Hereditary bekdom on the ancient site of Usrushana, holding the corridor between the Zarafshan and the Syr Darya; its ruling family kept its throne through a century of being fought over by Kokand, Tashkent, Khujand and Bukhara, ending with the last bek, Abdul Ghaffar.
Stormed by Russian troops on 14 October 1866 after an eight-day siege; Abdul Ghaffar Bek escaped to the mountains and later lived on a Russian pension, and the town passed into Russian Turkestan.
Schuyler interviewed the last bek, Abdul Ghaffar, and prints both the town's recent history and a dynastic appendix on its rulers.
Scholarly framing of the 1866 Russian campaign that took Khujand, Ura-Tyube and Jizzakh from the Bukharan-Kokandi frontier.