Henry Misa and Alisher Khaliyarov (PhD, Ohio State 2021)  have just published a new article, "A climate for the Khans: reinterpreting the economic history of the Khivan Khanate with paleoenvironmental evidence" in the Central Asian Survey. 

 

Abstract: This paper analyses the early period of the Qungrat dynasty (1804– 1920) of the Khanate of Khiva focusing on political centralization and an increase in agricultural production. Based on a synthesis of paleoenvironmental evidence and primary sources in Chaghatay, Persian and Russian, it argues that an early nineteenth-century cold period, the volcanic and solar forcing of which lasted from the 1780s to the 1830s, caused an increase in effective moisture in the Amu Darya watershed, and that the Khivan Khans, Muhammad Rahim Khan (r. 1806–25), Allah Quli Khan (r. 1826–43), Muhammad Amin Khan (r. 1846–55) and their officials exploited these new ecological circumstances by expanding their agricultural economy. The case study challenges current historiographical assumptions about crisis-inducing climate events in Central Asian environmental history.