Bukhara
(1997 est. pop. 237,000). Bukhara is an ancient city in modern Uzbekistan. Long a major center of learning in the eastern Islamic world, Bukhara was also capital of a state of the same name, from the sixteenth century to 1924.
Bukhara was an important trading post on the Silk Route connecting China with the Middle East well before Arab armies conquered the city in 709. After the Arab conquest, the population gradually converted to Islam. In the late ninth century Bukhara became the capital of the Samanid dynasty (892–1005), which presided over the revival of the Persian literary tradition after two centuries of Arabic-language domination. Bukhara remained a major center of Persian language and civilization until the twentieth century.
After the decline of the Samanids, the armies of Ghengis Khan sacked Bukhara in 1220. Although the city's political eclipse continued until the mid-sixteenth century when it became the capital of Shaybanid dynasty, Bukhara was celebrated as a center of Islamic learning. Imam Ismaiʿil al-Bukhari (d. 869), the great collector of hadith, or the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, had worked in Bukhara. Baha' al-Din Naqshband (d. 1388) established the influential Naqshbandi Sufi order in Bukhara. After the sixteenth century Bukhara's madrasas (seminaries) attracted students from all Central Asia and from as far away as Tatarstan and India.
The Ark Fortress or Citadel in Bukhara which since the first millennium has served as the home of various rulers of the region. It has also been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times. (DAVID SAMUELROBBINS/CORBIS)Bukhara came under Russian protection in 1868; in 1920 the Soviets, with the help of disaffected Bukharans, overran the country and established a Bukharan People's Soviet Republic. In 1924 Central Asian state boundaries were redrawn on an ethnonational basis, the Bukharan republic was abolished, and Bukhara was included in Uzbekistan. Bukhara lost its status as a capital city; Uzbek replaced Persian as the official language.
Today Bukhara is a regional city in Uzbekistan, with an economy based on the exploitation of nearby oil and gas resources and the processing of cotton and karakul-sheep wool. Much of the city's architecture dates from the Soviet period, but the old city boasts several architectural monuments, such as the tenth-century mausoleum of the Samanid dynasty and the Kalon minaret, the tallest structure in the world when it was built in 1127.
Adeeb Khalid
Further Reading
Aini, Sadriddin. (1998) Sands of the Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini. Trans. by John Perry and Rachel Lehr. Malibu, CA: Mazda.
Becker, Seymour. (1968) Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carrere d'encausse, Hélène. (1988) Islam and the Russian Empire. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Frye, Richard. (1965). Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
McChesney, R. D. (1992) Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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