NASRULLAH, EMIR OF BOKHARA 1827-60
BY ÁRMIN VÁMBÉRY

Ármin (“Arminius” in English) Vámbéry (1832-1913) was a Hungarian Professor of Oriental Languages and Literatures in the Royal University of Pest, traveller and spy who spoke more than twenty Turkish languages and dialets and travelled through Central Asia, including the Emirate of Bokhara, in 1863-4, successfully disguised as a Sunni dervish, the first successful journey of its kind undertaken by a European.

His History of Bokhara, “composed for the first time after known and unknown oriental manuscripts” was published in German in 1872 and in English by Henry S. King & Co. in London in 1873.

Chapter XVIII. Emir Nasrullah. 1242 (1826)^[1] -1277 (1860)

On the Emir Nasrullah:

Nothing was sacred enough in the eyes of the miserable tyrant to restrain  the excesses of his lust and cruelty. When Dost Mohammed Khan, flying before the English,^[2] sought refuge together with his family at the court of Nasrullah, the beauty of Sultan Djan, a boy of fourteen years old, the youngest son of the fugitive  prince, excited the foul passion of the Emir. In spite of the  sanctity of the laws of hospitality respected by the wildest barbarians of Asia, he dared to ask the son of the father.  Dost Mohammed attempted to save his child by flight, but unsuccessfully. Sultan Djan and his eldest brother Ekber Khan were overtaken, and, in spite of a desperate resistance, taken back to Bokhara. Dost Mohammed  himself escaped with great difficulty out of the claws of the  monster. The pure spring of Bokhariot Islamism did not probably seem to him very attractive when later he was able to compare the honourable confinement in which he was kept by the British at Loodianah with the hospitality afforded him  by his neighbour and fellow-believer. As we shall see in the next chapter, he determined in his old age to take vengeance  for this disgraceful behaviour.^[3]

This just vengeance did not, however, reach Nasrullah.  His external enemies were not in a position to call him to  account, and his successor had to suffer for the sins of Nasrullah. In the interior, namely in Bokhara, everybody was  paralysed with fear. Fathers saw their sons and daughters  carried off by force into the ‘Ark,’ as the palace was called, without daring to breathe a word of discontent, for according to the teaching of the mollahs the prince could deal as freely with his people as the shepherd with his flock. [pp. 390-1]

^[1] AH 1242 was more accurately equivalent to AD 1826-7, and Nasrullah’s reign actually began in the second half of that year, in April 1827, not in 1826.

^[2] Dost Mohammed Khan (1792-1863), Emir of Afghanistan, fled to Bokhara following his being overthrown by the British in August 1839.

^[3] After fleeing Bokhara, Dost Mohammed was held in captivity by the British in India until they allowed his restoration in 1842. He thereupon plotted revenge against Nasrullah, but without success. The same story was recounted by the French explorer J. P. Ferrier (in Afghanistan for most of 1845) with different detail in his History of the Afghans. More about Nasrullah's passion for boys can be read in Nasrullah of Bokhara by Various Russian Writers and The Emirs of Bokhara by Fitzroy Maclean.