BUKHARA (BOKHARA). (I) Town and province in the Uzbek Socialist Soviet Republic. The town, old Bukhara, Lat. N., Long. 64° 3o' E. Alt. 1,200ft. Pop. (1926) 71,019. It is the centre of the fertile oasis depending on irrigation from the Zerafshan river; the canal supplying Bukhara is the Shahri Rud. Water-borne diseases, especially the "rishta" or cotton thread worm, are common, since the water stagnates in the canals. The Labihauz, or tank, in front of the chief mosque, with its shady trees, is picturesque but dirty, as the Zerafshan river is here nearing exhaustion and economy is necessary. Bukhara has a dry, sunny climate with extremes of cold and heat and cloudless skies most of the year. The approach to the city is lined with gardens of apricots, apples, cherries, vines, melons, roses, irises, sunflowers, poppies and tobacco plants. The unburnt brick, one storeyed, flat-roofed houses are in striking contrast to the in numerable mosques, amongst which are the beautiful 16th century Mir-Arab, the Mejid-kalyan or Kok-humbez mosque of the emir, near which is the brick minaret 2o3ft. high, from whose summit state criminals were thrown until 1871. Bukhara is a commercial centre for Central Asia and its bazaar (a noted slave market until the Russian occupation) extends for 7m. with roofs of beaten clay upon undressed timber: its booths display carpets, dress fabrics, karakul (lamb's wool), copper ware, cutlery, trinkets and every variety of Asiatic ware. One section, roofed by a dome of ancient brick work, is set apart for literature. There is a separate market for raw cotton, the production of which increased with the opening of the railway. The population includes Uzbegs, Turkomans, Tadzhiks, Afghans, Arabs, Hindus and a Jewish colony said to have migrated from Baghdad.
Bukhara has always been a centre of Mohammedan learning. When the Mongol invasions of the 13th century laid waste Samarkand and other Muslim cities, it retained its independence and became the chief seat of Islamic culture. It has numerous madrasas (theological colleges) and, though many of their libraries have been scattered or destroyed, there are still literary treasures preserved in private collections, and Afghan, Persian, Armenian and Turkish bibliophiles look to Bukhara for rare texts, so that it is the principal Central Asiatic book market. The present city was begun A.D. 83o on the site of an older city, was destroyed by Jenghiz Khan 1220 and later rebuilt. The Raghistan is the chief square and has a citadel on an artificial eminence 45ft. high, sur rounded by a mile of wall and containing the former Emir's palace, the larger houses, the prisons and the water cisterns. The city wall is 28f t. high, 8m. long, and has semicircular towers and I 1 gates, but is of little value for defence. In any case Bukhara's fate depends on Samarkand, which can cut off its water supply.
(2) New Bukhara or Kagan, a Russian town near the railway station, 8m. from Old Bukhara, is the centre for the Bogoyetidin district of the Bukhara province, a district which has a population (1926) of 78,691. (X.) The most important part of Bukhara belonged to the country of Sogdiana, which, after the conquest of Alexander the Great formed part of the Seleucide empire. For many centuries this country had been inhabited by the Sakas who, towards the end of the 2nd century A.D., were driven out of the Oxus country by the Yue-chi, who, in their turn, were ejected by the Ephthalites, or White Huns, in A.D. 450. One hundred years later the Turks of Central Asia defeated the king of the Ephthalites near Bukhara and became possessed of the rich lands between the Oxus and the Jaxartes. The Ephthalites had been engaged in a continual war fare with the Sassanian rulers of Persia, and when the Turkish Khan had driven them out of Bukhara he wrote to the Persian king that "the blood of their common enemy had reddened the waters of the Oxus." Down to the time of the invasion of Trans oxiana by the Muslims at the end of the 7th century Bukhara had remained under the overlordship of the Western Turks. The town of Bukhara actually fell in the year A.D. 676. It was not, however, till 3o years later that Transoxiana was finally subdued. The Arab historians gave to the country the name of Mavera-un nahr or "what lies beyond the river" (i.e., the Oxus). Down to the beginning of the 9th century Transoxiana was under the juris diction of the governor of the Eastern Provinces of the Caliphate. Hitherto Arabs had been appointed to this governorship, but in 82o it was given to a Persian named Tahir in whose family the post became hereditary. These governors in their turn appointed sub-governors to various provinces and several members of a Persian family known as the Samanids were employed in this capacity in Transoxiana. One of the Samanids named Ismail man aged in A.D. 904 to make himself a semi-independent ruler with Bukhara as his capital and founded a dynasty which lasted down to the end of the loth century. It was under the Samanids—the first Persian dynasty to rule in Islam—that Bukhara became a centre of learning. On the fall of the Samanids Transoxiana again fell into the hands of the Turks, and it continued to be governed by various branches of this race until the Russian occupation. In 1220 Bukhara was sacked by Jenghiz Khan. It attained its greatest importance during the rule of the Shaybanids (15oo-99).
Towards the middle of the 19th century Bukhara became an ob ject of rivalry to Russia and England and envoys were sent by both nations to cultivate the favour of its Emir. Two of the English emissaries, Colonel C. Stoddart and Captain A. Conolly, were thrown into prison by the Emir Nasrullah and'there put to death in 1842. In 1866 the Russians invaded the territory of Bukhara proper, and crushingly defeated the Emir's forces. In 1868 the Russians entered Samarkand, and a treaty was con cluded whereby the Emir of Bukhara became, to all intents and purposes, a vassal to the conquerors and undertook to protect Russian trade. In 1882 a Russian political agent was appointed to reside in Bukhara and a Russian bank was established; thus gradually Bukhara became a part of Russian Turkistan. In 1892 the Emir made a journey to the Russian court and left his two sons to be educated in Russia. In 1920 a Soviet revolution broke out in Bukhara and the Emir took refuge in Afghanistan. In the following year an anti-Soviet Pan-Turanian movement, known as the Basmachi revolt, started in Eastern Bukhara and found a leader in the person of Enver Pasha who arrived in the country at the end of Nov. 1921, got into touch with the fugitive Emir of Bukhara and became his commander-in-chief. The main object of the Basmachi revolt was the creation of a large Pan-Turanian empire comprising Persia, Bukhara, Afghanistan and eventually Turkey. In Jan. 1922 Enver sent an ultimatum to Moscow demanding total abandonment of Turkistan by the Soviet. The Red Army was then despatched to Bukhara and in August the movement was definitely broken by the death of Enver Pasha in a rear-guard action. After the suppression of this rising the two former Russian protectorates of Khiva and Bukhara became "People's Independent Soviet Republics," linked to the U.S.S.R. as independent contracting parties. In 1924 a new grouping of Turkistan took place according to the national principle and it now consists of three republics, namely: (1) Turkmanistan (capital, Polterask), comprising Khiva and west ern parts of the frontier Bukhara Khanate; (2) Uzbegistan (cap ital, Samarkand), comprising the lands inhabited by the Uzbegs and the rest of Bukhara; and (3) Kirghizistan (since re-named Kazakistan). Within Uzbegistan is an autonomous state called Tajikistan (capital, Dushambe), created for that section of the population who speak Iranian languages. (See PERSIA.) See Khanikov's Bokhara, translated by De Bode (1845) ; Vambery, Travels in Central Asia (1864), Sketches of Central Asia (1868), and History of Bokhara (1873) ; Fedchenko, "Sketch of the Zarafshan Valley," in Journ. R. Geogr. Soc. (187o) ; Hellwald, Die Russen in Central Asien (1873) ; Skrine and Ross, The Heart of Asia (1899) ; Lipsky, Upper Bukhara, in Russian (1902) ; Lord Ronaldshay, Out skirts of Empire in Asia (19o4) ; Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (19o5) ; J. Castagne, Les Basmatchis (Paris, 1925) ; and V. Barthold, Turkestan down to the time of the Mongol Invasion . (E. D. R.)