Yakub Beg

Yakub Beg (about 1820 – May 1877) was a Kokandi commander who carved out the state of Yettishar — also called Kashgaria — in south-western Xinjiang and ruled it from 1865 to 1877 under the title Ataliq Ghazi, "Champion Father of the Faithful". He remains, as the English article puts it, a controversial figure, hero to some and invader to others. ^{1 2}

Arabic and Urdu editions of his article exist; the Arabic article gives his birth as 1820 or 1825, a variant recorded in his data record. ³

He was born at Pskent, near Tashkent, in the Khanate of Kokand, in about 1820 — the English article's biography gives the year 1820 outright, citing Kim — to a family of Tajik or part-Tajik background; his father was a qadi educated in Khujand who served in Tashkent and Pskent. Orphaned young and raised by relatives, he worked in turn as a tea-house dancer, a blacksmith's assistant and a shopkeeper before entering Kokandi service, where he rose from fifty-man command to command of a regiment. By 1864 he had accumulated enough wealth to marry and buy land in Tashkent. ^{1 3}

When the Muslim revolts of 1864 broke Qing power in Altishahr, the Khoja line was restored at Kashgar under Buzurg Khan, and Yakub Beg arrived in January 1865 as his commander, leading some 6,000 Kokandi troops. He defeated the remaining Qing garrisons across the region, then turned on the Khojas themselves: Buzurg Khan was forced into exile in 1867, and his successors were overthrown in turn. From 1870 he took Turfan, Ürümqi and Manas from the Tungan rebels, unifying the region south of the Tianshan as the state of Yettishar, "Seven Cities", ruled from Kashgar. He banned the Tungan styles of dress and speech he disliked and subdued the Kyrgyz. ¹

His rule lasted about a decade. The English article describes a strict Islamic state: Islamic law was enforced, non-Islamic institutions such as Chinese temples were abolished or converted into mosques, and his rule featured forced conversions as a result of restrictions against non-Muslims. At the same time he built madrasas, caravanserais and mosques, invested in irrigation, and drew merchants from Tashkent, Ferghana, India and Russia. His emirate also won recognition abroad: the Ottoman Empire and the Russian and British empires concluded commercial treaties with him (1872 and 1874), and the British envoy T. D. Forsyth and the Russian envoy N. F. Petrovsky were received at Kashgar. The article stresses that these were acts of his state; they say nothing, by themselves, about his personal school of law. ^{1 2}

The Qing reconquest under Zuo Zongtang began in 1876. Yakub Beg's indiscriminate demands for conscription and grain turned the region's population against him, and after the fall of Turfan his state collapsed inward. He retreated to Korla and died there suddenly in late May 1877; within a month Kashgar had fallen. The English article's death section shows how unsettled the details remain: Sayrami's date of 28 April is impossible, since Przewalski met him alive on 9 May; Chinese sources usually give 22 May, Kuropatkin thought 29 May, and Sayrami's own tradition gives 30 May — the day the article's lead and the Chinese article carry — while the manner of death is variously given as poisoning, suicide, death in battle, or a natural death from a stroke, which modern historians following Kim judge most plausible. After his death Kashgaria passed back to Qing rule. ^{1 4}

His faith is recorded as unknown. The English article's infobox carries a religion field "Sunni Islam", but no text in any edition names a legal school or order for him, and the Chinese article and Wikidata give only "Islam" in general. A ruler's enforcement of Islamic law in his state is a policy of that state, not an attestation of the ruler's own school, and his regnal title is a styling, not an attestation; on the museum's two-source rule the single infobox reading does not settle the segment, and it is preserved in his data record. ^{1 2 4}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.