The Khanate of Kokand was the youngest and easternmost of Uzbekistan's three khanates, founded by the Uzbek Ming dynasty in 1709 and extinguished by Russian General Skobelev in 1876.
Territory at peak (c. 1850): - The entire Fergana Valley. - Northern Tajikistan (Khujand). - Much of modern Kyrgyzstan. - Southern Kazakhstan (Shymkent, Turkestan). - Tashkent (controlled 1809–1865).
Key events: - 1809: Kokand conquers Tashkent. - 1842: Madali Khan briefly takes Bukhara, making Kokand the dominant power in Central Asia. - 1865: Russia takes Tashkent from Kokand. - 1873: Khudayar Khan builds his palace in Kokand — the most lavish 19th-century palace in Central Asia. - 1875: Popular revolt by Nasriddin Bek deposes Khudayar Khan. - 1876: Russia annexes the khanate outright. Fergana becomes a Russian oblast.
Legacy: - Khudayar Khan Palace (1863–1873) — 27 surviving rooms of vivid Fergana tilework. - Silk and pottery traditions of Margilan, Rishton and Kokand flourished under khanate patronage. - The Kokand literary court produced Uzbek-language poets and chroniclers.
The brief Kokand Autonomy of 1918 was a failed attempt by local leaders to restore independence; it lasted 60 days before the Red Army dissolved it.
View as raw markdown — optimised for AI agents, LLMs, and programmatic consumption.
Related entries
- Places
Kokand: the Khudayar Khan Palace
The 1870s residential palace of the last Khan of Kokand, with 27 surviving rooms covered in vivid Fergana-style tilework. Feels like Rajasthan crossed with Samarkand.
- Places
Margilan: 2,000 years of Uzbek silk
Margilan in the Fergana Valley has been a silk-weaving centre since the 1st century CE. Two working workshops — Yodgorlik and Said Ahmad Hoja — welcome visitors and still make ikat by hand.
- History
The Khanate of Khiva (1511–1920)
A Turkic state in the Amu Darya delta (modern Karakalpakstan + Khorezm) that built the monuments of Ichan Kala and survived until the Red Army arrived in 1920.
- History
The Samanid dynasty: Bukhara's golden age
A Persian-speaking dynasty (819–999) that made Bukhara the intellectual capital of the eastern Islamic world — the era of Rudaki, al-Razi, and the birth of New Persian literature.
- History
Al-Biruni: the first comparative anthropologist
A Khwarezmian polymath (973–1048) who calculated Earth's radius to within 1% accuracy, wrote the first objective study of Hinduism, and mastered astronomy, mineralogy, and pharmacology.
- History
Al-Khwarizmi: the father of algebra
A 9th-century mathematician from Khiva whose book al-Kitab al-Mukhtasar gave us the word 'algebra' and whose name gave us 'algorithm'.