BUKHARA
iii. After the Mongol Invasion
The Mongol period. The city of Bukhara was conquered by Chingiz Khan on 4 D¨uʾl-ḥejja 616/10 February 1220 (according to Ebn al-Aṯīr, XII, pp. 365-67), and the citadel fell twelve days later. All the inhabitants were driven out, their property pillaged, and the city burned; the defenders of the citadel were slaughtered. According to Jovaynī (I, pp. 83-84), rebuilding began under the first Mongol governor, Tawša (or Tamša) Bāsqāq, who was appointed by Chingiz Khan, and by the time of Ögedey Qaʾan (Pers. UÚktāy Qāʾān; 626-39/1229-41) the city was once again populous and prosperous. Affairs remained in the hands of powerful ṣadr (Hanafite) families, first the Āl-e Borhān and after 636/1238-39 the house of Maḥbūbī, which retained control at least until the 740s/1340s (Pritsak). The nature of relations between these traditional religious leaders and the local secular rulers is not clear; only one of the latter is mentioned in historical sources, a certain Sayin (ṣāyen) Malekšāh, in the reign of Ögedey (Jovaynī II, p. 232; Barthold, Turkestan 3, p. 503, where it is suggested that he may have been a descendant of Sanjar Malek, cf. ibid., pp. 355, 360). The Mongol governors of Bukhara or of Bukhara and Samarkand jointly also remained as late as the 660s/1260s. Waṣṣāf (pp. 25, 129) mentions two men who were governors or garrison commanders of both cities in the time of Ögedey: Būqā-Būšā (probably identical with the Tawša Bāsqāq mentioned above) and Ching-sang Tai-fu (Ùūnksān Ṭāyfū); the last reference to both is in 666/1268 (Barthold, Turkestan3, pp. 469, 488; Bartol’d, 1966, p. 345). Ögedey placed the civil administration of all the settled regions of Central Asia in the hands of Maḥmūd Yalavāč Ḵᵛārazmī, a Muslim merchant trusted by the Mongols (according to Barthold, Turkestan3, p. 396, probably identical with one of the leaders of Chingiz Khan’s embassy to Ḵᵛārazmšāh ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Moḥammad; see Eqbāl on him), who resided in Ḵojand (at least in 636/1238-39; Jovaynī, I, p. 86) and reported directly to the supreme khan. The revival of prosperity of Bukhara may have been owing to his efforts (Jovaynī, I, pp. 75, 84). Shortly after 636/1239 he was removed and appointed governor of Ḵānbalïq, (Ḵānbālīq, Ḵānbāleg, i.e., Peking), but he was succeeded at Bukhara by his son Masʿūd Beg, who remained in authority until his death in 688/1289, despite feuding among the Mongol successor states and repeated shifts in their borders within Central Asia. Masʿūd Beg was succeeded by his three sons, who ruled in turn until the early 8th/14th century (Barthold, “Ùaghatāi-Khān,” in EI1 I, p. 813; idem, Turkestan3, pp. 473, 504 n. 70). Masʿūd Beg may have had his residence at Bukhara, for he was buried in the madrasa that he had built there (Bartol’d, 1963, pp. 148, 262), but his third son, Süyünč, resided in Kashgar (Kāšḡar). The skilled craftsmen inhabiting Bukhara were apportioned among the four Mongol ūlūses (divisions of the Mongol empire), each belonging to one of Chingiz Khan’s sons and his descendants; each ūlūs was entitled to revenues from the portion of the population assigned to it (see Petrushevskiĭ, 1949, pp. 114-15; Barthold, Turkestan3, pp. 515-17 n. 198; cf. Jackson, p. 191).
For almost a century after the Mongol conquest efforts to restore the economy and normal city life of Bukhara were repeatedly interrupted and even entirely undone by internal feuding, wars, and rebellions. The first of these events was a popular uprising led by Maḥmūd Tārābī, a sieve maker, in 636/1238-39 (Jovaynī, I, pp. 84-90; Yakubovskiĭ, pp. 120-35). In suppressing the rebellion the Mongols are supposed to have killed 20,000 people, but a general massacre was prevented by Maḥmūd Yalavāč. In 662/1263, during the wars between Qubilay (Qūbīlāy) and Arïq Böke (Arīq/Arīḡ Būkā), the Mongols at the order of either Hülegü (Hūlāgū) or Alḡu (Alḡū), massacred 5,000 men of Bukhara belonging to the ūlūs of Joči (Jūjī); their property was plundered and their families slaughtered or taken captive (Waṣṣāf, p. 98; Barthold, Turkestan3, pp. 490, 515-17; Petrushevskiĭ, loc. cit.). In 671/1273 Bukhara was captured by the army of Abāqā Khan under Nīkpey Bahādor, whose troops sacked the city for seven days and destroyed most of it. Chaghatayid princes, who had originally come to defend Bukhara, continued the pillaging and destruction. In 674/1276 the Mongols of Iran and the Chaghatayids joined forces in sacking what was left, so that, according to Waṣṣāf, the city remained uninhabited for the next seven years (Rašīd-al-Dīn, Jāmeʿ al-tawārīḵ [Baku], pp. 140-42; Waṣṣāf, p. 148; Barthold, “Bukhārā,” in EI1 I, p. 781; Petrushevskiĭ, 1949, pp. 116-17). In 716/1316 Bukhara was again sacked by the Il-khanids of Iran together with the Chaghatayid prince Yasāvūr.
Despite all this devastation, during the 7th/13th century Bukhara and Transoxiana in general were gradually recovering from the Mongol conquest, though not as quickly as Jovaynī claims (I, pp. 83-84): according to numismatic material studied by E. A. Davidovich, the first half of the century was a period of continued economic decline, and improvement took place only in the second half (1972, pp. 134-35). Apparently the normalization of economic life should be credited to reforms promulgated by Khan Möngke (Mangū Qāʾān) in 649/1251 and especially to the activity of Masʿūd Beg, which culminated in a monetary reform in 670/1271 (ibid., pp. 140-51). After each destruction the city was rebuilt promptly, but in the sources only two prominent buildings are mentioned as having been constructed during this period: the Madrasa-ye Ḵānī, built by Sorqo(q)tani (d. 649/1252; Jovaynī, I, p. 84, III, pp. 8-9), the wife of Toluy (Tūlī), and the Masʿūdīya madrasa, built by Masʿūd Beg himself (Jovaynī, I, p. 85). The city wall was restored during the Mongol period, probably more than once; Ebn Baṭṭūṭa (Paris, III, p. 27) saw it intact in 733/1333, though he found most of the mosques, madrasas, and bāzārs of the city in ruins, possibly owing to Yasāvūr’s pillaging in 716/1316. Documents containing data on rural areas of the Bukhara oasis in the 620s-30s/1320s-30s also show a mixed picture: ruined buildings, devastated orchards, and abandoned fields everywhere but at the same time new canals, newly planted orchards and vineyards, and newly cultivated lands (Chekhovich, 1965, pp. 14-15).
It was during the Mongol period that Bukhara became the most important center of Sufism in Central Asia. The mystic and poet Sayf-al-Dīn Bāḵarzī, a disciple of Shaikh Najm-al-Dīn Kobrā, returned to his native city, where he was appointed administrator of waqfs (pious endowments) for the Madrasa-ye Ḵānī and a Sufi ḵānaqāh attached to it (Jovaynī, III, p. 9), a position he held until his death in 659/1261 (for this date see ʿAlīšāh b. Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Boḵārī, Ašjār wa aṯmār, an astrological work written around 686/1287 (see DeWeese, pp. 26-27, and Moʿīn-al-Foqarāʾ, p. 42; for the most recent discussion of Sayf-al-Dīn’s life, see DeWeese, pp. 25-34). His influence reached far beyond Bukhara, and he is often credited with the conversion of Berke (Berkāy), khan of the Golden Horde, to Islam; according to another version (probably more reliable, as it comes from Abuʾl-Fażl Jamāl-al-Dīn Moḥammad Qaršī, an author closer to these events), Berke was already a Muslim when he came to Bukhara to visit the shaikh and receive his blessing (Bartol’d, 1898, p. 136). The descendants of Sayf-al-Dīn remained in Bukhara, and his mausoleum and ḵānaqāh, which were located in the northern suburb of Fatḥābād, were among the most revered and frequently visited holy sites there. Ebn Baṭṭūṭa was entertained by Sayf-al-Dīn’s grandson in this ḵānaqāh in 733/1333; he describes it as having large waqfs and being very prosperous (Ebn Baṭṭūṭa, III, pp. 27-28; see also Chekhovich, 1965, p. 14).
Although there were Kobrawī shaikhs at Fatḥābād until the 13th/19th century (see DeWeese, pp. 37, 101), already in the 8th/14th century they had been far surpassed in spiritual and especially political importance by the Naqšbandīya. Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband spent most of his life in or near Bukhara, and after his death (791/1389) his tomb in his native village, Qaṣr-e ʿĀrefān, renamed Bahāʾ-al-Dīn (now Bahovaddin), became a major pilgrimage center.
The Timurid and Uzbek periods. Bukhara played a relatively unimportant role in the political life of Transoxiana under the Timurids (771-906/1370-1500), whose capital was at Samarkand. In this period Bukhara never matched its pre-Mongol size and remained within the limits of the city wall rebuilt after the Mongol conquest (Sukhareva, 1976, p. 296). Large areas of formerly irrigated lands in the oasis of Bukhara were reclaimed, however, especially in the second half of the 9th/15th century (Mukhamedzhanov, pp. 108-09).
Among the many disciples of Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband, Moḥammad b. Moḥammad Ḥāfezáī Boḵārī, known as Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad Pārsā (d. 822/1419), was especially influential at Bukhara, and it was probably under his leadership that the Naqšbandīya began to play the political role that distinguished it in the later history of Central Asia. After the death of Tīmūr (807/1405) the shaikhs of Bukhara under Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad supported Šāhroḵ (807-50/1405-47) in his struggle with Ḵalīl (807-12/1405-09; Bartol’d, 1964b, p. 87), and in 853/1449 they probably played some part in the coup that put an end to Oloḡ Beg’s reign in favor of his son ʿAbd-al-Laṭīf Mīrzā (853-54/1449-50; ibid., pp. 157-58). In the second half of the 9th/15th century, however, Samarkand became the center of Naqšbandī activity, under the leadership of Ḵᵛāja ʿObayd-Allāh Aḥrār.
At the end of the century Šāhbaḵt, or Šaybak, later known as Šaybānī Khan, escaped from his enemies in Dašt-e Qepčāq and found refuge in Bukhara under the Timurid governor ʿAbd-al-ʿAlī Tarḵān. He spent two years in the service of the latter, studying Islamic matters under the guidance of one of the best qāreʾs (Koran reciters) of that time and two Naqšbandī shaikhs, Jamāl-al-Dīn ʿAzīzān and Manṣūr (the exact dates are not clear; see Doḡlāt, p. 166; Semenov, 1956, p. 53; idem, 1954b, p. 43). It was probably at this time that the close connection between the Uzbek Shaibanid dynasty and the Naqšbandīs of Bukhara had its beginning. Subsequently, as leader of the Uzbeks, Šaybānī Khan captured Bukhara after a three-day siege in 905/1500 (see Bābor-nāma, facs. ed., fols. 78b-79b; Moḥammad ṣāleḥ, pp. 44-48; Semenov, 1954b, p. 49). Slightly later, when a conspiracy against him was discovered, he came again to Bukhara, punished the conspirators, imposed a heavy indemnity on the city, and ordered the city walls destroyed (see Semenov, 1954b, p. 50). The sons of Ḵᵛāja Aḥrār at Samarkand, led by Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad Yaḥyā, had supported the Timurids against the Uzbeks; Ḵᵛāja Yaḥyā was killed after the capture of Samarkand in 905/1500, and from that time on the leadership of the Naqšbandī order belonged to the shaikhs of Bukhara. Its ties with the ruling house, already established, were further strengthened under Šaybānī Khan’s successors.
About a year after Šaybānī Khan’s defeat and death at Marv in 916/1510 Bukhara was taken from the Uzbeks by Bābor, but in 918/1512 it was reconquered by ʿObayd-Allāh, Šaybānī Khan’s nephew (see Semenov, 1954b, pp. 122-28, with references). In that year the Shaibanid state was divided into several appanages: Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, and Balḵ with their respective provinces, each ruled by the descendants of one of the four sons of Abuʾl-Ḵayr Khan, Šaybānī Khan’s grandfather. At Bukhara the first such ruler was ʿObayd-Allāh, of the line of Shah Bodāḡ. In 940-46/1533-39, he became supreme khan of the Uzbeks and Bukhara the Shaibanid capital. ʿObayd-Allāh’s son ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz succeeded him and ruled the province of Bukhara until his death in 957/1550. According to most sources, he was succeeded in turn by Šaybānī Khan’s grandson, Yār-Moḥammad (so apparently on his coins, as well as in some historical sources; see Davidovich, 1979, pp. 61, 69-80; Maḥmūd b. Walī in Materialy po istorii kazakhskikh khanstv, p. 356; cf., however, one of the earliest mss. of Ḥāfezá Tanīš Boḵārī, fols. 29a, 57a, 59b, 69b, 72a, where the name is consistently given as Moḥammad-Yār). Soon afterward Bukhara was captured by Pīr Moḥammad b. Jānī Beg, the ruler of Balḵ, who abandoned it in 958/1551. In 958-61/1551-54 Yār-Moḥammad and Sayyed Borhān Solṭān, a grandson of ʿObayd-Allāh, ruled the province jointly; then Borhān killed Yār-Moḥammad and disputed the province with ʿAbd-Allāh Khan b. Eskandar, until he too was killed in 964/1557. ʿAbd-Allāh then made Bukhara the Shaibanid capital.
During these struggles among the Shaibanids the influence of the Naqšbandī shaikhs of Bukhara seems to have increased greatly. Aḥmad Ḵᵛājagī Kāsānī “Maḵdūm-e Aʿzáam”, the second successor to Ḵᵛāja Aḥrār, founded a ḵānaqāh in Bukhara with the help of ʿObayd-Allāh Khan. Among his disciples were Jānī Beg (d. 935/1528-29) and his son Eskandar, respectively grandfather and father of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan and Ḵᵛāja Eslām, a shaikh from Jūybār, a suburb of Bukhara. The Jūybāri shaikhs were custodians of the tomb of the imam Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Saʿd (d. 360/970-71; Moʿīn-al-Foqarāʾ, p. 28), considered their progenitor. After the death of Maḵdūm-e Aʿzáam (949/1542-43) Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad Eslām succeeded him at Bukhara and gave his full support to ʿAbd-Allāh Khan during his campaign to capture Bukhara. From that time until the 13th/19th century the Jūybāri shaikhs played a major role in the political affairs of the khanate.
During the long reign of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan (964-1006/1557-98, as supreme khan after 991/1583) the system of princely appanages was effectively eliminated. Bukhara reached the peak of its military might and achieved the greatest expansion of its territory. This period was also one of great economic and cultural flowering, during which many fine buildings were constructed. The area within the walls was enlarged to 1.54 square miles, at the expense of neighboring villages, which gradually became incorporated as city quarters (Sukhareva, 1958, pp. 59-61; idem, 1976, pp. 302-03). Extensive building activity was sponsored not only by ʿAbd-Allāh Khan himself but also by his amirs, and especially the Jūybāri shaikh Ḵᵛāja Saʿd (McChesney, 1987). Nor was it limited to Bukhara, though other cities of the khanate, notably rival Samarkand, received much less attention. In the countryside the irrigation system was expanded, both in the Zarafshan (Zarafšān) basin and elsewhere throughout the khanate, and large areas of land were reclaimed for cultivation (Mukhamedzhanov, pp. 110-11).
In 1007/1599, one year after the death of ʿAbd-Allāh Khan, the khanate of Bukhara passed into the hands of the Janid dynasty (q.v.), descendants of another line of the Jochids; although some territory was lost, the political stability and economic well-being of the state were not immediately affected. The system of princely appanages was apparently not fully restored under the new dynasty, and Bukhara remained the uncontested capital of the khanate to the end, although Balḵ acquired special prominence as the seat of the heir apparent, who controlled all provinces south of the Amu Darya and sometimes even claimed power equal to that of the khan of Bukhara himself. The reign of Emāmqolī Khan (1020-51/1611-42) is usually described in contemporary sources as a period of prosperity. The irrigation system was further expanded (Abduraimov, I, pp. 267-68), and Bukhara remained the focus of building activity.
In the mid-10th/17th century the khanate entered a period of political and economic decline, which, especially from the reign of Sobḥānqolī Khan (1093-1114/1682-1702), was manifest in the growing strength of the Uzbek tribal chieftains at the expense of the central authority, frequent internal feuds, and the reduction of state revenues. The khans of Ḵīva, beginning with Abuʾl-Ḡāzī (1054-74/1644-64), took advantage of Janid difficulties and repeatedly raided Transoxiana, often penetrating to its central regions. In 1092/1681 Anūša Khan, Abuʾl-Ḡāzī’s son, even captured and sacked the city of Bukhara, and the ḵoṭba (Friday sermon) was read there in his name (according to Kīrāk-Yarāqčī and Termeḏī, see Salakhetdinova, pp. 77-78; cf. Moḥammad-Yūsof Monšī, p. 104, where Anūša is said to have captured only the suburb of Jūybār). During the reign of Sobḥānqolī Khan, Anūša Khan invaded the central regions of Transoxiana three times and twice captured Samarkand (Salakhetdinova).
ʿObayd-Allāh Khan (1114-23/1702-11) attempted to curb tribal separatism and strengthen the central government, but, in order to finance his measures, he pushed the traditional Janid policy of debasing the currency to such an extreme that it triggered a riot in Bukhara in 1120/1708. Three years later ʿObayd-Allāh Khan was assassinated, and the khanate disintegrated into a number of tribal principalities, often at war with one another. The authority of Abuʾl-Fayż Khan, ʿObayd-Allāh’s successor, was limited to the city of Bukhara and its immediate district, while real power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the khan’s atalïq (ā¦tālīq), Moḥammad Ḥakīm Biy, chieftain of the Uzbek tribe of Manḡït (see, e.g., “Mangéts,” in EI2 VI). The collapse of central authority and the economic crisis were exacerbated by the invasion of a great mass of nomadic Kazakhs, who fled from across the Syr Darya into the Zarafshan valley in 1135/1723 after a defeat at the hands of the Junghars. Together with rebellious Uzbek tribes they ravaged Transoxiana, particularly the environs of Bukhara, for seven years. Famine struck Bukhara, and instances of cannibalism were recorded; a great many people fled to other parts of the country, and Moḥammad Yaʿqūb in his Golšan al-molūk, written a hundred years later, claims (probably with some exaggeration) that only two quarters remained inhabited and that many houses collapsed (see Sukhareva, 1958, p. 76). Before the country could fully recover after the departure of the Kazakhs (1142/1730), it was invaded by Nāder Shah Afšār in 1153/1740. Abuʾl-Fayż Khan was defeated and offered his submission, and Nāder Shah’s army did not enter the city. During the next several years the influence of Moḥammad Ḥakīm (d. 1156/1743) and his son, Moḥammad Raḥīm Atalïq, who enjoyed the patronage of Nāder Shah, grew rapidly. After the assassination of Nāder Shah in 1160/1747, Abuʾl-Fayż Khan was also killed, and Moḥammad Raḥīm became effective ruler of Bukhara, in the name of a puppet khan of the Janid house. Moḥammad Raḥīm should be considered the actual founder of the Manḡït dynasty, which reigned in Bukhara until the abolition of the khanate in 1920; the Janids continued as nominal khans until 1200/1785 or, according to some numismatic data, 1203/1788-89 (Davidovich, 1964, pp. 51-52).
During the reign of the first Manḡïts, the khanate of Bukhara recovered from the devastation of the preceding decades. The city itself is supposed to have been restored by the third Manḡït ruler, Shah Morād “Amīr-e Maʿṣūm,” (1199-1215/1785-1800), who resettled there a group of Iranian Shiʿites whom he had deported from Marv in 1204/1789-90, as well as some groups of Uzbeks and Turkmens who emigrated from Ḵᵛārazm; apparently the majority of the previous inhabitants, who had scattered throughout the country during the disturbances and famine, also returned to their homes (Sukhareva, 1958, pp. 76-77). Bukhara again became the major center of traditional handicrafts in Central Asia (in one modern ethnographic study ninety-nine separate crafts are listed for 13th/19th-century Bukhara; Sukhareva, 1962, pp. 16-20), as well as of both internal and international trade, especially of that rapidly developing with Russia. The relative political and military power of the khanate of Bukhara in Central Asia diminished, however, owing to the increased strength of rivals: the khanates of Ḵīva and Ḵoqand. Substantial portions of the territory of Bukhara were lost to Ḵoqand in the east and Afghanistan in the south. The city of Bukhara, however, retained its prestige as a stronghold of orthodoxy and the major center of Islamic learning in Central Asia. It had a very high concentration of madrasas (between 100 and 200, according to different counts; see Sukhareva, 1962, pp. 70-74), with a total of about 10,000 students (mollābača) from all parts of Central Asia. The Islamic establishment, many of the leading members of which were traditionally recruited from among the Jūybāri shaikhs, exercised great influence in the political affairs of Bukhara. The Manḡït rulers, especially Shah Morād and Ḥaydar (1215-42/1800-26), took care to demonstrate their piety by patronizing Islamic institutions. Shah Morād was the first of the line to adopt as his main title amīr, meaning amīr al-moʾmenīn (Vel’yaminov-Zernov, p. 412, Bartol’d, 1963, p. 279), in place of khan. He also issued a decree granting Bukhara the status of tarḵān, exempting the inhabitants of the city from taxes; it remained in force until the end of Manḡït rule.
Although the area of the city did not increase after the 10th/16th century, its population did, necessitating greater density of construction (for which Bukhara had already been notorious as early as the 4th/10th century). According to modern ethnographic data, the total population of the city at the end of the Manḡït period was about 90,000, living in 220 goḏars (quarters). The majority spoke Tajik, including some originally Turkic groups that had been assimilated by the local Tajiks (Sukhareva, 1962, pp. 117-43). There was also a large Jewish community (see v, below). Under the Manḡïts building activity was particularly intense, including construction of more than sixty madrasas, as well as mosques, caravansaries, baths, and reservoirs. The quality of construction was generally very poor, however.
The period of Russian domination (see, in general, Becker, 1968). In 1285/1868, under Mozáaffar-al-Dīn (1277-1302/1860-85), the khanate of Bukhara was conquered by the Russians, and the Manḡïts became vassals of the Russian empire. The sovereignty of the khans was not formally limited, and at first the Russians did not interfere in the internal affairs of Bukhara. Their influence began to be felt only after construction of the Central Asian railway across the territory of the khanate (1887) and the redrawing of the Russian customs frontier to include the khanate (1895). Russian settlements, with extraterritorial rights, were established along the railroad and on the Amu Darya; the most important of them, New Bukhara (Novaya Bukhara), where the Russian political agent lived, was located at the Bukhara railroad station 8 miles south of the city. These settlements grew rapidly, and by 1914 at least 50,000 Russians were living in the khanate. The political agency at New Bukhara was connected by telephone and telegraph lines to the citadel in the old city, and the power plant in New Bukhara supplied electricity to the capital, though very little was used there. Russian and other Western manufactured goods were sold in the bāzārs in increasing quantities. Nevertheless, daily life, especially in the capital, and public administration remained almost unaffected by modernization. In the 1940s and 1950s Bukhara under the Manḡïts became the subject of a comprehensive study by a group of Soviet ethnographers and historians. The results of this study have been published mainly by O. A. Sukhareva (1958, 1962, 1966, 1976) and have made the life of the city during this period better known than that of any other city in Central Asia.
After 1905 a liberal reform movement developed in Bukhara, but it encountered strong opposition from the conservative Islamic clergy and was suppressed by the amir. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 Russian troops from the Tashkent Soviet, led by F. I. Kolesov, attempted to take Bukhara in March, 1918, but they had to retreat after having shelled the city for a day and a half. At the end of August, 1920, the last amir, ʿĀlem Khan, was overthrown, as the result of an invasion by the Red Army, and on 6 October 1920 the khanate was abolished and proclaimed the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic. ʿĀlem Khan fled to the eastern parts of the country and from there to Kabul (1921). Armed resistance to the Soviets (the Basmačī movement) continued until 1926, but after 1923 it was limited to mountainous areas in the east. At the end of that year, as a result of political purges organized by the representatives of Moscow, the government of Bukhara was brought totally under Russian control. In October, 1924, the republic was dismembered under the Soviet plan for “national delimitation of Central Asia”; most of its territory was included in the newly formed Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbekistan). The loss of its status as capital city had a serious effect on Bukhara. According to the census of 1926, the population had declined to only 41,839 inhabitants, half the pre-revolutionary figure (Sukhareva, 1962, p. 101); a great many people had fled during the civil war, mainly to Afghanistan, and others scattered throughout the countryside and to other cities of Uzbekistan. Another wave of emigration followed in the early 1930s, during forced collectivization in the Soviet Union; even in the late 1940s entire quarters of the city, once so densely populated, remained in ruins after having been abandoned (author’s observations). Bukhara also lost to Tashkent and Samarkand its former importance as the cultural capital of Central Asia, partly as a result of the suppression of Islam and its institutions in the region in the 1920s and 1930s.
Bibliography:
Sources. Most indigenous sources for the history of Bukhara in the 7th-13th/13th-19th centuries are in Persian. For the Mongol period see especially Jovaynī, ed. Qazvīnī; Rašīd-al-Dīn, Jāmeʿ al-tawārīḵ (Moscow; Baku); ʿAbd-Allāh Waṣṣāf Šīrāzī, ed. and tr. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte Wassaf’s I, Vienna, 1856. For manuscripts, editions, and translations of all these sources, see Storey-Bregel, pp. 759-67, 301-20, 769-75, respectively. On Timurid historiography, none of it written in Transoxiana, see Storey-Bregel, pp. 339-58, 361-93, 787-843. Ẓahīr-al-Dīn Moḥammad Bābor, Bābor-nāma, ed. A. S. Beveridge, The Ba‚bar-nāma …, GMS I, Leiden and London, 1905. Historical writing of Bukhara proper, with the exception of the earlier work by Naršaḵī begins with the Shaibanids and continues without interruption into the 20th century (Storey-Bregel, pp. 1115-82). Among the most important Persian historical works for the Shaibanid period are Kamāl-al-Dīn Šīr-ʿAlī Benāʾī, Šaybānī-nāma and Fotūḥāt-e ḵānī; Ḥāfezá Tanīš Boḵārī, Šaraf-nāma-ye šāhī (or ʿAbd-Allāh-nāma; facsimile ed. and tr. M. A. Salakhetdinova, I, Moscow, 1983); Fażl-Allāh b. Rūzbehān Konjī, Mehmān-nāma-ye Boḵarā, ed. M. Sotūda, Tehran, 1341 Š./1962; Moḥammad Ḥaydar Doḡlāt (Duḡlat), Tārīḵ-e Rašīdī (tr. E. D. Ross, London, 1895-98); Masʿūd b. ʿOṯmān Kūhestānī, Tārīḵ-e Abuʾl-Ḵayrḵānī; Šādī, Fatḥ-nāma; and Zayn-al-Dīn Maḥmūd Wāṣefī, Badāʾeʿ al-waqāʾeʿ. The Janid period is represented, among others, by Mīr Moḥammad Amīn Boḵārī, ʿObayd-Allāh-nāma; Moḥammad Amīn Kīrāk-Yarāqčī, Moḥīṭ al-tawārīkò; Maḥmūd b. Walī, Baḥr al-asrār fī manāqeb al-aḵyār (tr. by K. A. Pishchulina from a Tashkent ms. in Materialy po istorii kazakhskikh khanstv XV-XVIII vekov, Alma-Ata, 1969, pp. 320-68); Āḵūnd Mollā Šaraf-al-Dīn Aʿlam, Tārīḵ-e Rāqemī; Moḥammad Yūsof Mongī, Taḏkera-ye Moqī-ḵānī (tr. A. A. Semenov, Tashkent, 1956); and ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Ṭāleʿ, Tārīḵ-e Abuʾl-Fayż Ḵān (tr. A. A. Semenov, Tashkent, 1959); Ḵᵛāja Samandar Termeḏī, Dastūr al-molūk (ed. M. A. Salakhetdinova, Moscow, 1971). For the Manḡït period there are ʿAbd-al-Karīm Boḵārī’s untitled work; Mīr ʿĀlem Boḵārī, Fatḥ-nāma-ye solṭānī; Moḥammad Wafā Karmīnagī, Toḥfat al-ḵānī; Moḥammad Šarīf, Tāj al-tawārīkò; Tārīḵ-e Amīr Ḥaydar; Moḥammad Yaʿqūb, Golšan al-molūk; Moḥammad Salīm Bek Salīmī, Tārīḵ-e salīmī; and ʿAbd-al-ʿAzáīm Sāmī, Toḥfa-ye šāhī and Tārīḵ-e salāṭīn-e Manḡītīya. Most of these works have not yet been published. During the first half of the 10th/16th century several important works on the history of the Shaibanids were written in Chaghatay: Tawārīḵ-e gozīda-ye Noṣrat-nāma (probably by Šaybānī Khan himself, facsimile ed. A. M. Akramov, Tashkent, 1967); ʿAbd-Allāh Naṣr-Allāhī, Zobdat al-āṯār (unpublished mss. in Tashkent and Leningrad); Moḥammad ṣāleḥ, Šaybānī-nāma (ed. H. Vámbéry, Stuttgart, 1872; ed. P. Melioranskiĭ and A. Samoĭlovich, St. Petersburg, 1908). Biographical, and especially hagiographical, literature related to these periods, though substantial, has been even less well studied and published than the historical works (see Storey, I, pt. 2). Among the most important are Aḥmad Moʿīn-al-Foqarāʾ, Tārīḵ-e Mollā-zāda (or Ketāb-e Mollā-zāda; middle or late 9th/15th century; ed. A. Golčīn-e Maʿānī, Tehran, 1339 Š./1960); Nāṣer-al-Dīn Tūrā (Töre; a son of Amir Mozáaffar), Toḥfat al-zāʾerīn (1324/1906; lith. ed., Bukhara, 1328/1910). Only a few Arabic and Persian geographical works contain useful information on Bukhara and Transoxiana in the 7th-13th/13th-19th centuries. See especially Ebn Baṭṭūṭa; the geographical portion of Maḥmūd b. Walī, Baḥr al-asrār (facsimile ed. and tr., B. A. Akhmedov, More taĭn otnositel’no doblesteĭ blagorodnykh (geografiya), Tashkent, 1977).
Persian documentary sources related to the history of Bukhara and preserved mainly in Tashkent are numerous and very little studied. Main publications: A. K. Arends, A. B. Khalidov, and O. D. Chekhovich, eds. and trs., Bukharskiĭ vakf XIII v., Pamyatniki pis’mennosti Vostoka 52, Moscow, 1979. O. D. Chekhovich, Dokumenty k istorii agrarnykh otnosheniĭ v Bukharskom khanstve, I. Akty feodal’noĭ sobstvennosti na zemlyu XVII-XIX vv., Tashkent, 1954. Idem, Bukharskie dokumenty XIV veka, Tashkent, 1965. Iz arkhiva sheĭkhov Dzhuĭbari. Materialy po zemel’nym i torgovym otnosheniyam Sredneĭ Azii XVI v., Moscow and Leningrad, 1939. Materialy po istorii Uzbekskoĭ, Tadzhikskoĭ i Turkmenskoĭ SSR, Leningrad, 1932. R. G. Mukminova, K istorii agrarnykh otnosheniĭ v Uzbekistane XVI v.: Po materialam “Vakf-name,” Tashkent, 1966. The first European to visit Bukhara was Anthony Jenkinson in 1558 (E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote, eds., Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia by Anthony Jenkinson and Other Englishmen I, Hakluyt Society 72, London, 1886). After that Bukhara was visited mainly by Russian travelers and envoys until the 19th century. The most important account was written by B. and S. Pazukhin, Nakaz Borisu i Semenu Pazukhinym poslannym v Bukharu, Balkh i Yurgench, 1669, St. Petersburg, 1894.
Both Russian and other Western travelers have left valuable descriptions of 19th-century Bukhara. See especially G. de Meyendorff, Voyage d’Orenbourg aà Boukhara, fait en 1820, Paris, 1826; A. Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, 3 vols., London, 1834; Zapiski o Bukharskom khanstve (Otchety P. I. Demezona i I. V. Vitkevicha), Moscow, 1983 (publication of travel reports written in 1833 and 1836); N. V. Khanykov, Opisanie Bukharskogo khanstva, St. Petersburg, 1843; tr. Bokhara. Its Amir and Its People, London, 1845.
A. Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia, London, 1864. Idem, Sketches of Central Asia, London, 1868.
Among the many Western descriptions of Bukhara after the Russian conquest, the following should be noted: E. Schuyler, Turkistan. Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja, 2 vols., London, 1876.
H. Lansdell, Russian Central Asia, Including Kuldzha, Bokhara, Khiva and Merv, 2 vols., London and New York, 1885.
O. Olufsen, The Emir of Bokhara and His Country. Journeys and Studies in Bokhara, Copenhagen, 1911.
Russian descriptions after 1868 are too numerous to be mentioned here. The most extensive, though still incomplete, listing of published Western and Russian travel accounts is R. A. Pierce, Soviet Central Asia. A Bibliography, Berkeley, 1966 (pt. 1. 1558-1866, pp. 26-48; pt. 2. 1867-1917, pp. 43-56).
Studies. M. A. Abduraimov, Ocherki agrarnykh otnosheniĭ v Bukharskom khanstve v XVI-pervoĭ polovine XIX veka I-II, Tashkent, 1966-70.
S. Aĭni, Vospominaniya, tr. from Tajik A. Rozenfel’d, Moscow and Leningrad, 1960 (including A. A. Semenov, “K proshlomu Bukhary,” pp. 980-1015).
B. A. Akhmedov, Istoriya Balkha (XVI-pervaya polovina XVIII v.), Tashkent, 1982.
M. S. Andreev and O. A. Chekhovich, Ark (kreml’) Bukhary v kontse XIX-nachale XX vv., Dushanbe, 1972.
W. B[acher], “Bokhara,” in The Jewish Encyclopaedia III, 1902, pp. 292-95.
V. V. Bartol’d, “Istoriya kol’turnoĭ zhizni Turkestana,” in his Sochineniya II/1, Moscow, 1963, pp. 257-433.
Idem, “Tseremonial pri dvore uzbekskikh khanov v XVII veke,” ibid., II/2, 1964a, pp. 388-99.
Idem, “Ulugbek i ego vremya,” ibid., II/2, 1964b, pp. 25-196.
Idem, “K istorii orosheniya Turkestana,” ibid., III, 1965, pp. 157-62, 185-209.
Idem, “Iz mints-kabineta pri SPb. Universitete I,” ibid., IV, 1966, pp. 343-45.
Idem (W. Barthold), Turkestan3, pp. 381-519.
S. Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia, Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924, Cambridge, Mass., 1968 (with a valuable bibliography).
A. N. Boldyrev, Zaĭnaddin Vasifi. Tadzhikskiĭ pisatel’ XVI v. (Opyt tvorcheskoĭ biografii), Stalinabad, 1957.
R. Burnasheva, “Monety Bukharskogo khanstva pri Mangytakh (seredina XVIII-nachalo XX v.),” Epigrafika Vostoka 18, 1967, pp. 112-28; 21, 1972, pp. 67-80.
H. Carrère d’Encausse, Re‚forme et re‚volution chez les musulmans de l’Empire Russe. Bukhara 1867-1924, Paris, 1966.
E. A. Davidovich, “Materialy dlya kharakteristiki e‚konomiki i sotsial’nykh otnosheniĭ v Sredneĭ Azii XVI v.,” Izvestiya Akademii Nauk Tadzhikskoĭ SSR. Otdelenie obshchestvennykh nauk 1, 1961, pp. 25-44.
Idem, Istoriya monetnogo dela Sredneĭ Azii XVII-XVIII vv. (Zolotye i serebryanye monety Dzhanidov), Dushanbe, 1964.
Idem, “O vremeni maksimal’nogo razvitiya tovarno-denezhnykh otnosheniĭ v srednevekovoĭ Sredneĭ Azii,” Narody Azii i Afriki 6, 1965, pp. 83-91.
Idem, Denezhnoe khozyaĭstvo Sredneĭ Azii posle mongol’skogo zavoevaniya i reforma Masʿud-beka (XIII v.), Moscow, 1972.
Idem, “Feodal’nyĭ zemel’nyĭ milk v Sredneĭ Azii XV-XVIII vv. Sushchnost’ i transformatsiya,” in Formy feodal’noĭ zemel’noĭ sobstvennosti i vladeniya na Blizhnem i Srednem Vostoke. Bartol’dovskie chteniya 1975 g., Moscow, 1979a, pp. 39-62.
Idem, Klady drevnikh i srednevekovykh monet Tadzhikistana, Moscow, 1979b.
Idem, Istoriya denezhnogo obrashcheniya srednevekovoĭ Sredneĭ Azii (mednye monety XV-pervoĭ chetverti XVI v. v Maverannakhre), Moscow, 1983.
D. DeWeese, The Kashf al-Hudā of Kamāl al-Dīn Ḥusayn Khorezmī, Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1985.
ʿA. Eqbāl, “Maḥmūd Yalavāj Ḵᵛārazmī,” MDAT 2/2, 1333 Š./1954, pp. 66-70.
B. G. Gafurov, Tadzhiki. Drevneĭshaya, drevnyaya i srednevekovaya istoriya, Moscow, 1972, pp. 447-578.
H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols II/2, London, 1880, pp. 686-816 (still useful for political history).
Istoriya Bukhary s drevneĭshikh vremën do nashikh dneĭ, Tashkent, 1976, pp. 80-194 (with bibliography).
Istoriya narodov Uzbekistana II, Tashkent, 1947 (later editions, entitled Istoriya Uzbekskoĭ SSR, are often unreliable).
P. P. Ivanov, Vosstanie kitaĭ-kipchakov v Bukharskom khanstve 1821-25gg. Istochniki i opyt ikh issledovaniya, Moscow and Leningrad, 1937.
Idem, Khozyaĭstvo dzhuĭbarskikh sheĭkhov. K istorii feodal’nogo zemlevladeniya v Sredneĭ Azii v XVI-XVII vv., Moscow and Leningrad, 1954.
P. Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal 22/3-4, 1978, pp. 186-244.
N. A. Khalfin, Rossiya i khanstva Sredneĭ Azii (pervaya polovina XIX veka), Moscow, 1974.
N. A. Kislyakov, Patriarkhal’no-feodal’nye otnosheniya sredi osedlogo sel’skogo naseleniya Bukharskogo khanstva v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka, Moscow, 1962.
D. N. Logofet, Bukharskoe khanstvo pod russkim protektoratom I-II, St. Petersburg, 1911.
N. M. Lowick, “Shaybanid Silver Coins,” Numismatic Chronicle, ser. 7, 6, 1966, pp. 251-330.
R. D. McChesney, “The Amirs of Muslim Central Asia in the XVIIth Century,” JESHO 26/I, 1983, pp. 33-70.
Idem, “Economic and Social Aspects of the Public Architecture of Bukhara in the 1560’s and 1570’s,” Islamic Art 2, 1987, pp. 217-42.
K. M. Mirzaev, Amlyakovaya forma feodal’noĭ zemel’noĭ sobstvennosti v Bukharskom khanstve, Tashkent, 1954.
A. R. Mukhamedzhanov, Istoriya orosheniya Bukharskogo oazisa (s drevneĭshikh vremën do nachala XX v.), Tashkent, 1978.
R. G. Mukminova, Ocherki po istorii remesla v Samarkande i Bukhare v XVI veke, Tashkent, 1976.
I. P. Petrushevskiĭ, “Iz istorii Bukhary v XIII v.,” Uchënye zapiski Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta XCVIII, Seriya Vostokovedcheskikh Nauk 1, 1949, pp. 103-18.
L. I. Rempel’, Dalekoe i blizkoe. Stranitsy zhizni, byta, stroitel’nogo dela, i iskusstva Staroĭ Bukhary. Bukharskie zapisi, Tashkent, 1981.
O. Pritsak, “Āl-i Burhān,” Der Islam 30, 1952, pp. 81-96.
M. A. Salakhetdinova, “Pokhody Anusha-khana na zemli Bukharskogo khanstva,” in Blizhniĭ i Sredniĭ Vostok (Istoriya, kul’tura, istochnikovedenie), Moscow, 1968, pp. 123-33.
A. A. Semenov, Ocherk pozemel’no-podatnogo i nalogovogo ustroĭstva b. Bukharskogo khanstva, Tashkent, 1929.
Idem, “Kul’turnyĭ uroven’ pervykh Sheĭbanidov,” Sovetskoe vostokovedenie 3, 1956, pp. 51-59.
Idem, “Bukharskiĭ traktat o chinakh i zvaniyakh i ob obyazannostyakh nositeleĭ ikh v srednevekovoĭ Bukhare,” in Sovetskoe vostokovedenie V, Moscow and Leningrad, 1948, pp. 137-53.
Idem, Ocherk ustroĭstva tsentral’nogo administrativnogo upravleniya Bukharskogo khanstva pozdneĭshego vremeni, Stalinabad, 1954a.
Idem, “Pervye Sheĭbanidy i bor’ba za Maverannakhr,” Materialy po istorii tadzkkov i uzbekov Sredneĭ Azii 1, Trudy Akademii Nauk Tadzhikskoĭ SSR 12, Stalinabad, 1954b, pp. 109-150.
Idem, “Sheĭbani-khan i zavoevanie im imperii Timuridov,” Materialy po istorii tadzhikov i uzbekov Sredneĭ Azii 1, Trudy Akademii Nauk Tadzhikskoĭ SSR 12, Stalinabad, 1954c, pp. 39-83.
O. A. Sukhareva, K istorii gorodov Bukharskogo khanstva (Istoriko-ètnograficheskie ocherki), Tashkent, 1958.
Idem, Pozdnefeodal’nyĭ gorod Bukhara kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka. Remeslennaya promyshlennost’, Tashkent, 1962.
Idem, Bukhara, XIX-nachalo XX v. (Pozdnefeodal’nyĭ gorod i ego naselenie), Moscow, 1966.
Idem, Kvartal’naya obschchina pozdnefeodal’nogo goroda Bukhary (v svyazi s istorieĭ kvartalov), Moscow, 1976.
V. V. Vel’yaminov-Zernov, “Monety bukharskie i khivinskie,” Trudy Vostochnogo otdeleniya Imp. Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva 4, 1858, pp. 328-456.
V. L. Vyatkin, “Sheĭkhi Dzhuĭbari I. Khodzha Islam,” V. V. Bartol’du turkestanskie druz’ya, ucheniki i pochitateli, Tashkent, 1927, pp. 3-19.
A. Yakubovskiĭ, “Vosstanie Tarabi v 1238 g. (K istorii krest’yanskikh i remeslennykh dvizheniĭ v Sredneĭ Azii),” Doklady gruppy vostokovedov na sessii Akademii nauk SSSR 20 marta 1935 g., Trudy Instituta vostokovedeniya 17, Moscow and Leningrad, 1936, pp. 101-35.
(Yuri Bregel)
Originally Published: January 1, 2000
Last Updated: January 1, 2000
This article is available in print.
Vol. IV, Fasc. 5, pp. 515-521
