The Ferghana Valley at the crossroads of world history: the rise of Khoqand, 1709–1822

The Khanate of Khoqand emerged, flourished and collapsed during the era of Chinese and Russian imperial expansion into Central Asia. While eighteenth-century Central Asia has long been considered to have been an unimportant backwater ‘on the margins of world history’, this essay juxtaposes focused research in local primary sources with a world historical perspective in an effort to illuminate some of the ways in which the region remained interactively engaged with its neighbours and, through them, with historical processes unfolding across the globe. The essay argues that these interactions were substantial, and that they contributed to Khoqand’s emergence as a significant regional power and centre of Islamic cultural activity in pre-colonial Central Asia.