ANŪŠA MOḤAMMAD B. ABU’L-ḠĀZĪ, ABU’L-MOẒAFFAR, Khan of Ḵīva 1074-98/1663-87. Anūša Moḥammad inherited his father’s rule in Ḵīva when the latter stepped aside in order to write history, study religion, and combat Kalmuk Mongol pagans and Iranian heterodoxy. Anūša’s first move was to reestablish relations with the Turkmen tribes that had been alienated by Abu’l-Ḡāzī’s reliance on the Uzbeks. This manipulation of tribal enmity, characteristic of 11th/17th-century Khwarazmian politics, was designed in part to reopen the trade route, that ran from Ḵīva to the Caspian via Turkmen territory on the Manqešlāḡ peninsula. Though Anūša Moḥammad’s forces continued to include some Uzbeks, he campaigned steadily against Bukhara, the Uzbek stronghold and chief Khivan trade rival. He also sought good relations with the Russians at Astrakhan, the port of entry for most Indian, Persian, and Bukharan goods. Until the Siberian routes were functioning in the 1680s Chinese goods moved along the same roads. Several times between 1676 and 1687 the khan asked the Russians to consider construction of a fortified trading center at Karagan, the Manqešlāḡ anchorage where the Russian boats called from Astrakhan. He offered them significant customs revenues in return for security from the cossacks, the Turkmen, and the Kalmuks. The Mongols regularly blocked the “dry” or steppe route from Ḵīva to Astrakhan, which would otherwise have been preferred by Central Asian traders because of the greater volume that it could carry. For the time the Russians declined the invitation to establish a presence; Khivan relations with them remained vigorous but evidently not lucrative enough to still the urge for the quick wealth to be had by attacking Bukhara. It was Anūša Moḥammad’s persistence in the latter enterprise that finally cost him his rule. Upon his return to Ḵīva from a foray in 1687, he was deposed by his Uzbeks, who had conspired with the Bukhara khan, Subkhan Qoli . They claimed that Anūša Moḥammad had neglected the Kalmuk menace that, not incidentally, hampered Bukharan trade as well. The Bukharans first supported Anūša Moḥammad’s son, Erengh Sultan , but murdered him in 1691. This extinguished the line established by Ḥāǰǰī Moḥammad Khan in Ḵīva and Organǰ at the close of the sixteenth century.
See also Abu’l-Ḡāzī Bahādor Khan.
Bibliography:
A. N. Kononov, Rodoslovnaya turkmen, sochinenie Abu-l-Gazi khana khivinskogo, Moscow, 1958.
Materialy po istorii Turkmen i Turkmenii I, VII-XV vv., Arabskie i persidskie istochniki; pod red. S. L. Volina, A. A. Romaskevicha i A. Iu. Iakubovskogo, Moscow and Leningrad, 1939; II, XVI-XIX vv., Iranskie, bukharskie, i khivinskie istochniki; pod red. V. V. Struve, A. K. Borovkova, A. A. Romaskevicha i P. P. Ivanvova , 1938.
Materialy po istorii Uzbekskoĭ, Tadzhikskoĭ i Turkmenskoĭ SSR, chast’ 1, Torgovlya s Moskovskim gosudarstvom i mezhdunarodnoe polozhenie Sredneĭ Azii v XVI-XVII vv., Trudy istoriko-arkheograficheskogo instituta i instituta vostokovedeniya AN SSSR, Materialy po istorii narodov SSSR, vyp. 3, Leningrad, 1932.
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Eskandar Beg as excerpted in Materialy po istorii Turkmen i Turkmenii II, pp. 95-122.
Mūnes, Ferdaws al-eqbāl, as excerpted in ibid., II, pp. 326-30.
(G. L. Penrose)
Originally Published: December 15, 1986
Last Updated: August 5, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. II, Fasc. 2, p. 138