Iskandar Khan

Iskandar Khan (in full Iskandar ibn Jani Beg) belonged to the Shaybanid dynasty, descended from Abu’l-Khayr Khan. He was born around 1512 into the family of Jani Beg Sultan; his mother was a daughter of Sultan Mahmud Khan, the ruler of Tashkent and a maternal uncle of Babur. While still young he governed the district of Afarinkent (Miankal) in Sogdiana near Samarkand, and in 1529, after his father’s death, he became ruler of Karmana.

In the early 1550s the Shaybanid princes of Transoxiana fell into civil war. Pressed by Nawruz Ahmad Khan (Baraq Khan), Iskandar withdrew with his family, except his son Abdullah, to his brother Pir Muhammad Khan in Balkh. From 1551 to 1556 he and Abdullah held Andkhud, one of the larger districts of the Khanate of Balkh. After Nawruz Ahmad Khan died in September 1556, Abdullah took Bukhara and Iskandar recovered his authority over Karmana and Miankal.

From 1557 the Friday sermon in Bukhara was read in the name of Pir Muhammad Khan, but he stayed in Balkh and it was Abdullah who actually ran the city. In the spring of 1561 an agreement with Pir Muhammad to exchange Bukhara for Balkh fell through. Back in Bukhara, Abdullah summoned his father from Karmana and, with the support of the clergy, raised him to the throne by right of seniority; Pir Muhammad’s name was dropped from the sermon.

The sources mention Iskandar not for any gift for government but for his devotion to religion. Unlike Nawruz Ahmad Khan and Pir Muhammad Khan, he ruled from Bukhara, yet he took no part in affairs of state: real power lay with Abdullah Khan II, who fought the rival princes in his father’s name. According to Abu’l-Ghazi, Iskandar performed all the obligatory and recommended prayers with care and knew falconry better than anyone. A chronogram composed on his death calls him “sovereign of the dervishes”.

Iskandar had four sons: Ibadullah Sultan (governor of the Samarkand province), Dustum Sultan (governor of the Tashkent province), Abd al-Latif Sultan and his successor Abdullah Khan II. His daughter Zuhra Khanim married Jani Beg Sultan and became the mother of the first Ashtarkhanid khans. Iskandar died in 1583, whereupon Abdullah Khan II was proclaimed official ruler. A quarter of Bukhara bore his name, and the mosque he built there stood until the 1950s.