Junaid Khan (de facto ruler of Khiva)  Junaid Khan (Muhammet-Kurban Serdar) (; 1857 — 1938) - was a talented military commander from the Turkmen yomud tribe who was the (last) de facto ruler of the State of Khorezm from 1918 to 1920, Chief of the Armed forces (Serdar-Kerim) of Khorezm during the tumultuous years after the Russian October revolution. Born in 1857 (according to other sources in 1862), Junaid Khan was the son of Khojibay, a powerful leader of the yomud (Turkmen) tribe of Junaids and a wealthy man. Muhammet-Kurban himself, despite his illiteracy, also enjoyed relevant authority among his tribesmen, which allowed him to become first kazi (judge) in the village, then a water distributor (mirab). In September 1917, after the overthrow of the government of young (revolutionary) Khivans, who had advocated reform and wished to limit the power of the Khan of Khiva (Khorezm), Asfandiyar Khan, Muhammet-Kurban Serdar arrived to the capital. By uniting previously warring Turkmen tribes and establishing close relations with Colonel , the head of the detachment sent to Khiva by the Provisional Government of Russia, he became one of the most influential people in the Khanate. In January 1918, the ruler of Khiva, Asfandiyar Khan, appointed Muhammet-Kurban as the commander of the armed forces of the Khanate, bestowing on him the title “Serdar-Karim” (“noble commander”). After Zaitsev’s detachment from Khiva recaptured Tashkent from Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries, the Junaid Khan's detachment, numbering about 1,600 horsemen, became the main military force in the Khanate. Having defeated and expelled by mid-September 1918 his main adversaries in the khanate of Khiva - the Turkmen leaders of Koshmammet Khan, Gulam-ali, Shamyrat-Bakhshi - Muhammed-Kurban actually became the ruler of Khiva. Junaid Khan waged numerous wars for several years with the emerging Soviet Turkestan and later with constituent republics of Soviet Central Asia for different reasons: to keep Khiva independent from Soviet rule, to recapture lost territories of the Khanate during the years as Russian protectorate, as well as to accumulate wealth.