ABSTRACT
The Sheibanid dynasty reached its zenith under Abdullah Khan (ruler of Bukhara from 1557; of all the Uzbek lands from 1583 to 1598). During his reign the Uzbek Khanate held sway over territory that included Khotan and Kashgar to the east, Balkh and Badakshan to the south, Tashkent to the north. Abdullah was almost the last of his line, however, for after his son's death the throne was offered to a prince of the Astrakhan Khanate (to whom Abdullah had been related by marriage). By this period the Uzbeks, who had first imposed themselves on Transoxiana during the fifteenth century, had merged with the previous inhabitants of the region, including the other Turkic peoples (e.g. Karakhanids) who had been settled there since well before the advent of the Uzbeks. The name 'Uzbek' came to be used for the whole population (including, for a while, the Kazakhs: see p. 287). Under the Astrakhanids the tendency towards local autonomy was intensified and there was no longer a single, united Uzbek Khanate (though, admittedly, even under the Sheibanids this had not often been the case), but instead a number of small, more or less independent groupings. Bukhara itself, the seat of the Astrakhanids, remained very powerful, its wealth and importance assured by its position as a vital node in the commercial network linking Europe and Asia (typical of the energy and initiative with which the Bukharans pursued their trading activi-
ties is the group who moved to Siberia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the better to exploit the opportunities offered by that rich market; see Bukharans of Siberia, p. 98). In Khwarezmia, a region which had always been somewhat apart from Transoxiana, belonging formerly to the Golden Horde rather than the Ulus of Chagatai, an independent state developed, the Khanate of Khiva, which seriously challenged Bukhara's territorial claims. Yet another rival was the Khanate of Khokand in Ferghana, which grew steadily stronger throughout the eighteenth century. The three states were implacable enemies and remained in a constant state of conflict until the time when they were rendered powerless by the Russians.
