Abdullah Khan of Khiva

Abdullah Khan was a ruler of the Khanate of Khiva from the Kungrat dynasty who held the throne for only a few months in 1855. He is counted as the dynasty’s eighth khan. His year of birth is not known: some references give about 1835, while the tradition about the madrasa raised in his memory says he was 17 when he was killed.

Sources disagree about his parentage. Uzbek and Russian reference articles call him a son of Muhammad Amin Khan, whereas lists of rulers name Ibadullah Bek as his father. His brother Kutlug Murad Khan followed him on the throne.

After Muhammad Amin Khan was killed in March 1855 in a battle with the Teke Turkmen near Serakhs, the defeated army returned to Khiva and raised Abdullah to the throne. Unrest had begun across the khanate, and the new khan fought the nomadic Turkmen tribes.

His reign lasted about six months. In August 1855 he was killed in a battle with the Yomut Turkmen. A coin bearing his name is also known. The throne passed to his brother Kutlug Murad Khan, who was killed the same year; in 1856 power went to Sayyid Muhammad Khan, who restored order.

The Khivan historian Komiljon Khudoyberganov, in his genealogy of the khans of Khiva, describes Abdullah as hasty and impatient but brave, a man who valued friendship and justice; heeding a man named Mir Ahmad, he had several innocent people put to death. He left no son; his daughter was married to Abdulaziz Tora.

His memory is kept by the Abdullakhan Madrasa in Khiva, built in 1855 by his mother in memory of her son. It stands in Ichan-Qala between the madrasas of Allakuli Khan and Kutlug Murad Inak, west of the White Mosque, and now houses an exhibition of the Khorezm Museum of Nature.