Yakub Beg
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Yakub Beg (1820 – May 16, 1877) was a Tajik adventurer who became head of the kingdom of Kashgaria.
Yakub Beg was born in Pskente, Kokand (in today's Uzbekistan). He rose rapidly through the ranks in the service of the Khanate of Kokand, by the year 1847 he was commander of the fort at Ak-Mechet. The fort was captured by the Russian army under the command of General Petrovski six years later in 1853. Yakub Beg made several attempts to recapture the fort but was repulsed by the Russians.
By 1865 he had become the commander-in-chief of the army of Kokand. He was able to take advantage of an anti-Chinese uprising in what is now Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in north-western China, to make himself the ruler of Kashgaria with its capital in Kashgar. He then deposed his former master, Buzurg Khan and declared that he was now the Amir. He ruled at the height of The Great Game era when the British, Russian, and Chinese empires were all vying for Central Asia.
Kashgaria extended from the capital Kashgar in south-western Xinjiang to Urumqi, Turfan, and Hami in central and eastern Xinjiang more than a thousand kilometers to the north-east. He ruled a majority of what was known at the time as East Turkestan.
He was not particularly admired by his subjects, burdening them with heavy taxes and subjecting them to tyrannical rule. He is commonly said to have suicided at Korla on 16th May, 1877, although no one knows exactly what caused his death. Author and historian George MacDonald Fraser claims he was assassinated on May 1 by a son of his former leader, Burzurg Khan (see Appendix II of Flashman at the Charge). Other reports say he committed suicide, killed in battle or had a stroke. One source says that his tomb was at Kashgar but was razed to the ground by the Chinese in 1978.[1]
After his death his state of Kashgaria rapidly fell apart, and Kashgar was reconquered by China (though it soon broke free again when the Manchu Dynasty fell from power).
[edit] References
- Boulger, Demetrius Charles (1878). The Life of Yakoob Beg, Athalik Ghazi and Badaulet, Ameer of Kashgar. London: W. H. Allen.
- Hodong Kim (2004). Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804748845.
[edit] In Literature
- Yakub Beg is a secondary character in the novel Flashman at the Charge, published in 1973.
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