Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/113

x U X U 101 a printed catalogue of four volumes, part of which was the work of Dr Johnson. In the recollection of the Harleian manuscripts, the Harleian library, and the Harleian Miscellany, the family name will never die. (w. p. c.) OXUS. This river rises in the lofty table-lands which are intercepted between the two great mountain ranges of central Asia, the Thian Shan and the Hindu Kush, in the region where they approach each other most closely. It flows westwards through a broad valley, receiving numerous affluents from the mountain ranges on either side ; then bending to the north-west it traverses the arid deserts of western Turkestan on the borders of Bokhara, descends into and fertilizes the rich oasis of Khiva, and finally disembogues at the southern extremity of the Sea of Aral. Its course is roughly parallel to that of its sister river the Jaxartes, which rises to the north of the Thian Shan water-parting, and disembogues at the northern extremity of the Sea of Aral. The name Oxus is that by which the river is mentioned in the writings of the ancient Greek historians. In the older traditions of the Parsi books it is named the Veh- riid, in some form of which originates the classical name which we find it most convenient to use, and also it may be presumed the names of various territories on the banks of its upper waters, such as Wakhan, Wakhsh, and Washgird, which are no doubt identical in formation, if not in application, with the classical Oxiani, Oxii, and Oxi-Petra. The classical names have long ceased to be known to the inhabitants of the country. In early Mohammedan history the river was usually styled Al-Nahr, whence the title Ma ward 1 Nahr, or " beyond the river," which came to be bestowed on a province of Persia lying to the north of tlis Oxus, and which in modern use has been rendered Transoxiana. In subsequent Mohammedan writings Al- Nahr gives place to Jaihun, corresponding to the Gihon of the Mosaic garden of Eden. And now the river is known by Asiatics as the Amii Daria, a name of which the origin is uncertain. 1 In the most remote ages to which written history carries us, the regions on both sides of the Oxus were subject to the Persian monarchy. Of their populations Herodotus mentions the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, and Saere as contributing their contingents to the armies of the great King Darius. The Oxus figures iu Persian romantic history as the limit between Iran and Turan, but the substratum of settled population to the north as well as the south was probably of Iranian lineage. The valley is connected with many early Magian traditions, according to 1 which Zoroaster dwelt at Balkh, where, in the 7th Sketch Map of the Oxus. century B.C., his proselytizing efforts first came into operation. Buddhism eventually spread widely over the Oxus countries, and almost entirely displaced the religion of Zoroaster in its very cradle. The Chinese traveller Hwen Tsang, who passed through the country in 630-644 A.D., fomd Termedh, Khulm, Balkh, and above all Bamian, amply provided with monasteries, stirpas, and 1 Natives of western India hold that it implies " mother" of rivers, in correlation with Abi-san or "father of rivers," a title which is frequently given to its great southern neighbour, the river Indus. colossal images, which are the striking characteristics of prevalent Buddhism ; even the Pamir highlands had their monasteries. Christianity penetrated to Khorasan and Bactria at an early date ; episcopal sees are said to have existed at Merv and Samarkand in the 4th and 5th centuries, and Cosmas (c. 545) testifies to the spread of Christianity among the Bactrians and Huns. Bactria was long a province of the empire which Alexander the Great left to his successors, but the Greek historians give very little information of the Oxus basin and its inhabitants. About 250 B.C. Tiieodotus, the " governor of the thousand cities of Bactria," declared himself king, simultaneously with the revolt of Arsaces which laid the foundation of the Parthian monarchy. The Grseco- Bactrian dominion was overwhelmed entirely about 126 B.C. by the Yuechi, a numerous people of Tibet who had been driven westwards from their settlements on the borders of China by the Hiongnu, the Huns of Deguignes. From the Yuechi arose, about the Christian era, the great Indo-Scythian dominion which extended across the Hindu Kush southwards, over Afghanistan and Sind. The history of the next five centuries is a blank. In 571 the Haiathalah of the Oxus, who are supposed to be descendants of the Yuechi, were shattered by an invasion of the Turkish khakan ; and in the following century the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang found the former empire of the Haiathalah broken up into a great number of small states, all acknowledging the supremacy of the Turkish khakan, and several having names identical with those which still exist. The whole group of states he calls Tukhara, by which name in the form Tokharistan, or by that of Haiathalah, the country continued for centuries to be known to the Mohammedans. At the time of his pilgrimage Chinese influence had passed into Tokharistan and Transoxiana. Yezdegird, the last of the Sasanian kings of Bokhara, who died in 651, when defeated and hard pressed by the Saracens, invoked the aid of China ; the Chinese emperor, Taitsung, issued an edict organizing the whole country from Ferghana to the borders of Persia into three Chinese administra tive districts, with 126 military cantonments, an organization which, however, probably only existed on paper. In 711-12 Mohammedan troops were conducted by Kotaiba, the governor of Khorasan, into the province of Khwarizm (Khiva), after subjugating which they advanced on Bokhara and Samarkand, the ancient Sogdiana, and are said to have even reached Ferghana and Kashgar, but no occuption then ensued. In 1016-25 the govern ment of Khwarizm was bestowed by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni upon Altuntash, one of his most distinguished generals. Tokharistan in general formed a part successively of the empires of the Sasanian dynasty of Bokhara (terminated 999 A.D. ), of the Ghaznavi dynasty, of the Seljukian princes of Persia and of Khorasan, of the Ghori or Shansabanya kings, and of the sultans of Khwarizm. The last dynasty ended with Sultan Jalal-ud-din, during whose reign (1221-31) a division of the Moghul army of Jenghiz Khan first invaded Khwarizm, while the khan himself was besieging Bamian ; Jalal-ud-din, deserted by most of his troops, retired to Ghazni, where he was pursued by Jenghiz Khan, and again retreating towards Hindustan was overtaken and driven across the Indus. The commencement of the 16th century was marked by the rise of the Uzbek rule in Turkestan. The Uzbeks were no one race, but an aggregation of fragments from Turks, Mongols, and all the great tribes constituting the hosts of Jenghiz and Batu. They held Kimduz, Balkh, Khwarizm, and Khorasan, and for a time Badakhshan also ; but Badakhshan was soon won by the emperor Baber, and in 1529 was bestowed on his cousin Suliman, who by 1555 had established his rule over much of the region between the Oxus and the Hindu Kush. The Moghul emperors of India occasionally interfered in these provinces, notably Shah Jehan in 1646 ; but, finding the difficulty of maintaining so distant a frontier, they abandoned it to the Uzbek princes. About 1765 the wazir of Ahmed Shah Abdali of Cabul invaded Badakhshan, and from that time until now the domination of the countries on the south bank of the Oxus from Wakhan to Balkh has been a matter of frequent struggles between Afghans and Uzbeks. The Uzbek rule in Turkestan has during the last twenty years been rapidly dwindling before the growth of Russian power. In 1863 Russia invaded the Khokand territory, taking in rapid succes sion the cities of Turkestan, Chemkend and Tashkend. In 1866 Khojend was taken, the power of Khokand was completely crushed, a portion was incorporated in the new Russian province of Turkestan, while the remainder was left to be administered by a native chief almost as a Russian feudatory ; the same year the Bokharians were defeated at Irdjar. In 1867 an army assembled by the amir of Bokhara was attacked and dispersed by the Russians, who in 1868 entered Samarkand, and became virtually rulers of Bokhara. In 1873 Khiva was invaded, and as much of the khanate as lay on the right bank of the Oxus was incorporated into the Russian empire, a portion being afterwards made over to Bokhara. Russia acquired the right of the free navigation of the Oxus throughout its entire course, on the borders of both Khiva and Bokhara. The administration of the whole of the states on the right bank of the Oxus, down to the Russian boundary line at Ichka