Junaid Khan (Basmachi leader)

Junaid Khan
De facto (last) ruler of the State of Khorezm
In office
March 1918 – February 1920
MonarchSayid Abdullah
Personal details
Born1857 or 1862
Badirkent, Dashoguz, Khanate of Khiva
Died1938 (aged 76 or 81)
near Herat, Afghanistan
NationalityTurkmen Yomut tribe
Parent
  • Khojibay (father)
Military service
Years of service1912–1938
RankGeneral, Chief of the Armed forces
Battles/wars

Junaid Khan (Turkmen: Jüneýit han; full name: Muhammet Gurban); (b.1857/62–1938) was a Turkmen tribal leader who became the Chief of the Armed Forces and later the de facto and last ruler of the Khanate of Khiva.

Born into the Turkmen tribe of Yomut, Muhammet Gurban was the son of a tribal chieftain Khojibay, after whose death he assumed the leadership of the tribe. Gaining authority during the Turkmen uprisings of 1912-1916, Junaid was granted enormous power within the Khanate by the then Khan of Khiva Isfandiyar, who sought to lessen the growing Turkmen threat. However, after a short period of time Junaid arranged Isfandiyar's assassination and later enthroned the murdered Khan's uncle Sayid Abdullah as a puppet ruler, while himself becoming the real master of the Khanate.

Disillusioned with his ineffective policies that ultimately led to a new revolt, a number of influential leaders of other Turkmen tribes and Uzbek population appealed to the Bolsheviks, who were gaining a foothold in Russian Turkestan after the October Revolution. In 1919, under the pretext of assisting rebels, Bolsheviks invaded the Khanate and soon captured its capital Khiva. Junaid fled to the Karakum Desert with the remnants of his troops from where he organized active resistance to the emerging Soviet government.

Biography before 1917

Born in 1857 (according to other sources in 1862), Junaid Khan was the son of Khojibay, a powerful leader of the Yomut (Turkmen) tribe[1] of Junaids and a wealthy man. Muhammet-Kurban himself, despite his illiteracy, also enjoyed relevant authority among his tribesmen, which allowed him to become first kazi (judge) in the village, and later a water distributor (mirab).

Rise to power in Khiva

Flag used by the Khanate of Khiva during the civil war (1917–1922)[2]

In September 1917, after the overthrow of the government of the Young (revolutionary) Khivans, who had advocated reform and wished to limit the power of the Khan of Khiva Asfandiyar Khan, Muhammet-Kurban Serdar arrived to the capital. By uniting previously warring Turkmen tribes and establishing close relations with Colonel Ivan Zaitsev [ru], the head of the detachment sent to Khiva by the Provisional Government of Russia, he became one of the most influential people in the Khanate.[3]

In January 1918, Asfandiyar Khan appointed Muhammet-Kurban as the commander of the armed forces of the Khanate,[1] bestowing on him the title "Serdar-Karim" ("noble commander"). After Zaitsev's detachment from Khiva recaptured Tashkent from Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries, the Junaid Khan's detachment, numbering about 1,600 horsemen, became the main military force in the Khanate.

Dissatisfaction with Asfandiyar’s policy greatly increased in Khiva and in the spring of 1918, Junaid Khan organized a military coup, which overthrew and put to death Asfandiyar. Later he seized power for himself almost without resistance. An uncle of Asfandiyar Khan, Sayyid Abdullah became a new (puppet) Khan.

Having defeated and expelled by mid-September 1918 his main adversaries in the Khanate – the Turkmen leaders of Koshmammet Khan, Gulam-ali, Shamyrat-Bakhshi – Muhammed-Kurban actually became the ruler of Khiva.[4]

Clashes with the Red Army

Operation to liquidate the remnants of Dzhunaid Khan's gangs in the Kara-Kum desert. May–June 1928

After the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution, and Junaid's failed attack against the Boshevik stronghold in Petro-Aleksandrovsk, anti-monarchists and Turkmen tribesmen joined forces with the Bolsheviks at the end of 1919 to depose the Khan.
By early February 1920, the Khivan army under Junaid Khan was completely defeated and Junaid Khan retreated to Karakum desert. On 2 February 1920, Khiva's last Khan, Sayyid Abdullah, abdicated and a short-lived Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (later the Khorezm SSR) was created out of the territory of the old Khanate of Khiva, before it was finally incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1924. The former Khanate was divided between the new Turkmen SSR and Uzbek SSR.

In early months of 1922 during the height of Basmachi movement, Enver Pasha sent convoys and letters to Junaid Khan who was offering strong resistance to the Bolsheviks in the Karakum desert.[5][6] In addition, Turkmen tribes also joined Junaid khan, who had the title of "Commander of the Army of Islam"[7] Thus the area under the control of the Khiva Basmachis was significantly expanded.[5] In April 1922, Junaid Khan captured The Boldumsaz District.[8][9] In April 12, Junaid Khan attacked the Turkmen tribes of Chavodurs who were close with Soviets and reflected heavy casualties.[10]

There were Basmachi uprisings against the Soviet government in Khiva in 1922[11][12] and the Russians also suffered a heavy defeat against Junaid Khan in Khiva.[13][14] Which led to Khiva and Khorezm being finally seized by Junaid Khan.[15][16][17][18][19] However, even though Junaid Khan lost in May 1922,[20] he did not lose any of his soldiers; in fact, new volunteers started joining his army.[21] Although he did not lose any of his soldiers, some of his troops began to negotiate with the Red Army and eventually 150 basmachis surrendered.[22][23]

Junaid Khan later waged numerous wars for several years with the emerging Soviet Turkestan and later with constituent republics of Soviet Central Asia for different reasons: to keep Khiva independent from Soviet rule, to recapture lost territories of the Khanate during the years as Russian protectorate, as well as to accumulate wealth. Though initially some of his battles were successful, he lost the most important ones and finally fled first to Persia and then to Afghanistan where he eventually died in 1938.

See also

Literature

  • D. M. Abdullahanov: Tarki Dunyo, Tashkent 2009.

References

  1. ^ a b Shoshana Keller. "To Moscow, Not Mecca", Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, p. 34-35
  2. ^ After the original flag on display in the museum of Khiva. Described by J. Renault and H. Calvarin, Franciae Vexilla # 5/51 (April 1997), cited after Ivan Sache on the Khiva page at Flags of the World (FOTW). According to David Straub (1996) on FOTW Archived 27 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine, "The flag of the Khivan Khanate in the pre-Soviet period is unknown."
  3. ^ Rafis Abazov, "Historical Dictionary of Turkmenistan", The Spacecrow Press, Inc, 2005
  4. ^ "History of Civilizations of Central Asia", Volume IV, p. 319
  5. ^ a b Ali Bademci, 1917-1934 Türkistan Milli İstiklal Hareketi Korbaşılar Ve Enver Paşa, Ötüken Yayınları, İstanbul 2008 p.412
  6. ^ Wheeler, Geoffrey (1964). The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia (PDF). New York: Frederick A. Praeger. p. 110.
  7. ^ Emre Esen, Türkistan’da Basmacılık Hareketi p.62
  8. ^ "Джунаид-хан Мухаммед-Курбан Сердар". Arboblar.uz (in Russian). UZINFOCOM. Retrieved 9 October 2025. Уже в апреле 1922 года он вновь начинает войну, захватив город Порсу.
  9. ^ Turkestan v Naçale XX Veka p.624 https://books.google.com.tr/books/about/Turkestan_v_nachale_XX_veka.html?id=ieTozgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y
  10. ^ RGASPI, f.122, op.4, d.59, l.93-94ob
  11. ^ ""In the Sands, Everyone Is a Basmachi": Armed Struggle in Central Asia in the 1920–1930s" [«В песках все — басмачи»: Вооруженная борьба в Средней Азии в 20–30-х годах прошлого века]. Islam Today (in Russian). 23 April 2014. Retrieved 9 October 2025.
  12. ^ Çalışkan, Murat. "Basmachi Movement". Academia.edu. p. 10. Retrieved 14 October 2025.
  13. ^ Hayit, Baymirza (1997). Basmacılar: Türkistan millî mücadele tarihi (1917–1934) (in Turkish). Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı. p. 205. ISBN 9789753893053.
  14. ^ Kara, İlyas. Enver Paşa Basmacılar İsyanı (in Turkish). p. 132.
  15. ^ Bademci, Ali (2008). Korbaşılar ve Enver Paşa-II (in Turkish). Istanbul, Turkey: Ötüken Neşriyat. p. 122.
  16. ^ Beyoğlu, Nevzat Kösoğlu. Şehit Enver Paşa (Martyr Enver Pasha). Ötüken Neşriyat A.Ş., T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2013, p. 623. ISBN 978-605-155-270-5.
  17. ^ Beckett, Ian, ed. (15 May 2017). Modern Counter-Insurgency. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781351917025. Retrieved 14 October 2025. in 1920, stimulated by some positive measures by Soviet authorities, the rebellion flared up again and in 1921 spread to the eastern part of the Emirate of Bukhara (the southern regions of today's Uzbekistan and western Tadzhikistan) and later to the Turkmen area of Khorezm
  18. ^ Baymirza Hayit, Basmacılar / Ruslara Karşı Basmacılar Hareketi [The Basmachi: The National Liberation Movement in Turkestan Against the Russians]. Istanbul: Babıali Kültür Yayıncılığı, 2006, p. 277.
  19. ^ Entsiklopedik Luğat, vol. 2 (Tashkent: Özbek Sovet Entsiklopediyasi, 1988), p. 117: "In the spring of 1922, the Basmachi occupied much of the Bukhara People's Soviet Republic; similar movements also occurred in Ferghana and Khorezm at that time."
  20. ^ Kotelnikov, Vladimir (2024). Soviet Military Aviation in Central Asia 1917–41. Helion and Company. p. 13. ISBN 978-1804516423.
  21. ^ Агафонов, Павел А. (1976). История Хорезмской Народной Советской Республики, 1920–1924 гг.: Сборник документов [History of the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic, 1920–1924: A Collection of Documents] (in Russian). Издательство «Фан», Ташкент. pp. 167–168.
  22. ^ Kotelnikov, Vladimir (2024). Soviet Military Aviation in Central Asia 1917–41. Helion and Company. pp. 13–15. ISBN 9781804516423.
  23. ^ "Борьба с басмачами в Средней Азии 1918-1938". Хронос. Retrieved 15 October 2025. ХНСР. В урочище Карасач советским властям сдались 150 басмачей Джунаид-хана. У Джунаид-хана осталось 120 всадников.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junaid_Khan_(Basmachi_leader)