Mohammed Alim Khan

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Emir Mohammed Alim Khan (1880–1944) was the last emir of the Manghit dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of the Emirate of Bukhara in Central Asia. He reigned from January 3, 1911 to August 30, 1920. He was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, the first Great Khan.

Although Bukhara was a protectorate of the Russian Empire from 1873, the Emir presided over the internal affairs of his emirate as absolute monarch.

At the age of thirteen, Alim Khan was sent by his father Emir Abdulahad Khan to Saint Petersburg for three years to study government and modern military techniques. In 1896, having received formal confirmation as Crown Prince of Bukhara by the Russian government, he returned home.

After two years in Bukhara assisting in his father's administration, he was appointed governor of Nasef region for the next twelve years. He was then transferred to the northern province of Karminah, which he ruled for another two years, until receiving word in 1910 of his father's death.

Alim Khan's rule began with promise. Initially, he declared that he would no longer expect or accept any gifts, and prohibited his officials from demanding bribes from the public, or imposing taxes on their own. However, as time went by the Emir's attitude towards bribes, taxes, and state salaries changed. The conflict between the traditionalists and the reformists ended with the traditionalists in control, and the reformers in exile in Moscow or Kazan. It is thought that Alim Khan, who initially favored modernization and the reformists, realised that their eventual goals included no place for either him or his descendants as rulers. Like his predecessors, Alim Khan was a traditional ruler. He toyed with the idea of reform as a tool to keep the clergy in line, and only as long as he saw the possibility of using it to strengthen Manghit rule.

One of the most important Tajik writers, Aini Sadriddin, wrote vivid accounts of life under the Emir. He was whipped for speaking Tajik and later wrote about the life under the Emirs in the Bukhara Executioners ("Jallodon-i Bukhara").

Alim Khan was the first and only Manghit ruler to add the title of Caliph to his name, and was the last direct descendant of Genghis Khan to serve as a national ruler.

When the Bolsheviks annexed Bukhara in 1920 and proclaimed the Bukharan People's Republic, the emir fled and went into exile in Afghanistan. He died in Kabul in 1944.