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The Pamir plateau lies to the north of Peshawar, and is bounded in the south by the Hindu-Kush range. The territorial spheres of government are extremely complicated. The Ameer of the neighbouring country of Afghanistan claims the sovereignty over the khanates Shugnan and Roshan, which form the larger portion of the Pamirs.
With the aim of baiting these proposals, he offered, during his visit to London in 1844, to refrain from any movement against the Khanates of Central Asia, concerning which British susceptibilities were becoming keen.
With the Central Asian khanates there was no connection except that of trade, but as regarded the Turcomans, who, it is said, had frequently asked for Russian protection, intercourse was discouraged, as they could not be trusted "within the lines," being simply bandits.
I have the authority of the most enlightened of modern Asiatic statesmen in support of my opinion that it would be the certain deathblow of Mohammedanism as a permanent religious faith in all the lands west of the Caspian, and that even among the Tartar races of the far East, the Sunite Mussulmans of Siberia and the Khanates, and as far as the Great Wall of China, it would be a shock from which Sunism in its present shape would with difficulty recover.
'You get nothing but a few wild conquerors rushing east and west, and then some squalid khanates. And yet all the materials were there the stuff for a strong race, a rich land, the traditions of an old civilisation, and natural barriers against all invasion. "'I suppose they never found the man, I said. "He agreed.
There every race and language are represented, and every sect. Indians, Persians, Moors, are there, negroes from the Niger, Malays from Java, Tartars from the Khanates, Arabs from the French Sahara, from Oman and Zanzibar, even, in Chinese dress and undistinguishable from other natives of the Celestial Empire, Mussulmans from the interior of China.
This was not to their liking, and they preferred to dwell in lands better suited to their tastes and habits. The great Tartar empire of Kaptchak, or the Golden Horde, was founded on the eastern frontier; other khanates were founded in the south; but the Russian princes were left to rule in the remainder of the land, under tribute to the khans, to whom they were forced to do homage.
It was the first real outburst against the Mongol yoke, and it shook the foundations of their authority. Then dissensions among themselves, and the struggles of numerous claimants for the throne at Saraï broke the Golden-Horde into five Khanates each claiming supremacy.
Up the river, bordered on each side by a narrow band of vegetation from which a desert spread away, the Russians gradually advanced, finally planting a military post within thirty-two miles of Tashkend, the military key of Central Asia. Such was the state of affairs in 1862, when war arose between the khanates themselves, and the Emir of Bokhara invaded and conquered Khokand.
In Asia beyond the Caspian, the southern boundary of the empire remains vague; the advance into the Turcoman Steppes and Afghan Turkestan, and on the Pamir plateau is still in progress. Bokhara and Khiva, though represented as vassal khanates, are in reality mere dependencies of Russia.
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