I saw the Emir afterwards in Samarcand; he is in the forty-second year of his age, of middle stature, somewhat corpulent. He has a very pleasing countenance, fine black eyes, and a thin beard. In his youth he acted as governor one year in Karshi, and eighteen in Kermineh, and was always distinguished for the gentleness and affability of his manners. He carries out strictly the political principles of his father, and in his capacity as Mollah and pious Musselman is the declared enemy of every innovation even when he may be convinced of its utility. On his accession he had impressed upon his signet the device
and up to the present moment has most scrupulously observed it. Many reports in circulation respecting him confirm the remark. True, according to our view of things, there seems great exaggeration in { 188} a system of justice which led the Emir to send his Mehter, the second in rank of his officers, to execution, for having (for it was in this form that the report reached Khokand) thrown a dubious glance at one of the royal slaves; nor should a prince, whose device is 'justice,' have conducted himself as the Emir did in Khokand. But all these faults are very pardonable in a Khan of Bokhara. Towards his grandees, who for the most part well merit the treatment they meet with, he is very severe, for although punishing with death even trivial offences in these, he spares the poorer classes. Hence the expression applied to him by the people, and which does him honour, for they say of him that he is 'killer of elephants and protector of mice.' [Footnote 58]
It is singular what pains the Emir takes to throw obstacles in the way of his subjects whenever they seek to depart from the simplicity and modesty of their present, in his opinion, happy condition. The introduction of articles of luxury, or other expensive merchandise, is forbidden, as also the employment of sumptuousness in house or dress: in offences of this description there is no respect of persons. His Serdari Kul (commandant-in-chief), Shahrukh Khan, sprung from a collateral branch of the royal family of Persia (Kadjar), having fled hither from Astrabad, where he had been governor, had been long held here in high honour and distinction; but, desirous of living in the Persian manner, he ordered, at great expense, a house to be erected one story high, like those in Teheran; in this, besides other articles of luxury, glass windows were inserted; it is said to have cost altogether 15,000 Tilla, regarded { 189} in Bokhara an enormous sum; it was of a description calculated to throw into the shade even the Ark (palace) itself. The Emir had been informed of this from the very beginning, but he waited until the whole was quite finished, and then suddenly Shahrukh Khan was accused of an offence against religion, thrown into confinement, and then exiled. The house was confiscated and reverted to the Emir: an offer was made to purchase it, and at a sum exceeding the cost price, but no! he directed it to be demolished; the ruins themselves, however, appearing too ornamental, he ordered them to be entirely destroyed, with the sole reservation of the timber, which was sold to a baker for 200 Tilla, in scorn and mockery of all who should venture to give way to a taste for luxuries. Even in his domestic arrangements the Emir is widely different from his father; and it did not appear to me that there could have been more than half the retinue of servants which M. de Khanikoff saw at the Court of Nasr Ullah, and of which, as of so many other particulars concerning Bokhara, the Russian traveller gives so careful, so exact and circumstantial an account.