Sources on the history of the Khiva Khanate
To study history one first uses documents, then works by local and foreign authors. The documents of the Khiva khan’s chancery were taken to St Petersburg in 1873 after Russia conquered the khanate and were returned to Tashkent in 1962; they provide information on government, taxes, money, administration and trade. Local works include Abulghazi’s “Shajara-i Turk”, Munis’s “Firdavs ul-iqbal”, Agahi’s historical works and Khudoyberdi Avaz Muhammad’s “Dil-i garoyib”, written in 1831–1832. Records left by Russian envoys are also important: I. Khokhlov (1620–1622), N. Muravyov (1819), G. Danilevsky and R. Basiner (1842) and N. Ignatyev (1858); they give political and economic information but were often gathered to serve their own country’s interests. Among European travellers the works of A. Jenkinson (16th century) and the Hungarian scholar A. Vámbéry (19th century) are valuable; Uzbek scholars have created studies such as the “History of Khwarazm from Ancient Times to the Present” (1976). Each source must be read with the author’s position and purpose in mind.
“Source analysis”: choose one source and answer three questions: who wrote it, when and why.