Emirate of Bukhara

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Emirate of Bukhara (Uzbek: Buxoro Amirligi) was a Central Asian state that existed from 1785 to 1920. It occupied the land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, known formerly as Transoxiana. It's core territory was the land along the lower Zarafshan River, and its urban centres were the ancient cities of Samarkand and the emirate's capital, Bukhara. It was contemporaneous with the Khanate of Khiva to the west, in Khwarezm, and the Khanate of Kokand to the east, in Fergana.

[edit] History

The Emirate of Bukhara was officially created in 1785, upon the assumption of rulership by the Manghit emir, Shah Murad. Over the course of the 18th century, the emirs had slowly gained effective control of the Khanate of Bukhara, from their position as ataliq. By the 1740s, when the khanate was conquered by Nadir Shah of Persia, it was clear that the emirs held the real power. In 1747 after Nadir Shah's death, the ataliq Muhammad Rahim Bi murdered Abulfayz Khan and his son, ending the Janid dynasty. From then on the emirs allowed puppet khans to rule until, following the death of Abu l-Ghazi Khan, Shah Murad assumed the throne openly.^[1]

In 1868 the emirate lost a war with Imperial Russia, which had colonial aspirations in the region. Russia annexed much of the emirate's territory, including Samarkand.^[2] In 1873 the remainder became a Russian protectorate,[1] and was soon surrounded by the Governorate-General of Turkestan.

Around the 16th Century, Europeans came to Central Asia and saw Jews living in the Emirate of Bukhara. They had named these Jews the Bukharian Jews. The Bukharian Jews later spread out to other lands like Tajikistan, other parts of Uzbekistan, etc because Muslims would force them to convert to Islam or die. So many Jews had to go from one place to another in order to keep their religion alive and not to die at the same time.

In 1920 the Emirate of Bukhara was conquered by the Bolsheviks and replaced with the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic. Reformists within the Emirate had found the conservative emir, Mohammed Alim Khan, unwilling to loosen his grip on power, and had turned to the Russian revolutionaries for military assistance. The Red Army launched an unsuccessful assault in March, 1920, and then a successful one in September of the same year.^[3] Today the territory of the defunct emirate lies mostly in Uzbekistan, with parts in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia (2000), p. 179-80.
2. ^ ibid, p. 198.
3. ^ ibid, pp. 221-222.