Among Zoroastrian burial items, there is a camel-shaped zoomorphic OSTADON lying there. It was found…
There are but a few photographs of the penultimate ruler of the Khanate of Kokand – Sayyid Muhammad Khudayar Khan (1832 – 1886).
The most famous is his photograph of 1871 – 1872 from the Turkestan album. Probably even then the fate of the Khanate of Kokand was predetermined, although the signing of the agreement on its final entry into the Turkestan Governor-Generalship, whose territory and peoples the album was dedicated to, happened only in 1876. Thus, the album got an image of the Khan of Kokand, but no pictures of the Khan of Khiva or the Emir of Bukhara – Russia also had to conclude peace treaties with them in 1872 and 1873.
Khudayar Khan, however, quickly left the political arena and was of no interest to photographers as a political figure. In 1875, as a result of an armed insurrection that broke out in the Khanate, he fled under the protection of the Russian authorities.
In 1876, he was escorted to Orenburg. From here he went on a long pilgrimage to Mecca, and while returning he died in Herat in 1886. There are no photographs of those of his subordinates who ruled the Emirate with him and survived its fall. But the photograph of the last Khan, who was proclaimed in 1875 by the rebels – Nasruddin Khan, was preserved. He was destined to put his signature in 1876 on the document on the Khanate of Kokand’s complete loss of its independence.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album “Uzbekistan in historic photographs of the 19th - early 20th centuries in the collections of Russian archives” (Volume XXXVII) in the series “Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan”.
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