History of Bukhara

In 19th century, Bukhara still played a significant part in regional cultural and religious life. The French Orientalist Jean Jacques Pierre Desmaisons visited, disguised as a Muslim merchant, in 1834.

The last Emir of Bukhara was Muhammad Alim Khan (1880–1944). The Trans-Caspian railway was built through the city in the late 19th century. The nearest station is at Kagan, a dozen miles away, but the emir had a private spur built to Bokhara itself.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND LATER

The Bukharan People's Soviet Republic existed from 1920 to 1925, when the city was integrated into 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"