warrior. At the close of the last
century Aga Mohamed also carried the sword of Persia into
their country, in a manner that tamed them for a while;
but since then, if we except Abbas Mirza's subjugation of
Sarakhs in 1832, Persia has done little or nothing to
teach the Turkmen
obedience, while her military reputation completely
collapsed with the capture of 20,000 of her best troops
by 5,000 Tekkes in 1861.
During the independent existence of
Khiva and Bokhara, both those states managed to make
their power felt among the Turkmen,
not so much by the sword as by the fact that they
afforded the nomads the only market for their slaves and
plunder, and could, in some instances, by refusing to
allow certain obnoxious clans to enter their boundaries
to purchase provisions, reduce them almost to a condition
of starvation. In Abbott's time (1840) it was calculated
that there were 700,000 slaves in Khiva, of whom 30,000
were Persians, captured and sold by the Tekke and Yomud Turkmen.
When Wolff visited Bokhara in 1844, there were 200,000
Persian slaves in the khanate. It is obvious that while
the Turkmen
had no interest in keeping on friendly terms with Persia,
from which country they derived their slaves, they had
the strongest reasons for maintaining friendship with the
khanates of Khiva and Bokhara, where alone they could
sell them.
At the same time quarrels did occasionally occur between
the Turkmen
and the Uzbek states, chiefly from the exactions of the
khans, and their
Page 39
- Page
40 - Page 41
- Page
42 - Page 43
- Page
44 - Page 45 - Page 46
- Page
47 - Page 48
- Page
49 - Page 50
- Page
51 - Page 52
- Page
53 - Page 54
- Page
55 - Page 56
- Page
57 - Page 58
- Page
59 - Page 60
- Page
61 - Page 62
- Page
63 - Page 64
|