This paper is the first study of the power struggle in the early reign of Irdana Biy by using both Manchu and Persian sources. Specifically, it examines these two bodies of sources to reconstruct the political events that led to the death of ‘Abd al-Rahman Biy, one of Irdana Biy’s main contenders to the throne. The Persian source is the Khoqand chronicle Muntakhab al-tavarikh, written by Muhammed Hakim Khan (b. 1802/3). The Manchu source is the memorial sent to the Qing Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735-96) by Šuhede, the Assistant Military Governor in Kashgar (Ma. hebei amban, Ch. canzan dachen) in 1761. The paper argues that the Persian source whitewashed Irdana Biy’s guilt in ‘Abd al-Rahman Biy’s murder, as its author Muhammed Hakim Khan, being a member of Khoqand’s royal family, had to take the trouble to preserve the ruling house’ political legitimacy. The Manchu source produced by the Qing frontier military official, however, was much more straightforward and pinned down the guilt directly on the person of Irdana Biy. The comparative analysis of both Manchu and Persian sources allows us to reevaluate the question of political legitimacy in Khoqand historiography by placing it under Joseph Fletcher’s framework of tanistry in the Ottoman Empire, according to which the bloody succession struggle was a defining characteristic of Turco-Mongolic monarchic tradition in Central Eurasia, to which Khoqand also belonged. More importantly, by studying the difference between these two sources, we can provide concrete written evidence of how later Khoqandian chroniclers rewrote the history of their ancestors, in which the steppe tradition of tanistry faded away from the living memories of the courtly intellectuals, now better versed in Sa'di and Nava'i than Genghisid law code. This paper aims to bridge the gap between Near Eastern studies and Manchu studies.