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0273 Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1
Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1 / Page 273 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000196
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P. thirst for blood and his unholy lusts soon rendered his rule intolerable, and awed even his most partial supporters into hatred. The pile of heads, to which in an

unhappy moment was added that of tine inoffensive scientific traveller, Adolphe Schlagentweit, raised by him on•the river-bank above the Kizil Bridge for long months remained a mournful testimony of his savage cruelties ; whilst the tales of his hellish barbarities are still fresh in the memory of a people for centuries accustomed to deaths and tortures in their worst forms.

On the flight of Wall Kan the Chinese recovered possession of. Kashghar without opposition. The former officials, both Chinese and Khokandi, such as had escaped the clutches of Wall Khan, were dismissed and their offices given to others ; whilst the leaders in the revolt were one by one captured and executed with tortures. Amongst the first was Mir Ahmad Shekh, the custodian of the Satoc Bughra Khan shrine at Alton Artosh, for his active partizanship with the Khoja rebel. He was crimped from heel to head and disembowelled; and his heart plucked out, whilst yet beating with life, was thrown to the dogs. He was then decapitated, and his head exposed in a cage on the main road leading to the city, together with a long row of those of other victims of Chinese revenge. His eldest son, Mir Ali Ccizî, shared a similar fate; but three other sons, Abdurrahim, Ismail, and Mahmûd from whom I have derived the above particulars, escaped by the Kurtka Fort to Khokand.

Many other leading men were executed with like barbarity, and their heads similarly exposed for their part in the revolt; whilst hundreds of others perished in the revenge taken for the massacre of the Chinese merchants and settlers. These executions did not cease till August of the following year, when relations on the former footing were resumed with Khokand, and Khudayar's agent arrived at Kashghar.

M. V.      In the meantime Wall Khan on his return to Khokand was arraigned by the
relatives of his victims for the murder of so many innocent Musalmans. He was formally tried by the (llama, " Doctors of the Law," and with characteristic partiality acquitted as being a Syad or descendant of the Prophet; whilst his accusers were even fined for daring to asperse the character of one boasting such honourable lineage. He, however, met his retribution at last, and was assassinated at Kashghar, the very scene of his crime, by the present ruler, Yakûb Beg, whom he accompanied in the party of Buzurg Khan, as will be mentioned hereafter.

In the spring of 1858, Khudayar Khan sent Naslruddin of Shahrikhan, who had acted in the same capacity in 1847, as envoy to Kashghar to renew relations with the Chinese, to express concern for the revolt, and to report the imprisonment of the

notoriously free and favoured Wall Khan. The envoy arrived at Kashghar in August with a caravan of 500 returning fugitives, and the Chinese, at once granting the

former concessions, accepted him as Khokand agent with the title of Dudkhio k. And thus the former relations between these incompatible people were once more resumed.

P.   In 1278 H. (1862 A.D.) after the establishment of the Russian rule on the

northern frontier of Kashghar, by their capture of the forts of Tokmak and Piskak

which they took in August 1860, and on the eve of the Tungani revolt in Shensi, one

other minor disturbance occurred in Kashghar before the final revolution that led to the severance of the whole province from its connection with the Chinese empire.

The three refugee sons of Mir Ahmad Shekh returned in this year from their asylum at Tashkand with a gathering of 300 men to recover their ancient patrimony in Artosh by the aid of the border Kirghiz who were their hereditary subjects.

Near Kashghar they fell in with a caravan of Chinese merchants, and plundering it killed seventeen of the traders in revenge of the death of their father. They then went on to Artosh where they raised the standard of revolt. On this a force of 2,000

Chinese infantry from the Mcrngslsin and 1,000 cavalry from the city was sent out against them by the Amban. The brothers were deserted by their rabble crew in the first skirmish with the enemy, and themselves fled the field as fast as any of them.