Khanate of Khiva

The Khanate of Khiva was the Uzbek state of Khorezm, the oasis land south of the Aral Sea, lasting from 1511 to 1920. Centred on the walled city of Khiva amid the irrigated fields of the lower Amu Darya, its khans ruled western Uzbekistan, southwestern Kazakhstan and much of Turkmenistan, raiding Persia and the Kazakh steppe for slaves and tribute. The khanate's wealth lay in water: whoever held the canals held Khorezm. In 1740 the Persian conqueror Nader Shah stormed the oasis and held it for six years, but his empire died with him and Khiva recovered. The fatal pressure came from the north. Russian columns advanced across the steppe through the nineteenth century, and in 1873 General Kaufman's army took Khiva itself; the khan kept his throne as a Russian protectorate, shrunken and obedient. The revolutions of 1917 undid even that: Young Khivans overthrew the khan in 1920, proclaimed the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic, and four years later the oasis was carved into Soviet Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.