The news of his death led the all-powerful Mohammad Rahīm Bi to throw off the semblance of loyalty to his effete master.[465] He entered Bokhārā with a strong force, seized the person of the wretched Abū-l-Fayz, confiscated his treasure, and finally put him to death. With him virtually ended the dynasty of the Astrakhanides, which had exhibited many virtues, neutralised, however, by an absence of will-power and a bias towards the mystic side of their religion. Their age was one of profound decadence. Its architectural remains, which reflect the spirit of an era much more closely than is generally supposed, are insignificant. They are, indeed, limited to the great college known as Shīr Dar, which was built at Samarkand in 1610, and a few other public edifices which do not shine by contrast with those dating from Tīmūr’s happier days. But Bokhārā was destined to wallow in a yet deeper abasement under the uncouth Uzbegs, who supplanted the cultured sovereigns of the Astrakhan line. CHAPTER XXVIII THE HOUSE OF MANGIT The family thus raised to royal rank by the ambition of Rahīm Bi[466] belonged to the great Uzbeg tribe of Mangit, which had been brought from the north-east of Mongolia by Chingiz, and had settled on the lower reaches of the Oxus and around Karshī, a Bokhāran citadel 140 miles south-east of the capital. Their warlike spirit had placed them at the head of the Uzbeg clans; and while the Astrakhanide sovereigns retained any real power, the loyalty of the Mangits was as conspicuous as their courage. We have seen how the imbecility of the degenerate Abū-l-Fayz tempted his headstrong minister, Rahīm Bi, to throw off the mask of allegiance. The latter sealed his disloyalty by assassinating the murdered Khān’s young heir, `Abd ul-Mū´min, who had married his daughter.[467] By an irony of fate Rahīm Bi was destined, in his old age, to sink to the condition of a _roi fainéant_. His vezīr, a Persian slave named Dawlat Bi, usurped all the functions of royalty, and misgoverned Bokhārā in his name. On his deathbed, having no male heirs, he designated his uncle Dāniyāl Bi as his successor--the choice having been probably dictated by his vezīr, who was acquainted with Dāniyāl’s weak and overscrupulous character, and fondly hoped to retain the mastery which he had won over the degenerate Rahīm Bi. Dāniyāl was, at his nephew’s death, governor of the town of Kerminé. His modest disposition forbade him to assume the purple. He contented himself with the title of Atālik,[468] and placed Abū-l-Ghāzi Khān, the last scion of the Astrakhanides, on the throne.[469] But his son, the famous Ma´sūm, who afterwards assumed the name of Shāh Murād, was not of a nature to brook an inferior position. Under a mask of asceticism and insensibility to the promptings of ambition, which imposed on the priesthood and the mob, he cherished deep-seated schemes of conquest. He gained unbounded influence over his doting father, and persuaded