The Andijān uprising against the Russian colonial authorities in Turkistan took place on 18 May 1898; it had as its aim the expulsion of the Russians and the establishment of a Muslim state. Andijān (Andizhan) is a city on the Andijān River, in the Fergana (Farghāna) Valley of present-day eastern Uzbekistan, near the border with Kyrgyzstan. A part of the Kokand khānate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was seized by Russian forces in 1876. In the uprising, about two thousand poorly armed insurgents attacked a tsarist army