Bukhara ( ) is the seventh-largest city in Uzbekistan by population, with 305,500 residents as of 2026. It is the capital of Bukhara Region. Since ancient times, Bukhara was one of the most prosperous cities in Transoxiana alongside neighbouring Samarkand owing to its location on Silk Road. Today its historic core is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Dating to pre-Islamic antiquity, Bukhara became a major centre of Islamic sciences and scholarship during the Islamic Golden Age. It was the birthplace of the scholar Imam Bukhari.Города Узбекистана, Таш.. 1965; Ашуров Я. С., Гелах Т. Ф., Камалов У. Х., Бухара, Таш., 1963; Сухарева О. А., Бухара XIX—начала XX вв., М., 1966; Пугаченкова Г. А., Самарканд, Бухара, 2 изд., [М, 1968]; Бухара. Краткий справочник, 4 изд., Таш., 1968. Bukhara was a major city in the Samanid Empire, and later, in the Karakhanid Khanate; both empires have left monuments such as Samanid Mausoleum and Kalan Minaret in the city. Bukhara was devastated during the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan in the 13th century but recovered under the Timurid Empire in the next century. It became capital of the Uzbek Khanate of Bukhara in the 16th century. The Uzbek state added a number of monuments, mosques and madrasas, such as the Po-i-Kalyan complex to the landscape of the city. The Emirate of Bukhara was abolished after the Russian Revolution in 1920, and the Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic was created, later transformed into Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924.
Bukhara has about 140 architectural monuments, including the massive fortifications of Ark of Bukhara. UNESCO has listed the historic center of Bukhara (which contains numerous mosques and madrasas) as a World Heritage Site.
Names The exact name of the city of Bukhara in ancient times is unknown. The whole oasis was called Bukhara in ancient times, and probably only in the tenth century was it finally transferred to the city.Bukhara; Architectural epigraphy of Uzbekistan. p.28; Abdukhalikov F. Tashkent: UZBEKISTAN TODAY, 2016.
According to some scholars, the name dates back to the Sanskrit vihāra (Buddhist monastery). This word is very close to the word in the language of the Uyghur and Chinese Buddhists, who named their places of worship the same way. Very few artifacts related to Buddhism have survived into the modern day in the city. But, numerous Arabic, Persian, European and Chinese travellers and historians noted the place and Transoxiana itself to be once populated by mostly Buddhists and few Zoroastrians. Indeed, the first Islamic text on Bukhara relates to the first Arab invader of Bukhara, Ubaidullah bin Ziad, who noted Bukhara to be a Buddhist country with Buddhist monasteries ruled by a queen regent acting on behalf of her son.
According to other sources (such as Encyclopædia Iranica), the name Bukhara is possibly derived from the Sogdian βuxārak ('Place of Good Fortune'), a name for Buddhist monasteries.Richard N Frye, 'Bukhara i. In pre-Islamic times' , Encyclopædia Iranica, 512.
In the Tang dynasty, and other successive dynasties of Imperial China, Bukhara was known under the name of Bǔhē (捕喝), which has been replaced in Chinese by the modern generic phonetic spelling Bùhālā (布哈拉).
Between the 19th and 20th centuries, Bukhara was known as Bokhara in the English publications as exemplified by the writings and reports on the Emirate of Bukhara during the Great Game.
Muhammad ibn Jafar Narshakhi in his History of Bukhara (completed AD 943–44) mentions: Since the Middle Ages, the city has been known as Bukhārā / بخارا in Arabic and Persian sources. The modern Uzbek spelling is Buxoro.
The city's name was mythologized as Albracca in the Italian epic poem Orlando Innamorato, published in 1483 by Matteo Maria Boiardo.Orlando Innamorato translated by Charles Stanley Ross, Parlor Press LLC, 2004, p. 593. (Albraca is first mentioned in Book I, Canto VI, stanza 42, on p. 60.)
History
The history of Bukhara stretches back millennia. Along with Samarkand, Bukhara was the epicentre of Persian culture in medieval Central Asia until the fall of Timurid dynasty. Located west of Samarkand, it was a prominent center of learning, well-known throughout the Persian and Islamic world. It served as the most important of cities in many Persianate empires, including Samanids, Karakhanids, Khwarazmians, and Timurids. The historic center of Bukhara, which contains numerous mosques and madrassas, has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
By 850, Bukhara served as the capital of the Samanid Empire, and was the birthplace of Imam Bukhari. The Samanids claimed descent from Bahram Chobin, the Sasanian general and king. They rejuvenated Persian culture far from Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic world. New Persian flourished in Bukhara. Rudaki, the father of Persian poetry, was born and raised in Bukhara and wrote his most famous poem about the beauty of the city. Located on the Silk Road, the city became a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. During the golden age of the Samanids, Bukhara was a major intellectual center of the Islamic world, renowned for its numerous libraries.
At the beginning of the 11th century, Bukhara became part of the Turkic Kara-Khanid Khanate. The Karakhanids built many buildings in Bukhara: the Kalyan Minaret, the Magok-i-Attari Mosque, palaces and parks.Nemtseva N. B. Rabat-i Malik, XI — nachalo XVIII vv.: arkheologicheskiye issledovaniya. — Tashkent: Frantsuzskiy Institut Issledovaniy Tsentral'noy Azii, 2009. Genghis Khan besieged Bukhara for 15 days in 1220, followed by its complete destruction."Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire – The Brake on Islam" at
As an important trading centre, Bukhara was home to a community of medieval merchants from the city of Multan (present-day Pakistan) who were noted to own land in the city. Bukhara was the old neighborhood of Sheikh Baha' al-Din Naqshband. He was a central figure in the development of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, significantly influencing the mystical Sufi approach to spirituality, theology, and Islamic practice. The influence of Bukhara in the wider Islamic world started to diminish after the arrival of Turkic dynasty of Uzbeks in the 16th century. For several centuries, the cities of Bukhara and Khiva were known as major centers of the slave trade, and due to the Bukhara slave trade, alongside the neighboring slave trade in Khiva, both have been referred to as the "slave capitals of the world".Mayers, K. (2016). The First English Explorer: The Life of Anthony Jenkinson (1529-1611) and His Adventures on the Route to the Orient. Storbritannien: Matador. p. 121
Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar was the last Persian emperor who attempted to capture the city just before his assassination, and by the 19th century the city had become a peripheral city in the Persian and the Islamic world, being ruled by local Emirs of Bukhara, who were the last Persianate princes before the fall of the city to the Red Army.
Bukhara was the last capital of the Emirate of Bukhara and was besieged by the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. During the Bukhara operation of 1920, Red Army troops under the command of Bolshevik general Mikhail Frunze attacked the city of Bukhara. On 31 August 1920, the Emir Mohammed Alim Khan fled to Dushanbe in Eastern Bukhara (later he escaped from Dushanbe to Kabul in Afghanistan). On 2 September 1920, after four days of fighting, the emir's citadel (the Ark) was destroyed and the red flag was raised from the top of Kalyan Minaret. On 14 September 1920, the All-Bukharan Revolutionary Committee was set up, headed by A. Mukhitdinov. The government—the Council of People's Nazirs (see nāẓir)—was presided over by Fayzulla Xoʻjayev.The Bukharan People's Soviet Republic existed from 1920 to 1924 when the city was integrated into the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.
During Enver Pasha's campaign in 1922, majority of Bukhara temporarily fell into the hand of the Basmachis.
Fitzroy Maclean, then a young diplomat in the British Embassy in Moscow, made a surreptitious visit to Bokhara in 1938, sight-seeing and sleeping in parks. In his memoir Eastern Approaches, he judged it an "enchanted city" with buildings that rivalled "the finest architecture of the Italian Renaissance". In the latter half of the 20th century, the war in Afghanistan and civil war in Tajikistan brought Dari- and Tajik-speaking refugees into Bukhara and Samarkand. After integrating themselves into the local Tajik population, these cities face a movement for annexation into Tajikistan with which the cities have no common border.
Landmarks
Architectural complexes Po-i-Kalyan Complex. The title Po-i Kalan or Poi Kalân ( 'Grand Foundation') belongs to the architectural complex located at the base of the great minaret Kalân. Kalyan minaret. More properly, Minâra-i Kalân (Persian/Tajik for 'Grand Minaret'). Also known as the Tower of Death, as according to legend it is the site where criminals were executed by being thrown off the top for centuries. The minaret is the most famed part of the ensemble, and dominates over historical center of the city. The role of the minaret is largely for traditional and decorative purposes—its dimension exceeds the bounds of the main function of the minaret, which is to provide a vantage point from which the muezzin can call out people to prayer. For this purpose it was enough to ascend to a roof of a mosque. This practice was common in initial years of Islam. The word minaret derives from the Arabic word منارة manāra ('lighthouse', or more literally 'a place where something burns'). The minarets of the region were possible adaptations of "fire-towers" or lighthouses of previous Zoroastrian eras. The architect, whose name was simply Bako, designed the minaret in the form of a circular-pillar brick tower, narrowing upwards. The diameter of the base is , while at the top it is . The tower is high, and can be seen from vast distances over the flat plains of Central Asia. There is a brick spiral staircase that twists up inside around the pillar, leading to the landing in sixteen-arched rotunda and skylight, upon which is based a magnificently designed stalactite cornice (or "sharif")."Бухоро Bukhara Бухара" На узбекском, английском и русском языках. Издательство "Узбекистан", Ташкент 2000 Kalân Mosque (Masjid-i Kalân), arguably completed in 1514, is equal to the Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand in size. The mosque is able to accommodate twelve thousand people. Although Kalyan Mosque and Bibi-Khanym Mosque of Samarkand are of the same type of building, they are different in terms of art of building. Two hundred and eighty-eight monumental pylons serve as a support for the multi-domed roofing of the galleries encircling the courtyard of Kalyan Mosque. The longitudinal axis of the courtyard ends up with a portal to the main chamber (maksura) with a cruciform hall, topped with a massive blue cupola on a mosaic drum. The edifice keeps many architectural curiosities, for example, a hole in one of domes. Through this hole one can see foundation of Kalyan Minaret. Then moving back step by step, one can count all belts of brickwork of the minaret to the rotunda."В.Г. Сааков Архитектурные шедевры Бухары. Бухарское областное общество "Китабхон" Уз ССР, Ровно 1991 г.