Khanate of Bukhara

The Khanate of Bukhara was the dominant Uzbek state of Transoxiana (Mawarannahr) and the principal successor to the Timurid Empire in Central Asia.

It was founded around 1500-1501 when Muhammad Shaybani Khan, a grandson of Abu'l-Khayr Khan and a Chinggisid descended from Genghis Khan's son Jochi, led the Uzbek tribes out of the Dasht-i Qipchaq steppe to conquer Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, and the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins from the fractured Timurid principalities. The khanate was ruled successively by three dynasties: the Shaybanids (c. 1500-1598), under whom Bukhara became the permanent capital by 1562 and Abdullah Khan II built the state's apogee; the Janids or Ashtarkhanids (Astrakhanids, 1599-1747), the last Chinggisid line to rule the realm; and the non-Chinggisid Manghit emirs, who governed first as ataliqs before Shah Murad formalised their rule in 1785, transforming the khanate into the Emirate of Bukhara. As a settled Sunni Muslim state centred on the ancient caravan cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, it anchored the political, religious, and commercial life of early-modern Central Asia for nearly three centuries until the Russian Empire reduced its Manghit successor to a protectorate in 1868.