Afghan Turkestan

Afghan Turkestan is a region in northern Afghanistan, on the border with the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It was the name of a former province in this area, which was centred on Mazari Sharif and included territory in the modern provinces of Kunduz, Balkh, Jowzjan and Sar-e Pol. The whole territory, from the junction of the Kokcha river with the Amu Darya on the north-east to the province of Herat on the south-west, was some 500 miles in length, with an average width from the Russian frontier to the Hindu Kush of 114 miles (183 km). It thus comprised about 57,000 square miles (148,000 km²) or roughly two-ninths of the former kingdom of Afghanistan.

Geography

The area is agriculturally poor except in the river valleys, being rough and mountainous towards the south, but subsiding into undulating wastes and pasture-lands towards the Turkman Desert.

Population

Ethnically and historically Afghan Turkestan is more connected with Bukhara than with Kabul, of which government it has been a dependency only since the time of Dost Mahommed. The bulk of the people are Turkic (Uzbek) and Turkmen, with large concentration of Tajik, Hazara and Pashtun in the cities.

History

Ancient Balkh or Bactriana was a province of the Achaemenian Empire, and probably was occupied in great measure by a race of Afghan blood. About 250 BC Diodotus (Theodotus), governor of Bactria under the Seleucidae, declared his independence, and commenced the history of the Greco-Bactrian dynasties, which succumbed to Parthian and nomadic movements about 126 BC. After this came a Buddhist era which has left its traces in the gigantic sculptures at Bamian and the rock-cut topes of Haibak. The district was devastated by Genghis Khan, and has never since fully recovered its prosperity. For about a century it belonged to the Delhi empire, and then fell into Uzbek hands. In the 18th century it formed part of the dominion of Ahmad Khan Durani, and so remained under his son Timur. But under the fratricidal wars of Timur's sons the separate khanates fell back under the independent rule of various Uzbek chiefs. At the beginning of the 19th century they belonged to Bukhara; but under the emir Dost Mahommed the Afghans recovered Balkh and Tashkurgan in 1850, Akcha and the four western khanates in 1855, and Kunduz in 1859. The sovereignty over Andkhui, Shibarghan, Saripul and Maimana was in dispute between Bukhara and Kabul until settled by the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1873 in favour of the Afghan claim. Under the strong rule of Abdur Rahman these outlying territories were closely welded to Kabul; but after the accession of Habibullah the bonds once more relaxed.