Samarkand is a province of Turkestān, and under the control of the governor-general at Tashkent. It embraces the four districts of Samarkand proper, Katta Kurgān, Jizāk, and Khojend. The first-named has an area of 12,300 square miles, with a population of rather more than 300,000. It is administered by a chief who is a military officer of field rank, aided by a personal assistant.[746] Under him are officers styled pristas, in charge of subdivisions, which are again split up into volosts, or groups of 2000 to 2500 houses, governed by officers termed volostnois. Every village in the volost has its mayor (starshina). The duties of this class of officials are purely executive, and confined to the repression of crime, the execution of judicial decrees, and the collection of revenue. They form, too, the police force. On the occurrence of an offence it is reported to the starshina, who sends information to the volostnoi. An investigation follows, and, should the charge be considered _primâ facie_ true, it is reported to one of the two judges of instruction stationed at Samarkand. These officers are subordinate to the Ministry of Justice at St. Petersburg, and have charge of all steps in criminal inquiries up to the actual trial. When their work is complete the case comes before the judge of the peace, who is also an officer of the Ministry of Justice, and is disposed of under the Russian criminal code. Civil causes in which either party is a foreigner are tried by this functionary, whose tribunal is also that for suits referred to him by both litigants, though both may be natives of Turkestān. The ordinary tribunals for this latter are those of the Kāzīs--native judges stationed at the volost headquarters, who are guided in their decisions by the Mohammedan law. The executive officials are also responsible for the collection of revenue. Its chief source is the land tax, for Samarkand was, before its conquest, a province of Bokhārā, and the state in all Mohammedan countries is theoretically the owner of the soil. In this department things are not yet on a sound footing. When the Russians assumed the administration of the country they were compelled to trust to the information as to the demand from each villager furnished by the officers of the late Government. The statistics thus obtained were, of course, vitiated by the corruption of public servants universal throughout the East;[747] but they still form the basis of the annual demand which is assessed collectively on each village by the district chief, and paid into the treasury by the starshinas. The rate ranges, with the nature of the soil and the facilities for irrigation, between 2s. and 3s. 4d. per acre. The Russians are therefore in much the same predicament as were the English masters of Bengal in 1793, when the annual demand was crystallised for ever by that gigantic fiscal blunder, the Permanent Settlement. They possess the advantage of having a free hand; and for several years past