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186-613: People have inhabited the region around Bukhara for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time. Located on the Silk Road , the city has long served as a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. Bukhara served as the capital of the Khanate of Bukhara , and Emirate of Bukhara . It was the birthplace of the scholar Imam Bukhari . The city has been known as "Noble Bukhara" ( Bukhārā-ye sharīf ). Bukhara has about 140 architectural monuments. UNESCO has listed

372-539: A "complex network of trade routes" that gave people the chance to exchange goods and culture. A maritime Silk Route opened up between Chinese-controlled Giao Chỉ (centred in modern Vietnam , near Hanoi ), probably by the 1st century. It extended, via ports on the coasts of India and Sri Lanka , all the way to Roman -controlled ports in Roman Egypt and the Nabataean territories on the northeastern coast of

558-596: A "silk" one in particular. William Dalrymple points out that in pre-modern times, maritime travel cost only a fifth of overland transport, and argues for the pre-13th century primacy of an India-dominated " Golden Road " extending from Rome to Japan. The southern stretches of the Silk Road, from Khotan ( Xinjiang ) to Eastern China, were first used for jade and not silk, as long as 5000 BCE , and are still in use for this purpose. The term "Jade Road" would have been more appropriate than "Silk Road" had it not been for

744-755: A Chinese tomb of Shanxi province dated to the Sui dynasty (581–618). Both the Old Book of Tang and New Book of Tang , covering the history of the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907), record that a new state called Fu-lin (拂菻; i.e. Byzantine Empire) was virtually identical to the previous Daqin (大秦; i.e. Roman Empire). Several Fu-lin embassies were recorded for the Tang period, starting in 643 with an alleged embassy by Constans II (transliterated as Bo duo li , 波多力, from his nickname "Kōnstantinos Pogonatos") to

930-590: A biography of Süleyman the Magnificent . At the end of the 17th century, they gave up Persian as the court and administrative language, using Turkish instead; a decision that shocked the highly Persianized Mughals in India. The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman wrote an entire divan in Persian language. According to Hodgson: The rise of Persian (the language) had more than purely literary consequence: it served to carry

1116-479: A complex of buildings with two functions, ritual and shelter. The main edifice is a mosque. In spite of its unusual outward shape, the building has a typical interior for a Central Asian mosque. Owing to the buildings cupola, the room has good acoustic properties and therefore takes on special significance of 'dhikr-hana'—a place for ritualized 'dhikr' ceremonies of Sufi , the liturgy of which often include recitation, singing, and instrumental music. On either side of

1302-631: A contingent of Roman legionaries. The Romans may have been part of Antony 's army invading Parthia . Sogdiana (modern Bukhara ), east of the Oxus River, on the Polytimetus River, was apparently the most easterly penetration ever made by Roman forces in Asia. The margin of Chinese victory appears to have been their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armour. The Han dynasty army regularly policed

1488-706: A counterpoise to the rigidity of formal Islamic theology and law, Islamic mysticism sought to approach the divine through acts of devotion and love rather than through mere rituals and observance. Love of God being the focus of the Sufis' religious sentiments, it was only natural for them to express it in lyrical terms, and Persian Sufis , often of exceptional sensibility and endowed with poetic verve, did not hesitate to do so. The famous 11th-century Sufi, Abu Sa'id of Mehna frequently used his own love quatrains (as well as others) to express his spiritual yearnings, and with mystic poets such as Attar and Iraqi , mysticism became

1674-614: A currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia from the Ottoman pashalyq of Buda, which had been erected out of the wreckage of the Western Christian Kingdom of Hungary after the Ottoman victory at Mohacz in A.D. 1526, to

1860-409: A great extent. An autographed note of both Jahangir and Shah Jahan on a copy of Sa’di's Gulestān states that it was their most precious possession. A gift of a Gulestān was made by Shah Jahan to Jahanara Begum , an incident which is recorded by her with her signature. Shah Jahan also considered the same work worthy enough to be sent as a gift to the king of England in 1628, which is presently in

2046-464: A historical source on two levels: firstly, for its contribution to the store of basic factual knowledge of a period, and secondly, for the light it sheds, intentionally or otherwise, on contemporary thought and politics. Iranian and Persianate poets received the Shahnameh and modeled themselves after it. Murtazavi formulates three categories of such works too: poets who took up material not covered in

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2232-737: A leading astronomer and physician in Khanbaliq , at the court of Kublai Khan , Mongol founder of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and was even granted the noble title 'Prince of Fu lin' ( Chinese : 拂菻王; Fú lǐn wáng). The Uyghur Nestorian Christian diplomat Rabban Bar Sauma , who set out from his Chinese home in Khanbaliq (Beijing) and acted as a representative for Arghun (a grandnephew of Kublai Khan), traveled throughout Europe and attempted to secure military alliances with Edward I of England , Philip IV of France , Pope Nicholas IV , as well as

2418-490: A legitimate, even fashionable subject of lyric poems among the Persianate societies. Furthermore, as Sufi orders and centers ( Khaneghah ) spread throughout Persian societies, Persian mystic poetic thought gradually became so much a part of common culture that even poets who did not share Sufi experiences ventured to express mystical ideas and imagery in their work. As the broad cultural region remained politically divided,

2604-587: A library of 3,000 volumes), and patronized "Men of the Pen" The Safavids introduced Shiism into Persia to distinguish Persian society from the Ottomans , their Sunni archrivals to the west. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Ottomans rose to predominance in Asia Minor. The Ottomans patronized Persian literature for five and a half centuries and attracted great numbers of writers and artists, especially in

2790-405: A means of currency, just as valuable as silk yarn and textiles. Under its strong integrating dynamics on the one hand and the impacts of change it transmitted on the other, tribal societies previously living in isolation along the Silk Road, and pastoralists who were of barbarian cultural development, were drawn to the riches and opportunities of the civilisations connected by the routes, taking on

2976-481: A new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom. Henceforth while Arabic held its own as the primary language of the religious disciplines and even, largely, of natural science and philosophy, Persian became, in an increasingly part of Islamdom, the language of polite culture; it even invaded the realm of scholarship with increasing effects. It was to form the chief model of the rise of still other languages. Gradually

3162-486: A number of important technologies, and in addition to raiding vulnerable settlements for these commodities, they also encouraged long-distance merchants as a source of income through the enforced payment of tariffs. Sogdians played a major role in facilitating trade between China and Central Asia along the Silk Roads as late as the 10th century, their language serving as a lingua franca for Asian trade as far back as

3348-631: A prime example). One may call these traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, ‘Persianate’ by extension. This seems to be the origin of the term Persianate . The Iranian dynasty of the Samanids began recording its court affairs in Persian as well as Arabic, and the earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. The Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Arabic into Persian. In addition,

3534-668: A profusion of mosques , palaces, and tombs unmatched in any other Islamic country. The speculative thought of the times at the Mughal court, as in other Persianate courts, leaned towards the eclectic gnostic dimension of Sufi Islam, having similarities with Hindu Vedantism , indigenous Bhakti and popular theosophy . The Mughals , who were of Turco-Mongol descent, strengthened the Indo-Persian culture , in South Asia. For centuries, Iranian scholar-officials had immigrated to

3720-532: A result of the Western impact. According to Gibb in the introduction (Volume I): the Turks very early appropriated the entire Persian literary system down to its minute detail, and that in the same unquestioning and wholehearted fashion in which they had already accepted Islam. The Saljuqs had, in the words of the same author: attained a very considerable degree of culture, thanks entirely to Persian tutorage. About

3906-531: A similar Sufi spirit, thus following the norms of any Persianate court. The tendency towards Sufi mysticism through Persianate culture in Mughal court circles is also testified by the inventory of books that were kept in Akbar's library, and are especially mentioned by his historian, Abu'l Fazl , in the Ā’in-ī Akbarī . Some of the books that were read out continually to the emperor include the masnavis of Nizami,

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4092-566: A synthesis of Sufism and Sharia , which became the basis for a richer Islamic theology. Formulating the Sunni concept of division between temporal and religious authorities, he provided a theological basis for the existence of the Sultanate , a temporal office alongside the Caliphate , which at that time was merely a religious office. The main institutional means of establishing a consensus of

4278-455: A third "classical" tongue emerged, Turkish, whose literature was based on Persian tradition. Toynbee's assessment of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail, from A Study of History : In the Iranian world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art...gained

4464-455: A way, along with investing the notion of heteroglossia , Persianate culture embodies the Iranian past and ways in which this past blended with the Islamic present or became transmuted. The historical change was largely on the basis of a binary model: a struggle between the religious landscapes of late Iranian antiquity and a monotheist paradigm provided by the new religion, Islam. This duality

4650-580: Is Buxoro . The city's name was mythologized as Albracca in the Italian epic poem Orlando Innamorato , published in 1483 by Matteo Maria Boiardo . The history of Bukhara stretches back millennia. Along with Samarkand , Bukhara was the epicentre of the Persian culture in medieval Asia until the fall of Timurid dynasty . By 850, Bukhara served as the capital of the Samanid Empire , and

4836-571: Is a modern name, acquired from its similarity to the overland Silk Road. Like the overland routes, the ancient maritime routes through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean had no particular name for the majority of its very long history. Despite the modern name, the Maritime Silk Road involved exchanges in a wide variety of goods over a very wide region, not just silk or Asian exports. It differed significantly in several aspects from

5022-629: Is a mosque which is said to be that of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani , the patron saint of Kashmiri Muslims in the Valley of Kashmir . Shirbudun Palace (Uzbek: Shirbudun saroyi ) is one of the Bukhara emirs' political building. The palace's construction started approximately 1870, under the reign of Muzaffar bin Nasrullah (1860–1885) in the Bukhara Emirate . Bukhara Prison is the prison of

5208-492: Is associated with Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Fazl ibn Muso al-Muzakkir al-Jandi. Nodir Devonbegi is a historical memorial in Bukhara, Uzbekistan . It was established by Nodir Devonbegi (Nodir Mirzo Togay ibn Sultan), the vizier and brother of the ruler of Bukhara, Imamquli Khan , around 1620–1621. The Khanaka has been included in the national list of intangible cultural heritage objects of Uzbekistan . About 140 miles (230 km) west of Samarkand in south-central Uzbekistan, Bukhara

5394-625: Is called Albracca and described as a major city of Cathay . There, within its walled city and fortress, Angelica and the knights she has befriended make their stand when attacked by Agrican , emperor of Tartary . As described, this siege by Agrican resembles the historic siege by Genghis Khan in 1220. According to the official statistics, the city's population is 82% Uzbeks , 6% Russians , 4% Tajiks , 3% Tatars , 1% Koreans , 1% Turkmens , 1% Ukrainians , 2% of other ethnicities. However, official Uzbek numbers have for long been criticized and refuted by various observers and Western sources and it

5580-602: Is included in the National List of Objects of Material Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan of Republican Importance. Chashma-Ayub, or Job 's spring, is located near the Samani mausoleum. Its name is said to reflect a legend that states the prophet Job ("Ayub" in the Quran ) visited this place and brought forth a spring of water by the blow of his staff on the ground. The water of this well is said to be exceptionally pure, and

5766-545: Is little else than Persian poetry in Turkish words. But such was not consciously their aim; of national feeling in poetry they dreamed not; poetry was to them one and indivisible, the language in which it was written merely an unimportant accident. In general, from its earliest days, Persian culture was brought into the Subcontinent (or South Asia) by various Persianised Turkic and Afghan dynasties. South Asian society

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5952-574: Is located on the Zeravshan River, at an elevation of 751 feet (229 meters). Bukhara has a typically Central Asian cool arid climate ( Köppen BWk ). The average maximum afternoon temperature in January is 6.6 °C or 43.9 °F, rising to an average maximum of around 37.2 °C or 99.0 °F in July. Mean annual precipitation is 135 millimetres or 5.31 inches. Water was important in

6138-405: Is regarded for its supposed "healing qualities." The current edifice at the site was constructed during the reign of Timur , and features a Khwarazm-style conical dome that is otherwise uncommon in the region. The Ismail Samani mausoleum (between 9th and 10th centuries), is one of the most highly esteemed work of Central Asian architecture. It was built in the 9th century (between 892 and 943) as

6324-600: Is symbolically expressed in the Shiite tradition that Husayn ibn Ali , the third Shi'ite Imam, had married Shahrbanu , daughter of Yazdegerd III , the last Sassanid king of Iran . This genealogy makes the later imams, descended from Husayn and Shahrbanu, the inheritors of both the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and of the pre-Islamic Sassanid kings. After the Arab Muslim conquest of Iran, Pahlavi ,

6510-506: Is the author of the standard A Literary History of Ottoman Poetry in six volumes, whose name has lived on in an important series of publications of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish texts, the Gibb Memorial Series . Gibb classifies Ottoman poetry between the "Old School", from the 14th century to about the middle of the 19th century, during which time Persian influence was dominant; and the "Modern School", which came into being as

6696-459: 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 Uzbekistan itself to be once populated by mostly Buddhists and few Zoroastrians. Indeed,

6882-496: Is widely assumed that the population of the city consists mainly of Tajik-speaking Tajiks, with ethnic Uzbeks forming a growing minority. Exact figures are difficult to evaluate, since many people in Uzbekistan either identify as "Uzbek" even though they speak Tajik as their first language, or because they are registered as Uzbeks by the central government despite their Tajik language and identity. According to Soviet estimates in

7068-793: The Alans ], Lijian [Syria under the Greek Seleucids], Tiaozhi (Mesopotamia), and Tianzhu [northwestern India] ... As a rule, rather more than ten such missions went forward in the course of a year, and at the least five or six. ( Hou Hanshu , Later Han History). These connections marked the beginning of the Silk Road trade network that extended to the Roman Empire. The Chinese campaigned in Central Asia on several occasions, and direct encounters between Han troops and Roman legionaries (probably captured or recruited as mercenaries by

7254-656: The Berel burial ground in Kazakhstan , confirmed that the nomadic Arimaspians were not only breeding horses for trade but also produced great craftsmen able to propagate exquisite art pieces along the Silk Road. From the 2nd millennium BCE, nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand and Khotan to China. Significantly, these mines were not very far from the lapis lazuli and spinel ("Balas Ruby") mines in Badakhshan , and, although separated by

7440-662: The Caucasus endured until the loss of Azerbaijan , Armenia , eastern Georgia and parts of the North Caucasus to Imperial Russia following the Russo-Persian Wars in the course of the 19th century. The culture of peoples of the eastern Mediterranean in Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt developed somewhat independently; India developed a vibrant and completely distinct South Asian style with little to no remnants of

7626-617: The Chester Beatty Library , Dublin. The emperor often took out auguries from a copy of the diwan of Hafez belonging to his grandfather, Humayun . One such incident is recorded in his own handwriting in the margins of a copy of the diwan , presently in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, Patna . The court poets Naziri , ‘Urfi , Faizi , Khan-i Khanan , Zuhuri , Sanai , Qodsi , Talib-i Amuli and Abu Talib Kalim were all masters imbued with

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7812-788: 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 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,

7998-849: The Hungarian plain and the Carpathian Mountains to the Chinese Gansu Corridor, and linking the Middle East with Northern India and the Punjab , undoubtedly played an important role in the development of the Silk Road. Scythians accompanied the Assyrian Esarhaddon on his invasion of Egypt, and their distinctive triangular arrowheads have been found as far south as Aswan . These nomadic peoples were dependent upon neighbouring settled populations for

8184-779: The Karakum Desert . Both routes joined the main southern route before reaching ancient Merv , Turkmenistan. Another branch of the northern route turned northwest past the Aral Sea and north of the Caspian Sea , then and on to the Black Sea. A route for caravans, the northern Silk Road brought to China many goods such as "dates, saffron powder and pistachio nuts from Persia; frankincense , aloes and myrrh from Somalia ; sandalwood from India; glass bottles from Egypt, and other expensive and desirable goods from other parts of

8370-564: The Kushan Empire between the first and third centuries reinforced the role of the powerful merchants from Bactria and Taxila . They fostered multi-cultural interaction as indicated by their 2nd century treasure hoards filled with products from the Greco-Roman world, China, and India, such as in the archeological site of Begram . The Silk Road trade did not sell only textiles, jewels, metal and cosmetic, but also slaves, connecting

8556-606: The M37 highway which continues to other places in Turkmenistan including Ashgabat . The city is also served by railroad links with the rest of Uzbekistan, and is a hub for roadways leading to all major cities in Uzbekistan and beyond, including Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan via the M39 highway . The city of Samarkand is 215 km to the east of Bukhara. Bukhara city is the largest transport hub after Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Inside

8742-399: The Madrasah of Khalif Niyaz-kul ) is a building tucked away in a lane northeast of the Lyabi Hauz complex. The structure was built by Khalif Niyaz-kul, a wealthy Bukharan of Turkmen origin in the 19th century under the rule of the Janid dynasty . The four-towered structure is sometimes mistaken for a gate to the madras that once existed behind the structure; however, the Char-Minar is actually

8928-463: The Magyars , Armenians , and Chinese. The Silk Road reached its peak in the west during the time of the Byzantine Empire ; in the Nile- Oxus section, from the Sassanid Empire period to the Il Khanate period; and in the sinitic zone from the Three Kingdoms period to the Yuan dynasty period. Trade between East and West also developed across the Indian Ocean , between Alexandria in Egypt and Guangzhou in China. Persian Sassanid coins emerged as

9114-409: The Malay Peninsula , and the Mekong Delta ; through which passed the main routes of the Austronesian trade ships to Giao Chỉ (in the Tonkin Gulf ) and Guangzhou (southern China ), the endpoints (later also including Quanzhou by the 10th century CE). Secondary routes also passed through the coastlines of the Gulf of Thailand ; as well as through the Java Sea , Celebes Sea , Banda Sea , and

9300-414: The Maldives . It branches from here into routes through the Arabian Sea entering the Gulf of Oman (into the Persian Gulf ), and the Gulf of Aden (into the Red Sea ). Secondary routes also pass through the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal , the Arabian Sea, and southwards along the coast of East Africa to Zanzibar , the Comoros , Madagascar , and the Seychelles . The term "Maritime Silk Road"

9486-488: The Mazar-e-Quaid in Karachi , was modeled after the shrine. Built in 1712, on the opposite side of the citadel of Ark in Registan district, Bolo Haouz Mosque is inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list along with the other parts of the historic city. It served as a Friday mosque during the time when the emir of Bukhara was being subjugated under the Bolshevik Russian rule in the 1920s. Char Minor (alternatively spelled Chor Minor , and also alternatively known as

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9672-399: The Mediterranean Sea . Under their rule, many pre-Islamic Iranian traditional arts like Sassanid architecture were resurrected, and great Iranian scholars were patronized. At the same time, the Islamic religious institutions became more organized and Sunni orthodoxy became more codified. The Persian jurist and theologian Al-Ghazali was among the scholars at the Seljuq court who proposed

9858-406: The Persian Gulf and Red Sea into Persia , Mesopotamia (sailing up the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq ), Arabia , Egypt , Aksum (Ethiopia), and Somalia in the Horn of Africa . The Silk Road represents an early phenomenon of political and cultural integration due to inter-regional trade. In its heyday, it sustained an international culture that strung together groups as diverse as

10044-594: The Red Sea . The earliest Roman glassware bowl found in China was unearthed from a Western Han tomb in Guangzhou , dated to the early 1st century BCE, indicating that Roman commercial items were being imported through the South China Sea . According to Chinese dynastic histories , it is from this region that the Roman embassies arrived in China, beginning in 166 CE during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Emperor Huan of Han . Other Roman glasswares have been found in Eastern-Han-era tombs (25–220 CE) further inland in Luoyang , Nanyang , and Nanjing . Soon after

10230-411: The Sasanian Empire that allowed the Byzantines to bypass the Sasanian merchants and trade directly with the Sogdians for purchasing Chinese silk. Although the Byzantines had already procured silkworm eggs from China by this point, the quality of Chinese silk was still far greater than anything produced in the West, a fact that is perhaps emphasized by the discovery of coins minted by Justin II found in

10416-415: The Seljuq , Timurid , Mughal , and Ottoman dynasties. Persianate culture flourished for nearly fourteen centuries. It was a mixture of Persian and Islamic cultures that eventually underwent Persification and became the dominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of Greater Iran , Asia Minor , and South Asia . When the peoples of Greater Iran were conquered by Islamic forces in

10602-406: The Shahnameh was viewed as more than literature. It was also a political treatise, as it addressed deeply rooted conceptions of honor, morality, and legitimacy. Illustrated versions of it were considered desirable as expressions of the aspirations and politics of ruling elites in the Iranian world. The Persianate culture that emerged under the Samanids in Greater Khorasan , in northeast Persia and

10788-483: The Silk Road , the city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. During the golden age of the Samanids , Bukhara became a major intellectual center of the Islamic world , and was renowned for its numerous libraries. The historic center of Bukhara, which contains numerous mosques and madrassas , has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site . Genghis Khan besieged Bukhara for 15 days in 1220. As an important trading centre, Bukhara

10974-458: The Silla Kingdom in Gyeongju , Korea. Chinese wealth grew as they delivered silk and other luxury goods to the Roman Empire, whose wealthy women admired their beauty. The Roman Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds: the import of Chinese silk caused a huge outflow of gold, and silk clothes were considered decadent and immoral. I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide

11160-432: The Sulu Sea , reconnecting with the main route through the northern Philippines and Taiwan . The secondary routes also continue onward to the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea for a limited extent. The main route of the western regions of the Maritime Silk Road directly crosses the Indian Ocean from the northern tip of Sumatra (or through the Sunda Strait ) to Sri Lanka , southern India and Bangladesh , and

11346-538: 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: Bukhara has many names. One of its names

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11532-555: The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic . 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

11718-399: The World Heritage Fund . Although the collapse resulted in destabilizing the entire structure, the authorities were anxious to keep awareness of the disaster to a minimum. Without explanation the building disappeared from the list of sights and after hurried reconstruction of the tower "using non-traditional building material, such as poor quality cement and steel" Char Minar returned as one of

11904-435: The Wusun . Zhang Qian's report suggested the economic reason for Chinese expansion and wall-building westward, and trail-blazed the Silk Road, making it one of the most famous trade routes in history and in the world. After winning the War of the Heavenly Horses and the Han–Xiongnu War , Chinese armies established themselves in Central Asia, initiating the Silk Route as a major avenue of international trade. Some say that

12090-399: The madrasas . As the result of the impacts of Persian literature as well as to further political ambitions, it became a custom for rulers in the Persianate lands to not only commission a copy of the Shahnameh , but also to have his own epic, allowing court poets to attempt to reach the level of Ferdowsi: Thus, as with any piece of historical writing, the Shahnameh can be evaluated as

12276-417: The ulama on these dogmatic issues was the Nezamiyeh , better known as the madrasas , named after its founder Nizam al-Mulk , a Persian vizier of the Seljuqs. These schools became the means of uniting Sunni ulama , who legitimized the rule of the Sultans. The bureaucracies were staffed by graduates of the madrasas, so both the ulama and the bureaucracies were under the influence of esteemed professors at

12462-458: The 11th-century Garshāspnāmeh by Asadi Tusi . This tradition, chiefly a Timurid one, resulted in the creation of Islamic epics of conquests as discussed by Marjan Molé. Also see the classification employed by Z. Safa for epics: milli (national, those inspired by Ferdowsi's epic), tarikhi (historical, those written in imitation of Nizami's Iskandarnamah ) and dini for religious works. The other source of inspiration for Persianate culture

12648-428: The 12th century, the route was used to ship bullion from Yunnan (gold and silver are among the minerals in which Yunnan is rich), through northern Burma, into modern Bangladesh , making use of the ancient route, known as the 'Ledo' route. The emerging evidence of the ancient cities of Bangladesh, in particular Wari-Bateshwar ruins, Mahasthangarh , Bhitagarh , Bikrampur , Egarasindhur, and Sonargaon , are believed to be

12834-410: The 16th century. The Ottoman Empire's undeniable affiliation with the Persianate world during the first few decades of the sixteenth century are illustrated by the works of a scribe from the Aq Qoyunlu court, Edris Bedlisi. One of the most renowned Persian poets in the Ottoman court was Fethullah Arifi Çelebi , also a painter and historian, and the author of the Süleymanname (or Suleyman-nama ),

13020-404: 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 . At the beginning of the 11th century, Bukhara became part of the Turkic state of the Karakhanids . The rulers of the Karakhanids built many buildings in Bukhara: the Kalyan minaret,

13206-407: The 4th century. The Silk Road was initiated and spread by China's Han dynasty through exploration and conquests in Central Asia . With the Mediterranean linked to the Fergana Valley , the next step was to open a route across the Tarim Basin and the Hexi Corridor to China Proper . This extension came around 130 BCE, with the embassies of the Han dynasty to Central Asia following the reports of

13392-736: The 640s and 650s. During Emperor Taizong's reign alone, large campaigns were launched against not only the Göktürks , but also separate campaigns against the Tuyuhun , the oasis states , and the Xueyantuo . Under Emperor Taizong , Tang general Li Jing conquered the Eastern Turkic Khaganate . Under Emperor Gaozong , Tang general Su Dingfang conquered the Western Turkic Khaganate , an important ally of

13578-596: The 7th and 8th centuries, they became part of an empire much larger than any previous one under Persian rule. While the Islamic conquest led to the Arabization of language and culture in the former Byzantine territories, this did not happen in Persia. Rather, the new Islamic culture evolving there was largely based on pre-Islamic Persian traditions of the area, as well as on the Islamic customs that were introduced to

13764-651: The Amir of Bukhara. The prison was built in the second half of the 18th century, during the Mangit dynasty, and is located in the northwest corner of the ancient city, in the vicinity of the Hoja Nizamiddin Bolo burial site, around a hundred meters northeast of the Ark fortress, dating back to the middle centuries. Jandi Turki Mausoleum is situated on Namozgoh Street, in the old city section of Bukhara. The mausoleum

13950-601: The Arab conquest to the Mongols and is longer than Ferdowsi's work. The literary value of these works must be considered on an individual basis as Jan Rypka cautions: "all these numerous epics cannot be assessed very highly, to say nothing of those works that were substantially (or literally) copies of Ferdowsi. There are however exceptions, such as the Zafar-Nameh of Hamdu'llah Mustaufi a historically valuable continuation of

14136-506: The Arab world to the west, the dividing zone falling along the Euphrates . Socially the Persianate world was marked by a system of ethnologically defined elite statuses: the rulers and their soldiery were non-Iranians in origin, but the administrative cadres and literati were Iranians. Cultural affairs were marked by a characteristic pattern of language use: New Persian was the language of state affairs, scholarship and literature and Arabic

14322-621: The Basin of the Oxus and the Jaxartes; and in the heyday of the Mughal, Safawi, and Ottoman regimes New Persian was being patronized as the language of literae humaniores by the ruling element over the whole of this huge realm, while it was also being employed as the official language of administration in those two-thirds of its realm that lay within the Safawi and the Mughal frontiers. E. J. W. Gibb

14508-609: The Byzantine empire. After these conquests, the Tang dynasty fully controlled the Xiyu , which was the strategic location astride the Silk Road. This led the Tang dynasty to reopen the Silk Road, with this portion named the Tang-Tubo Road ("Tang-Tibet Road") in many historical texts. The Tang dynasty established a second Pax Sinica , and the Silk Road reached its golden age, whereby Persian and Sogdian merchants benefited from

14694-676: The Byzantine ruler Andronikos II Palaiologos . Andronikos II had two half-sisters who were married to great-grandsons of Genghis Khan , which made him an in-law with the Yuan-dynasty Mongol ruler in Beijing, Kublai Khan. The History of Ming preserves an account where the Hongwu Emperor , after founding the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), had a supposed Byzantine merchant named Nieh-ku-lun (捏古倫) deliver his proclamation about

14880-674: The Central Asian Silk Road through their ports in Barygaza (known today as Bharuch ) and Barbaricum (known today as the city of Karachi , Sindh , Pakistan ) and continued along the western coast of India. An ancient "travel guide" to this Indian Ocean trade route was the Greek Periplus of the Erythraean Sea written in 60 CE. The travelling party of Maës Titianus penetrated farthest east along

15066-611: The Chinese Emperor Wu became interested in developing commercial relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria, and the Parthian Empire : "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Dayuan "Great Ionians " ) and the possessions of Bactria ( Ta-Hsia ) and Parthian Empire ( Anxi ) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of

15252-584: The Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" ( Hou Hanshu , Later Han History ). Others say that Emperor Wu was mainly interested in fighting the Xiongnu and that major trade began only after the Chinese pacified the Hexi Corridor . The Chinese were also strongly attracted by the tall and powerful horses (named " heavenly horses ") in the possession of

15438-569: The Dayuan (literally the "Great Ionians," the Greek kingdoms of Central Asia ), which were of capital importance in fighting the nomadic Xiongnu. They defeated the Dayuan in the Han-Dayuan war . The Chinese subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as Seleucid Syria. Thus more embassies were dispatched to Anxi [Parthia], Yancai [who later joined

15624-543: The East included tea, dyes, perfumes, and porcelain ; among Western exports were horses, camels, honey, wine, and gold. Aside from generating substantial wealth for emerging mercantile classes, the proliferation of goods such as paper and gunpowder greatly affected the trajectory of political history in several theatres in Eurasia and beyond. The Silk Road was utilized over a period that saw immense political variation across

15810-727: The Empire as a whole. The Roman-style glassware discovered in the archeological sites of Gyeongju , the capital of the Silla kingdom (Korea) showed that Roman artifacts were traded as far as the Korean peninsula. The Greco- Roman trade with India started by Eudoxus of Cyzicus in 130 BCE continued to increase, and according to Strabo (II.5.12), by the time of Augustus , up to 120 ships were setting sail every year from Myos Hormos in Roman Egypt to India. The Roman Empire connected with

15996-702: The Ganges, they are only private citizens." His comments are interesting as Roman beads and other materials are being found at Wari-Bateshwar ruins , the ancient city with roots from much earlier, before the Bronze Age , presently being slowly excavated beside the Old Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. Ptolemy's map of the Ganges Delta , a remarkably accurate effort, showed that his informants knew all about

16182-489: The German term Seidenstraße (literally "Silk Road") and was first popularized in 1877 by Ferdinand von Richthofen , who made seven expeditions to China from 1868 to 1872. However, the term itself had been in use in decades prior to that. The alternative translation "Silk Route" is also used occasionally. Although the term was coined in the 19th century, it did not gain widespread acceptance in academia or popularity among

16368-509: The Han general dispatched envoy Gan Ying to Daqin (Rome). The Silk Road essentially came into being from the 1st century BCE, following these efforts by China to consolidate a road to the Western world and India , both through direct settlements in the area of the Tarim Basin and diplomatic relations with the countries of the Dayuan, Parthians and Bactrians further west. The Silk Roads were

16554-502: The Magoki Attori mosque, palaces and parks. Bukhara lies west of Samarkand and was previously a focal point of learning eminent all through the Persian and the Islamic world. It is the old neighborhood of the incomparable Sheik Naqshbandi . He was a focal figure in the advancement of the mysterious Sufi way to deal with theory, religion and Islam. It is now the capital of Bukhara Region ( viloyat ) of Uzbekistan . Located on

16740-819: The Middle Periods , he defined it thus: "The rise of Persian had more than purely literary consequences: it served to carry a new overall cultural orientation within Islamdom.... Most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims... depended upon Persian wholly or in part for their prime literary inspiration. We may call all these cultural traditions, carried in Persian or reflecting Persian inspiration, 'Persianate' by extension." The term designates ethnic Persians but also societies that may not have been predominantly ethnically Persian but whose linguistic, material or artistic cultural activities were influenced by or based on Persianate culture. Examples of pre-19th-century Persianate societies were

16926-552: The Middle-Persian of pre-Islamic times, but enriched by Arabic vocabulary and written in the Arabic script. The Persian language, according to Marshall Hodgson in his The Venture of Islam , was to form the chief model for the rise of still other languages to the literary level. Like Turkish , most of the more local languages of high culture that later emerged among Muslims were heavily influenced by Persian ( Urdu being

17112-498: The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his Iranian bride. Iranian poets, such as Sa’di , Hafez , Rumi and Nizami , who were great masters of Sufi mysticism from the Persianate world, were the favorite poets of the Mughals. Their works were present in Mughal libraries and counted among the emperors’ prized possessions, which they gave to each other; Akbar and Jahangir often quoted from them, signifying that they had imbibed them to

17298-641: The Muslim "successor-states" which had been carved, after the victory of the Deccanese Muslim princes at Talikota in A.D. 1565, out of the carcass of the slaughtered Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar. For this vast cultural empire the New Persian language was indebted to the arms of Turkish-speaking empire-builders, reared in the Iranian tradition and therefore captivated by the spell of the New Persian literature, whose military and political destiny it had been to provide one universal state for Orthodox Christendom in

17484-550: The Oxus to the southern territories of the Persian Gulf. Shah Isma'il's successors went further and adopted the title of Shāhanshāh (king of kings). The Safavid kings considered themselves, like their predecessors the Sassanid Emperors, the khudāygān (the shadow of God on earth). They revived Sassanid architecture, build grand mosques and elegant charbagh gardens, collected books (one Safavid ruler had

17670-581: The Persian language and Persianate culture was brought deep into India and carried further in the 13th century. The Seljuqs won a decisive victory over the Ghaznavids and swept into Khorasan; they brought Persianate culture westward into western Persia, Iraq, Anatolia, and Syria. Iran proper along with Central Asia became the heartland of Persian language and culture. As the Seljuqs came to dominate western Asia, their courts were Persianized as far west as

17856-536: The Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE, regular communications and trade between China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale. The Roman Empire inherited eastern trade routes that were part of the Silk Road from the earlier Hellenistic powers and the Arabs. With control of these trade routes, citizens of the Roman Empire received new luxuries and greater prosperity for

18042-804: The Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied through the Parthians), even though the Romans thought silk was obtained from trees. This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Younger in his Phaedra and by Virgil in his Georgics . Notably, Pliny the Elder knew better. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk." The Romans traded spices, glassware, perfumes, and silk. Roman artisans began to replace yarn with valuable plain silk cloths from China and

18228-606: The Shah-nama" and the Shahanshahnamah (or Changiznamah ) of Ahmad Tabrizi in 1337–38, which is a history of the Mongols written for Abu Sa'id. Second, poets versified the history of a contemporary ruler for reward, such as the Ghazannameh written in 1361–62 by Nur al-Din ibn Shams al-Din. Third, heroes not treated in the Shahnameh and those having minor roles in it became the subjects of their own epics, such as

18414-535: The Silk Road from the Mediterranean world, probably with the aim of regularising contacts and reducing the role of middlemen, during one of the lulls in Rome's intermittent wars with Parthia, which repeatedly obstructed movement along the Silk Road. Intercontinental trade and communication became regular, organised, and protected by the "Great Powers." Intense trade with the Roman Empire soon followed, confirmed by

18600-610: The Silk Road slave trade to the Bukhara slave trade as well as the Black Sea slave trade , particularly slave girls. Byzantine Greek historian Procopius stated that two Nestorian Christian monks eventually uncovered the way silk was made. From this revelation, monks were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (ruled 527–565) as spies on the Silk Road from Constantinople to China and back to steal

18786-410: The Silk Road trade. The originating source seems sufficiently reliable, but silk degrades very rapidly, so it cannot be verified whether it was cultivated silk (which almost certainly came from China) or a type of wild silk , which might have come from the Mediterranean or Middle East. Following contacts between Metropolitan China and nomadic western border territories in the 8th century BCE, gold

18972-459: The Soviet era, diversion of irrigation water from the two rivers that feed Uzbekistan, and the lack of water treatment plants have caused health and environmental problems on a large scale. Bukhara International Airport has regularly scheduled flights to cities in Uzbekistan and Russia. The Turkmenistan border is about 80 km away with the nearest city there being Türkmenabat , connected via

19158-541: The Tarim Basin, in the modern day Xinjiang region, until replaced by Turkic influences from the Xiongnu culture to the north and by Chinese influences from the eastern Han dynasty , who spoke a Sino-Tibetan language . Some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk dating from 1070 BCE have been found in Ancient Egypt . The Great Oasis cities of Central Asia played a crucial role in the effective functioning of

19344-834: The Turkic Ghaznavids and Seljuks (11th and 12th centuries), the Timurids (14th and 15th centuries), and the Qajars (19th and 20th centuries). The Ghaznavids, the rivals and future successors of the Samanids, ruled over the southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni . Persian scholars and artists flocked to their court, and the Ghaznavids became patrons of Persianate culture. The Ghaznavids took with them Persianate culture as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia . Apart from Ferdowsi, Rumi , Abu Ali Sina , Al-Biruni , Unsuri Balkhi, Farrukhi Sistani , Sanayi Ghaznawi and Abu Sahl Testari were among

19530-778: The West for land-based trade. The Tang captured the vital route through the Gilgit Valley from Tibet in 722, lost it to the Tibetans in 737, and regained it under the command of the Goguryeo General Gao Xianzhi . While the Turks were settled in the Ordos region (former territory of the Xiongnu ), the Tang government took on the military policy of dominating the central steppe. The Tang dynasty (along with Turkic allies) conquered and subdued Central Asia during

19716-549: The Xiong Nu) are recorded, particularly in the 36 BCE battle of Sogdiana (Joseph Needham, Sidney Shapiro). It has been suggested that the Chinese crossbow was transmitted to the Roman world on such occasions, although the Greek gastraphetes provides an alternative origin. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy suggest that in 36 BCE, [A] Han expedition into Central Asia, west of Jaxartes River , apparently encountered and defeated

19902-406: The affairs of everyday life and in the business of government, they preferred their own ideas; but in the sphere of science and literature they went to school with the Persian, intent not merely on acquiring his method, but on entering into his spirit, thinking his thought and feeling his feelings. And in this school they continued so long as there was a master to teach them; for the step thus taken at

20088-754: The ambassador Zhang Qian (who was originally sent to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu ). Zhang Qian visited directly the kingdom of Dayuan in Ferghana , the territories of the Yuezhi in Transoxiana , the Bactrian country of Daxia with its remnants of Greco-Bactrian rule, and Kangju . He also made reports on neighbouring countries that he did not visit, such as Anxi ( Parthia ), Tiaozhi ( Mesopotamia ), Shendu ( Indian subcontinent ) and

20274-776: The best known include the Eurasian Land Bridge and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In June 2014, UNESCO designated the Chang'an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site , while the Indian portion remains on the tentative site list. The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in silk , first developed in China , and a major reason for the connection of trade routes into an extensive transcontinental network. It derives from

20460-431: The body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes. ... Wretched flocks of maids labour so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body. The Western Roman Empire , and its demand for sophisticated Asian products, collapsed in the fifth century . The unification of Central Asia and Northern India within

20646-401: The borderlands of Turkistan exposed the Turks to Persianate culture; The incorporation of the Turks into the main body of the Middle Eastern Islamic civilization, which was followed by the Ghaznavids , thus began in Khorasan; "not only did the inhabitants of Khurasan not succumb to the language of the nomadic invaders, but they imposed their own tongue on them. The region could even assimilate

20832-401: The carriers of a mixed Sogdian-Türkic culture that often came from mixed families." Persianate A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language , culture , literature , art and/or identity. The term "Persianate" is a neologism credited to Marshall Hodgson . In his 1974 book, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in

21018-464: The centers of the Islamic world eastward. The institutions stabilized Islamic society into a form that would persist, at least in Western Asia , until the 20th century. The Ghaznavids moved their capital from Ghazni to Lahore in modern Pakistan , which they turned into another center of Islamic culture. Under their patronage, poets and scholars from Kashgar , Bukhara , Samarkand , Baghdad , Nishapur , Amol and Ghazni congregated in Lahore. Thus,

21204-416: The central edifice are located dwelling rooms, some of which have collapsed, leaving only their foundations visible. Consequently, for full functioning of madrasah only of classroom and some utility rooms is lacking. However, it was common practice that so-called madrasahs had no lecture rooms or, even if they had, no lectures had been given in them. These madrasahs were employed as student hospices. Each of

21390-433: The city there is facility of bus transportation. There are over 45 bus lines. Majority of them have been equipped with ISUZU buses but some buses are being brought from China. By the number of buses and bus routes facilities Bukhara is the largest after Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Bukhara recorded a population of 279,200 in 2019. Bukhara (along with Samarkand) is one of the two major centers of Uzbekistan's Tajik minority. Bukhara

21576-437: The commerce between East and West. At the same time, the Chinese empire welcomed foreign cultures, making it very cosmopolitan in its urban centres. In addition to the land route, the Tang dynasty also developed the maritime Silk Route. Chinese envoys had been sailing through the Indian Ocean to India since perhaps the 2nd century BCE, yet, it was during the Tang dynasty that a strong Chinese maritime presence could be found in

21762-413: The continent, exemplified by major events such as the Black Death and the Mongol conquests . The network was highly decentralized, and security was sparse: travelers faced constant threats of banditry and nomadic raiders, and long expanses of inhospitable terrain. Few individuals traveled the entire length of the Silk Road, instead relying on a succession of middlemen based at various stopping points along

21948-415: The cost of sustaining the Arab caliphs , the Umayyads , and in the 8th century, a general Iranian uprising—led by Abu Muslim Khorrasani —brought another Arab family, the Abbasids , to the Caliph's throne. Under the Abbasids, the capital shifted from Syria to Iraq , which had once been part of the Sassanid Empire and was still considered to be part of the Iranian cultural domain. Persian culture, and

22134-599: The course of the Brahmaputra River, crossing through the Himalayas then bending westward to its source in Tibet . It is doubtless that this delta was a major international trading center, almost certainly from much earlier than the Common Era. Gemstones and other merchandise from Thailand and Java were traded in the delta and through it. Chinese archaeological writer Bin Yang and some earlier writers and archaeologists, such as Janice Stargardt, strongly suggest this route of international trade as Sichuan – Yunnan – Burma – Bangladesh route. According to Bin Yang, especially from

22320-407: The court of Emperor Taizong of Tang . The History of Song describes the final embassy and its arrival in 1081, apparently sent by Michael VII Doukas (transliterated as Mie li yi ling kai sa , 滅力伊靈改撒, from his name and title Michael VII Parapinakēs Caesar) to the court of Emperor Shenzong of the Song dynasty (960–1279). However, the History of Yuan claims that a Byzantine man became

22506-417: The customs of the Persian Barmakid viziers , became the style of the ruling elite. Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control over Iranians. The governors of Khurasan , the Tahirids , though appointed by the caliph, were effectively independent. When the Persian Saffarids from Sistan freed the eastern lands, the Buyyids , the Ziyarids and the Samanids in Western Iran, Mazandaran and

22692-399: The early 20th century (based on numbers from 1913 and 1917), the Tajiks formed the overwhelming majority of city. The religion with the largest community of followers is Islam . But there are also Christian and Jewish minorities. Many notable people lived in Bukhara in the past. Among them are: The following is a list of Bukhara's sister cities : Silk Road The Silk Road

22878-415: 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

23064-493: The epic, poets who eulogized their patrons and their ancestors in masnavi form for monetary reward, and poets who wrote poems for rulers who saw themselves as heroes in the Shahnameh , echoing the earlier Samanid trend of patronizing the Shahnameh for legitimizing texts. First, Persian poets attempted to continue the chronology to a later period, such as the Zafarnamah of the Ilkhanid historian Hamdollah Mostowfi (d. 1334 or 1335), which deals with Iranian history from

23250-409: The establishment of a new dynasty to the Byzantine court of John V Palaiologos in September 1371. Friedrich Hirth (1885), Emil Bretschneider (1888), and more recently Edward Luttwak (2009) presumed that this was none other than Nicolaus de Bentra, a Roman Catholic bishop of Khanbilaq chosen by Pope John XXII to replace the previous archbishop John of Montecorvino . Although the Silk Road

23436-596: The far larger and geographically wider nature of the silk trade; the term is in current use in China. The Silk Road consisted of several routes. As it extended westwards from the ancient commercial centres of China, the overland, intercontinental Silk Road divided into northern and southern routes bypassing the Taklamakan Desert and Lop Nur . Merchants along these routes were involved in "relay trade" in which goods changed "hands many times before reaching their final destinations". The northern route started at Chang'an (now called Xi'an ), an ancient capital of China that

23622-542: The far-flung cities of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to India . Persianate culture involved modes of consciousness, ethos, and religious practices that have persisted in the Iranian world against hegemonic Arab Muslim ( Sunni ) cultural constructs. This formed a calcified Persianate structure of thought and experience of the sacred, entrenched for generations, which later informed history, historical memory, and identity among Alid loyalists and heterodox groups labeled by sharia -minded authorities as ghulāt . In

23808-420: 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. In

23994-443: The formation of Anjuman-i Ma’arif, an academy devoted to the strengthening of Persian language as a scientific language. From about the 12th century, Persian lyric poetry was enriched with a spirituality and devotional depth not to be found in earlier works. This development was due to the pervasive spread of mystical experience within Islam. Sufism developed in all Muslim lands, including the sphere of Persian cultural influence. As

24180-458: The formidable Pamir Mountains , routes across them were apparently in use from very early times. Genetic study of the Tarim mummies , found in the Tarim Basin , in the area of Loulan located along the Silk Road 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of Yingpan, dating to as early as 1600 BCE, suggest very ancient contacts between East and West. These mummified remains may have been of people who spoke Indo-European languages , which remained in use in

24366-431: The four towers has different decorational motifs. Some say that elements of decoration reflect the four religions known to Central Asians. One can find elements reminiscent of a cross, a Christian fish motif, and a Buddhist praying-wheel, in addition to Zoroastrian and Islamic motifs. In 1995, due to an underground brook, one of the four towers collapsed and emergency assistance was applied for and granted by UNESCO under

24552-453: The great Iranian scientists and poets of the period under Ghaznavid patronage. Persianate culture was carried by successive dynasties into Western and Southern Asia, particularly by the Persianized Seljuqs (1040–1118) and their successor states, who presided over Iran , Syria , and Anatolia until the 13th century, and by the Ghaznavids, who in the same period dominated Greater Khorasan and parts of India . These two dynasties together drew

24738-446: The head of the Persian Gulf and across to Petra and on to Alexandria and other eastern Mediterranean ports from where ships carried the cargoes to Rome . The southwestern route is believed to be the Ganges / Brahmaputra Delta, which has been the subject of international interest for over two millennia. Strabo, the 1st-century Roman writer, mentions the deltaic lands: "Regarding merchants who now sail from Egypt ... as far as

24924-423: The historic center of Bukhara (which contains numerous mosques and madrasas ) as a World Heritage Site . 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. According to some scholars, the name dates back to the Sanskrit vihāra ( Buddhist monastery ). This word

25110-422: The hot, dry climate of Central Asia , so from ancient times, irrigation farming was developed. Cities were built near rivers, and water channels were built to serve the entire city. Uncovered reservoirs, known as hauzes , were constructed. Special covered water reservoirs, or sardobas , were built along caravan routes to supply travelers and their animals with water. However, the heavy use of agrochemicals during

25296-404: The idiom of administration and literature. The Tahirid and Saffarid dynasties continued using Persian as an informal language, although for them Arabic was the "language for recording anything worthwhile, from poetry to science", but the Samanids made Persian a language of learning and formal discourse. The language that appeared in the 9th and 10th centuries was a new form of Persian, derivative of

25482-561: The international trade centers in this route. The Maritime Silk Road or Maritime Silk Route is the maritime section of the historic Silk Road that connected Southeast Asia , East Asia , the Indian subcontinent , the Arabian Peninsula , eastern Africa , and Europe . It began by the 2nd century BCE and flourished until the 15th century CE. The Maritime Silk Road was primarily established and operated by Austronesian sailors in Southeast Asia who sailed large long-distance ocean-going sewn-plank and lashed-lug trade ships . The route

25668-617: The journey by sea from various points. Crossing the high mountains, it passed through northern Pakistan , over the Hindu Kush mountains, and into Afghanistan , rejoining the northern route near Merv, Turkmenistan . From Merv, it followed a nearly straight line west through mountainous northern Iran , Mesopotamia , and the northern tip of the Syrian Desert to the Levant , where Mediterranean trading ships plied regular routes to Italy , while land routes went either north through Anatolia or south to North Africa . Another branch road travelled from Herat through Susa to Charax Spasinu at

25854-410: The language of Pre-Islamic Iran , continued to be widely used well into the second Islamic century (8th century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of the Caliphate . Despite the Islamization of public affairs, the Iranians retained much of their pre-Islamic outlook and way of life, adjusted to fit the demands of Islam. Towards the end of the 7th century, the population began resenting

26040-497: The language of religion. The Safavid dynasty ascended to predominance in Iran in the 16th century—the first native Iranian dynasty since the Buyyids . The Safavids, who were of mixed Kurdish , Turkic , Georgian , Circassian and Pontic Greek ancestry, moved to the Ardabil region in the 11th century. They re-asserted the Persian identity over many parts of West Asia and Central Asia, establishing an independent Persian state, and patronizing Persian culture They made Iran

26226-471: The learned authorities of Islam, the ulama , began using the Persian lingua franca in public. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language was the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), presented by its author Ferdowsi to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni (998–1030). This was a kind of Iranian nationalistic resurrection: Ferdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiment by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery and enshrined in literary form

26412-428: The local Tajik population, these cities face a movement for annexation into Tajikistan with which the cities have no common border. The Boboyi Poradoz Mausoleum ( Uzbek : Boboyi Poradoʻz maqbarasi) is a monument of architecture in Bukhara Region . The mausoleum was built in the 19th century and is located behind the Salakhona gate. Today the mausoleum is located opposite the Ibn Sina Library of Bukhara. The mausoleum

26598-402: The maritime spice networks between Southeast Asia and South Asia , and the West Asian maritime networks in the Arabian Sea and beyond, coinciding with these ancient maritime trade roads by the current era. Austronesian thalassocracies controlled the flow of trade in the eastern regions of the Maritime Silk Road, especially the polities around the straits of Malacca and Bangka ,

26784-425: The maritime route faced different perils like weather and piracy , but they were not affected by political instability and could simply avoid areas in conflict. Central Eurasia has been known from ancient times for its horse riding and horse breeding communities, and the overland Steppe Route across the northern steppes of Central Eurasia was in use long before that of the Silk Road. Archeological sites, such as

26970-459: The middle of the eleventh century they [that is, the Saljuqs] had overrun Persia, when, as so often happened, the Barbarian conquerors adopted the culture of their civilized subjects. Rapidly the Seljuq Turks pushed their conquest westward, ever carrying with them Persian culture...[s]o, when some hundred and fifty years later Sulayman's son [the leader of the Ottomans]... penetrated into Asia Minor, they [the Ottomans] found that although Seljuq Turkish

27156-410: The missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy Zhang Qian , which brought the region under unified control . The Chinese took great interest in the security of their trade products, and extended the Great Wall of China to ensure the protection of the trade route. By the first century CE, Chinese silk was widely sought-after in Rome, Egypt, and Greece. Other lucrative commodities from

27342-409: The most important of cities in many Persianate empires, namely Samanids , Karakhanids , Khwarazmids , and Timurids . The influence of Bukhara in the wider Islamic world started to diminish starting from the arrival of another Turkic dynasty of Uzbeks in the 16th Century. Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar was the last Persian emperor who attempted to retake the city just before his assassination, and by

27528-431: The most popular sights of the city, yet the event has been kept secret ever since. On the esplanade to the right from Char-Minar is a pool, likely of the same age as the rest of the building complex. Char Minar is now surrounded mainly by small houses and shops along its perimeter. The former Magoki Attori mosque was constructed in the 9th century on the remains of what may have been an older Zoroastrian temple. The mosque

27714-401: The most treasured folk stories. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh enjoyed a special status in Iranian courtly culture as a historical narrative as well as a mythical one. The powerful effect that this text came to have on the poets of this period is partly due to the value that was attached to it as a legitimizing force, especially for new rulers in the Eastern Islamic world: In the Persianate tradition

27900-424: The north-east respectively, declared their independence. The separation of the eastern territories from Baghdad was expressed in a distinctive Persianate culture that became dominant in west, central, and south Asia, and was the source of innovations elsewhere in the Islamic world. The Persianate culture was marked by the use of the New Persian language as a medium of administration and intellectual discourse, by

28086-413: The other going north of the Tian Shan mountains through Turpan , Talgar , and Almaty (in what is now southeast Kazakhstan ). The routes split again west of Kashgar, with a southern branch heading down the Alai Valley towards Termez (in modern Uzbekistan) and Balkh (Afghanistan), while the other travelled through Kokand in the Fergana Valley (in present-day eastern Uzbekistan) and then west across

28272-438: The outset developed into a practice; it became the rule with the Turkish poets to look ever Persia-ward for guidance and to follow whatever fashion might prevail there. Thus it comes about that for centuries Ottoman poetry continued to reflect as in a glass the several phases through which that of Persia passed...[s]o the first Ottoman poets, and their successors through many a generation, strove with all their strength to write what

28458-431: The overland Silk Road, and thus should not be viewed as a mere extension of it. Traders traveling through the Maritime Silk Road could span the entire distance of the maritime routes, instead of through regional relays as with the overland route. Ships could carry far larger amounts of goods, creating greater economic impact with each exchange. Goods carried by the ships also differed from goods carried by caravans. Traders on

28644-416: The overland routes, which prompted European polities to seek alternatives while themselves gaining leverage over their trade partners. This marked the beginning of the Age of Discovery , European colonialism , and the further intensification of globalization . In the 21st century, the name "New Silk Road" is used to describe several large infrastructure projects along many of the historic trade routes; among

28830-443: The public until the 20th century. The first book entitled The Silk Road was by Swedish geographer Sven Hedin in 1938. The use of the term 'Silk Road' is not without its detractors. For instance, Warwick Ball contends that the maritime spice trade with India and Arabia was far more consequential for the economy of the Roman Empire than the silk trade with China , which at sea was conducted mostly through India and on land

29016-439: The region by the Arab conquerors. Persianate culture, especially among the elite classes, spread across the Muslim territories in western, central, and south Asia, although populations across this vast region had conflicting allegiances (sectarian, local, tribal, and ethnic) and spoke many different languages. It was spread by poets, artists, architects, artisans, jurists, and scholars, who maintained relations among their peers in

29202-473: The region still had large populations of Zoroastrians who had begun to convert to Islam around that time. The shrine is also regarded as one of the oldest monuments in the Bukhara region. At the time of Genghis Khan 's invasion, the shrine was said to have already been buried in mud from flooding. Thus, when the Mongol hordes reached Bukhara, the shrine was spared from their destruction. The mausoleum of Pakistan's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah , known as

29388-680: The region where their expertise in Persianate culture and administration secured them honored service within the Mughal Empire. Networks of learned masters and madrasas taught generations of young South Asian men Persian language and literature in addition to Islamic values and sciences. Furthermore, educational institutions such as Farangi Mahall and Delhi College developed innovative and integrated curricula for modernizing Persian-speaking South Asians. They cultivated Persian art, enticing to their courts artists and architects from Bukhara, Tabriz , Herat , Shiraz , and other cities of Greater Iran. The Taj Mahal and its Charbagh were commissioned by

29574-479: The resting-place of Ismail Samani —the founder of the Samanid dynasty , which was the last native Persian dynasty to rule the region in the 9th to 10th centuries, after the Samanids established virtual independence from the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad . The site is unique for its architectural style which combines both Zoroastrian and Islamic motifs. The building's facade is covered in intricately decorated brick work, which features circular patterns reminiscent of

29760-430: The rise of Persianised-Turks to military control, by the new political importance of non-Arab ulama and by the development of an ethnically composite Islamic society. Pahlavi was the lingua franca of the Sassanian Empire before the Arab invasion, but towards the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 8th century Arabic became a medium of literary expression. In the 9th century, a New Persian language emerged as

29946-401: The shape of the Ottoman Empire and another for the Hindu World in the shape of the Timurid Mughal Raj. These two universal states of Iranian construction on Orthodox Christian and on Hindu ground were duly annexed, in accordance with their builders' own cultural affinities, to the original domain of the New Persian language in the homelands of the Iranian Civilization on the Iranian plateau and in

30132-458: The sharp antagonisms between empires stimulated the appearance of variations of Persianate culture. After 1500, the Iranian culture developed distinct features of its own, with interposition of strong pre-Islamic and Shiite Islamic culture. Iran's ancient cultural relationship with Southern Iraq ( Sumer / Babylonia ) remained strong and endured in spite of the loss of Mesopotamia to the Ottomans. Its ancient cultural and historical relationship with

30318-403: The silkworm eggs , resulting in silk production in the Mediterranean, particularly in Thrace in northern Greece, and giving the Byzantine Empire a monopoly on silk production in medieval Europe. In 568, the Byzantine ruler Justin II was greeted by a Sogdian embassy representing Istämi , ruler of the First Turkic Khaganate , who formed an alliance with the Byzantines against Khosrow I of

30504-405: The spiritual bastion of Shi’ism against the onslaughts of orthodox Sunni Islam , and a repository of Persian cultural traditions and self-awareness of Persian identity. The founder of the dynasty, Shah Isma'il , adopted the title of Persian Emperor Pādišah-ī Īrān , with its implicit notion of an Iranian state stretching from Afghanistan as far as the Euphrates and the North Caucasus, and from

30690-405: The sun—a common image in Zoroastrian art from the region at that time which is reminiscent of the Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda, who is typically represented by fire and light. The building's shape is cuboid, and reminiscent of the Ka'aba in Makkah, while the domed roof is a typical feature of mosque architecture. The syncretic style of the shrine is reflective of the 9th and 10th centuries—a time when

30876-506: The term Silk Routes , on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central , East , South , Southeast , and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe . The Silk Road derives its name from the highly lucrative trade of silk textiles that were primarily produced in China. The network began with the expansion of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) into Central Asia around 114 BCE, through

31062-401: The trade route against nomadic bandit forces generally identified as Xiongnu . Han general Ban Chao led an army of 70,000 mounted infantry and light cavalry troops in the 1st century CE to secure the trade routes, reaching far west to the Tarim Basin. Ban Chao expanded his conquests across the Pamirs to the shores of the Caspian Sea and the borders of Parthia . It was from here that

31248-441: The trades of marauders or mercenaries. "Many barbarian tribes became skilled warriors able to conquer rich cities and fertile lands and to forge strong military empires." The Sogdians dominated the east–west trade after the 4th century up to the 8th century. They were the main caravan merchants of Central Asia. A.V. Dybo noted that "according to historians, the main driving force of the Great Silk Road were not just Sogdians, but

31434-486: The way. In addition to goods, the network facilitated an unprecedented exchange of religious ( especially Buddhist ), philosophical, and scientific thought, much of which was syncretised by societies along the way. Likewise, a wide variety of people used the routes. Diseases such as plague also spread along the Silk Road, possibly contributing to the Black Death. From 1453 onwards, the Ottoman Empire began competing with other gunpowder empires for greater control over

31620-402: The works of Amir Khusrow , Sharaf Manayri and Jami, the Masnavi i-manavi of Rumi, the Jām-i Jam of Awhadi Maraghai , the Hakika o Sanā’i , the Qabusnameh of Keikavus , Sa’di's Gulestān and Būstān , and the diwans of Khaqani and Anvari . This intellectual symmetry continued until the end of the 19th century, when a Persian newspaper, Miftah al-Zafar (1897), campaigned for

31806-414: The world." In exchange, the caravans sent back bolts of silk brocade , lacquer-ware , and porcelain . The southern route or Karakoram route was mainly a single route from China through the Karakoram mountains, where it persists in modern times as the Karakoram Highway , a paved road that connects Pakistan and China . It then set off westwards, but with southward spurs so travelers could complete

31992-471: Was Numijkat. It has also been called "Bumiskat". It has 2 names in Arabic. One is "Madinat al Sufriya" meaning—"the copper city" and another is "Madinat Al Tujjar" meaning—"The city of Merchants". But, the name Bukhara is the original name and more known than all the other names. In Khorasan , there is no other city with so many names. Since the Middle Ages, the city has been known as Bukhārā / بخارا in Arabic and Persian sources. The modern Uzbek spelling

32178-420: Was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 km (4,000 mi), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds . The name "Silk Road" was first coined in the late 19th century, but some 20th- and 21st-century historians instead prefer

32364-419: Was also home to the Bukharan Jews , whose ancestors settled in the city during Roman times. Most Bukharian Jews left Bukhara between 1925 and 2000. Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda defines the name Bukhara itself as meaning "full of knowledge", referring to the fact that in antiquity, Bukhara was a scientific and scholarship powerhouse. In the Italian romantic epic Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo , Bukhara

32550-417: Was also utilized by the dhows of the Persian and Arab traders in the Arabian Sea and beyond, and the Tamil merchants in South Asia . China also started building their own trade ships ( chuán ) and followed the routes in the later period, from the 10th to the 15th centuries CE. The network followed the footsteps of older Austronesian jade maritime networks in Southeast Asia, as well as

32736-422: Was another Persian poet, Nizami , a most admired, illustrated and imitated writer of romantic masnavis . Along with Ferdowsi's and Nizami's works, Amir Khusraw Dehlavi 's khamseh came to enjoy tremendous prestige, and multiple copies of it were produced at Persianized courts. Seyller has a useful catalog of all known copies of this text. In the 16th century, Persianate culture became sharply distinct from

32922-419: Was destroyed and rebuilt more than once, and the oldest part now remaining is the south façade, which dates from the 12th century—making it one of the oldest surviving structures in Bukhara, and one of few which survived the onslaught of Genghis Khan. Lower than the surrounding ground level, the mosque was excavated in 1935. It no longer functions as a mosque, but, rather, houses a carpet museum. In Bukhara there

33108-508: Was enriched by the influx of Persian-speaking and Islamic scholars, historians, architects, musicians, and other specialists of high Persianate culture who fled the Mongol devastation. The sultans of Delhi , who were of Turko-Afghan origin, modeled their lifestyles after the Persian upper classes. They patronized Persian literature and music, but became especially notable for their architecture, because their builders drew from Irano-Islamic architecture, combining it with Indian traditions to produce

33294-443: Was excavated and found to have not only Greek bronzes but also Chinese silks. Similar animal-shaped pieces of art and wrestler motifs on belts have been found in Scythian grave sites stretching from the Black Sea region all the way to Warring States era archaeological sites in Inner Mongolia (at Aluchaideng) and Shaanxi (at Keshengzhuang  [ de ] ) in China. The expansion of Scythian cultures, stretching from

33480-420: Was handled by numerous intermediaries such as the Sogdians . Going as far as to call the whole thing a "myth" of modern academia, Ball argues that there was no coherent overland trade system and no free movement of goods from East Asia to the West until the period of the Mongol Empire . He notes that traditional authors discussing east–west trade such as Marco Polo and Edward Gibbon never labelled any route

33666-417: Was home to a community of medieval Indian merchants from the city of Multan (modern-day Pakistan) who were noted to own land in the city. For several centuries, the cities of Bukhara av Khiva were known as major centers of the slave trade, and the Bukhara slave trade , alongside the neighboring slave trade in Khiva , has been referred to as the "slave capitals of the world". Bukhara was the last capital of

33852-458: Was initially formulated during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (141–87 BCE), it was reopened by the Tang Empire in 639 when Hou Junji conquered the Western Regions , and remained open for almost four decades. It was closed after the Tibetans captured it in 678, but in 699, during Empress Wu 's period, the Silk Road reopened when the Tang reconquered the Four Garrisons of Anxi originally installed in 640, once again connecting China directly to

34038-418: Was introduced from Central Asia, and Chinese jade carvers began to make imitation designs of the steppes, adopting the Scythian -style animal art of the steppes (depictions of animals locked in combat). This style is particularly reflected in the rectangular belt plaques made of gold and bronze, with other versions in jade and steatite . An elite burial near Stuttgart , Germany, dated to the 6th century BCE,

34224-431: Was moved further east during the Later Han to Luoyang . The route was defined around the 1st century BCE when Han Wudi put an end to harassment by nomadic tribes. The northern route travelled northwest through the Chinese province of Gansu from Shaanxi Province and split into three further routes, two of them following the mountain ranges to the north and south of the Taklamakan Desert to rejoin at Kashgar , and

34410-400: Was the birthplace of Imam Bukhari . The Samanids, claiming descent from Bahram Chobin , rejuvenated Persian culture far from Baghdad , the centre of the Islamic world. New Persian flourished in Bukhara and Rudaki , the father of Persian poetry , was born and raised in Bukhara and wrote his most famous poem about the beauty of the city. For this purpose, Bukhara had continuously served as

34596-506: Was the everyday speech of the people, Persian was the language of the court, while Persian literature and Persian culture reigned supreme. It is to the Seljuqs with whom they were thus fused, that the Ottomans, strictly so called, owe their literary education; this therefore was of necessity Persian as the Seljuqs knew no other. The Turks were not content with learning from the Persians how to express thought; they went to them to learn what to think and in what way to think. In practical matters, in

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