desert. Under Russian auspices a considerable strip of alluvial
soil on the left bank has been brought under cultivation, measuring
Lower Oxus.
4 or 5 m. in width, and there is more cultivation on
the banks of the Oxus now than there is in the Merv oasis
itself, but it is confined to the immediate neighbourhood
of the river, for no affluents of any considerable size exist. The river
is navigable below Charjui, and takes its place as an important unit
in the general scheme of Russian frontier communications. There
is now a regular steamer service, twice a week in summer and once
a week, in winter, as far as Pata Kasar. The steamers are flat bottomed
paddle boats drawing 3 ft.
An important feature in connexion with the course of the Oxus
is the discussion that has arisen with regard to its former debouchment
into the Caspian Sea. On this point much recent
evidence has been collected, and it appears certain that
Junction with
the Aral Sea.
there was a time in the post-Pliocene Age when a long
gulf of the Caspian Sea protruded eastwards nearly as
far as the longitude of Merv, covering the Kara Kum sands, but not
the Kara Kum plateau to the north of the sands, which is separated
from the sands by a distinct sea beach. At the same time another
branch of the same gulf protruded northwards in the direction of the
Aral, probably as far as the Sary Kamish depression, which lies to
the west of the Khivan delta of the Oxus, separated from it by wide
beds of loess, clays and gravel, covering rocks of an unknown age.
The Murghab river and the Hari Rud, which terminate in the oases
of Merv and Sarakhs, almost certainly penetrated to the gulf of the
Kara Kum, but the question whether the Oxus was ever deflected
so as to enter the gulf with the Murghab cannot be said to be answered
decisively at present. The former connexion between the Caspian
and Aral by means of the gulf now represented by the Sary Kamish
depression seems to be admitted by Russian scientists, nor would
there appear to be much doubt about the connexion between the
Khivan oasis and the northern extremity of the Sary Kamish. In
this discussion the names of Kaulbars, Lessar, Annenkov, Konshin
and other Russian geographers are conspicuous. The general
conclusions are ably summed up by P. Kropotkin in the
September number of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society
for 1898.
History.—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 Sacae as contributing their contingents to the armies of the great king Darius. The Oxus figures in 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 which Zoroaster dwelt at Balkh, where, in the 7th 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 Hsuen Tsang, who passed through the country in A.D. 630–644, found Termez, Khulm, Balkh, and above all Bamian, amply provided with monasteries, stupas and 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. Diodotus, 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 Graeco-Bactrian dominion was overwhelmed entirely about 126 B.C. by the Yue-chi (q.v.), a numerous people who had been driven westwards from their settlements on the borders of China by the Hiungnu (q.v.). From the Yue-chi 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 (Ephthalites, q.v.) of the Oxus, who are supposed to be descendants of the Yue-chi, were shattered by an invasion of the Turkish khakan; and in the following century the Chinese pilgrim Hsuen 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 Mahommedans. At the time of his pilgrimage Chinese influence had passed into Tokharistan and Transoxiana. Yazdeged, the last of the Sassanid kings of Persia, who died in 651, when defeated and hard pressed by the Moslems, 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 administrative districts, with 126 military cantonments, an organization which, however, probably only existed on paper.
In 711–712 Mahommedan 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 occupation then ensued. In 1016–1025 the government 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 Sassanid dynasty (terminated A.D. 999), of the Ghaznevid dynasty, of the Seljuk 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 (1221–1231) a division of the Mogul 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 Uzbeg rule in Turkestan. The Uzbegs 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 Kunduz, Balkh, Khwarizm and Khorasan, and for a time Badakshan also; but Badakshan was soon won by the emperor Baber, and in 1529 was bestowed on his cousin Suleiman, who by 1555 had established his rule over much of the region between the Oxus and the Hindu Kush. The Mogul emperors of India occasionally interfered in these provinces, notably Shah Jahan in 1646; but, finding the difficulty of maintaining so distant a frontier, they abandoned it to the Uzbeg princes. About 1765 the wazir of Ahmad Shah Abdali of Kabul invaded Badakshan, 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 Uzbegs.
The Uzbeg rule in Turkestan has during the last fifty years been rapidly dwindling before the growth of Russian power. In 1863 Russia invaded the Khokand territory, taking in rapid succession the cities of Turkestan, Chimkent 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 Yar, is now in the hands of Bokhara, including Karateghin—which the Russians have transferred to it from Khokand—and Darwaz at the entrance to the Pamir highlands.
