This article examines Mullā Jumʿaqulī Khumūlī’s Tārīkh-i Khumūlī as a retrospective local narrative of the final phase of Janid (Astrakhanid) rule and the transfer of effective power to the Manghit elite in Bukhara. Rather than treating the chronicle as a transparent record of mid-eighteenth-century events, the study distinguishes between eyewitness testimony, reports derived from earlier written and oral traditions, and the author’s nineteenth-century interpretation of dynastic change. External and internal source criticism, historical comparison, chronological analysis, narrative analysis, and a systemic approach are employed. The findings show that Khumūlī explains the collapse of Janid authority not only through Nādir Shāh’s intervention but also through the erosion of central power, court and tribal rivalries, the growing autonomy of provincial military elites, and the political passivity attributed to Abū al-Fayż Khān. Muḥammad Raḥīm Bī’s rise is presented as a gradual process based on military experience, control of information, alliance-building, and selective use of Chinggisid legitimacy. At the same time, discrepancies between Khumūlī’s account and other historical evidence – especially concerning the identity and sequence of the nominal Chinggisid khans – demonstrate the need for caution. Tārīkh-i Khumūlī is therefore most valuable not as an eyewitness chronicle of the 1740s, but as evidence of how the transition from Janid to Manghit rule was remembered, morally evaluated, and politically legitimized in nineteenth-century local historiography.
Tārīkh-I Khumūlī As A Source on The Final Phase of Janid (Astrakhanid) Rule in Bukhara
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