Osh. Terrible Years

Mass Popular Movements in the Kokand Khanate

Particularly significant events took place in Osh in the first half of the 1870s. They are associated with the largest popular movement — the Kokand Uprising and the liquidation of the khanate itself. In a brief official note titled "Regarding the Disturbances in the Kokand Khanate," the Orientalist N. F. Petrovsky noted that the cause of the uprising boiled down to "the cruel, extremely despotic rule of the khanate by its former ruler Khudoyar Khan."

The severe khan-feudal oppression, the ever-increasing taxes and levies imposed by Khudoyar Khan and his officials made the situation of the working people — townsfolk, settled landowners, nomadic herders, and semi-nomads — unbearable everywhere, provoking active resistance from them.

The sympathy of the majority of Osh's residents and other cities for the rebels against the khan's despotism, the Kyrgyz and Kipchaks, predetermined that Osh, like other cities and villages in Eastern Fergana, was taken by the rebels in 1873 and 1875 without a fight, with many townspeople joining the ranks of the insurgents.

The leaders of the Kyrgyz in the popular movement against the khan's oppression in the 1870s were mainly from the common people. However, sources, especially narrative ones, typically wrote about the leaders of the uprising — the feudal lords. It should be noted that representatives of the Kyrgyz feudal nobility who participated in the uprising often betrayed the rebels at critical moments and, when captured by the khan's troops, frequently escaped punishment and were even rewarded with gifts: by courting the feudal nobility, the Kokand khans tried to win over the Kyrgyz tribal leaders or, at least, neutralize the force behind them.

One of the centers of continuous uprisings against the khan's oppression was Eastern Fergana, populated by Kyrgyz, including the cities of Osh, Uzgen, and the villages of Kara-Su, Jalal-Abad, Khan-Abad, and others. In the early 1870s, a major uprising broke out in the vicinity of the shrine of Hazret Ayub, led by a certain Mamyr Mergenov from the Kyrgyz Munduz tribe. The rebel Kyrgyz, who were nomadic east of Osh, dealt with the khan's tax collectors, seized the taxes collected from the population, and attacked Jalal-Abad and Khan-Abad. Concerned about the scale of the uprising, Khudoyar Khan himself set out to suppress it (according to other sources, Khudoyar Khan's brother, the Margilan bek Sultan Murad, was sent against the rebels).

In June 1873, the rebels occupied Uzgen without resistance, where they seized the khan's treasury. They won a battle against the Kokand troops, led by Sultan Murad, after which they occupied Osh, Suzak, Bulak-Bashi, Uch-Kurgan, and other cities and villages without a fight. The working masses switched to the side of the rebels, while the beks and elders fled for the protection of the khan's troops.

The mass nature of the popular movement is evidenced by letters from the rebels themselves to the Khodjent authorities, in which they explained the reasons for the uprising and requested assistance from Russia for the rebel movement. Here is a fragment of one of the letters written in the autumn of 1873: "We, unable to bear the injustice, robbed the zakatchi. Khudoyar Khan sent his troops against us, from whom we fled into the mountains, leaving our pastures. But the khan's commander managed to capture 240 of us. He brought these people to the city of Assake and, by the khan's order, commanded that they all be impaled. Then we all gathered and declared ourselves enemies of the khan. You sent a man to us, and we were all very glad about this and became your tamyrs.

Now we turn to You as to a tamyr. You are a great chief and can advise and command, and everything that You say, we will fulfill. If you order us to fight — we will fight, for we have lost all patience from all kinds of oppression and insults."

In April 1874, about 2,000 rebels, who had survived the winter in the Kara-Kulja Gorge, descended into the valley and, having occupied the city of Uzgen, began to threaten Osh.