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Bokhara(Boxoro)

Beside  Samarqand, Bokhara is the major cultural and industrial  centre of Tajik people.It is located  in  an oasis on  the Zeravshan River, now in western Uzbekistan. Also called  Buchara, Bokhara or Boxoro, the city  is situated in a region producing natural gas, cotton,  fruit, and silk.  It  has  industries manufacturing textiles,  processed karakul  pelts,  carpets, and clothing.

Among  Bukhoro's many architectural monuments, some dating  from   the 9th  century, are several mosques, the Ark  Fortress (now a museum), and the mausoleum   of Ismail  Samani (9th-10th century).  A teachers college  is also there. The Samanids contribution to Islamic architecture indeed is very significant. Examples of this could be observed in the growth of the cities in ninth and tenth centuries. Here we can code the to capital of the Samanids, Bukhara, which became the cultural, political, and economic centre of Central Asia for the centuries, until the Bolshevik revolution in 1920.

Founded  by the 1st century AD, Bukhoro was an important trade and cultural Tajik center  when it was captured (early 8th century) by the Arabs. Early  in the Samanid period,  Bukhoro(Buchara) became well-known as a center  of learning and culture  throughout the eastern  part of the Persian/Tajik-speaking  world. Samanid  literary patronage played an important role in preserving the culture of pre-Islamic Iran .It was a leading center of Islamic learning under the Arabs and the Tajik (East Persian) Samanid dynasty, which held   the city in the 9th and 10th centuries. It later  was captured successively by the Qarakhanids and Tatars. In the 16th  century it became the capital of an Uzbek khanate, and in the 18th century  became an emirate. The emirate was conquered in 1866 by Russia, which  held it as a protectorate from 1868 to 1920; then the emir was removed, and  the city was made the capital of  the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic.

In October 1924, the Soviet policy of cutting  across existing  ethnic and linguistic  lines in the region to  create Uzbekistan and the other new republics  also sowed tension and strife among the Central  Asian  groups  that inhabited the region. In particular,  the territory  of  Uzbekistan was drawn to include the two main Tajik cultural centers, Bukhara and Samarqand, as well as parts of the Fergana Valley to which other   ethnic  groups could  lay claim. Population (1994) 236,000.