Shoqan Walikhanov
c. 1835 – 1865 · 30 years · Zhetysu (Verny) · Asia
Kazakh scholar and Russian army officer who reached Kashgar in 1858–1859 and was among the first to describe East Turkestan.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Portrait: I. A. Kordovskiy (?) · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Charles Darwin — naturalist, author of evolutionary theory, 26 years older
- Karl Marx — philosopher and economist, 17 years older
- Queen Victoria — Queen of the United Kingdom, 16 years older
- Vincent van Gogh — painter, 18 years younger
- Victor Hugo — novelist and poet, 33 years older
- Napoleon III — last French monarch, who surrendered to Prussia at Sedan, 27 years older
Eastern Europe & Russia
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — novelist, 14 years older
- Leo Tolstoy — novelist, 7 years older
- Dmitri Mendeleev — chemist, creator of the periodic table, 1 year older
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — composer, 5 years younger
- Alexander II of Russia — Emperor of Russia, 17 years older
- Nicholas I — emperor who crushed the Decembrist revolt, 39 years older
Middle East
- Abdulmejid I — sultan of the Tanzimat reforms, 12 years older
- Abdul Hamid II — the 'Red Sultan' who dissolved the first parliament, 7 years younger
- Abdulaziz — first sultan to visit Western Europe, 5 years older
- Mehmed V Reşad — sultan under whom the empire entered World War I, 9 years younger
Africa
- David Livingstone — explorer of Africa and missionary, 22 years older
- Menelik II — Emperor of Ethiopia, 9 years younger
- Muhammad Ali of Egypt — ruler of Egypt, 66 years older
- Moshoeshoe I — founder of Lesotho, 49 years older
- Samori Ture — founder of the Wassoulou Empire, 7 years older
- Ranavalona I — Queen of Madagascar, 57 years older
Asia
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu — last shogun, who handed power back to the emperor, 2 years younger
- Katsushika Hokusai — Japanese artist, 75 years older
- Emperor Meiji — Emperor of Japan, 17 years younger
- Empress Dowager Cixi — Empress Dowager of China, born the same year
- Nikolay Przhevalsky — explorer of Central Asia, 4 years younger
- Tokugawa Iesada — shogun under whom Japan opened its ports to the West, 11 years older
Americas
- Abraham Lincoln — 16th President of the United States, 26 years older
- Thomas Edison — inventor and businessman, 12 years younger
- Benito Juárez — President of Mexico, 29 years older
- Ulysses S. Grant — 18th US president, commanding general of the Union Army, 13 years older
- Mark Twain — writer and humorist, born the same year
- Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone, 12 years younger
Oceania
- Truganini — Aboriginal Tasmanian woman, 23 years older
- Henry Parkes — Premier of New South Wales, 'Father of Federation', 20 years older
- Liliʻuokalani — Queen of Hawaii, 3 years younger
- Kate Sheppard — suffragist, 12 years younger
- Ned Kelly — bushranger and Australian folk hero, 19 years younger
The world in their lifetime
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — aged 0, Africa
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — aged 0, Americas
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — aged 3, Americas
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — aged 4, Asia
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — aged 4, Europe
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — aged 4, Middle East
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — aged 4, Middle East
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — aged 10, Europe
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — aged 11, Americas
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — aged 11, Americas
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — aged 12, Africa
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — aged 13, Europe
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — aged 13, Europe
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — aged 16, Oceania
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — aged 18, Asia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — aged 18, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — aged 24, Europe
- 1861 Unification of Italy — aged 26, Europe
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — aged 26, Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — aged 26, Americas
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — aged 28, Americas
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — aged 29, Americas