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BŪF-E KŪR (The blind owl), the chef d’œuvre of Ṣādeq Hedāyat (1281-1330 Š./1903-51) and one of the first major modernist Persian novels. Būf-e kūr was first distributed from Bombay in a stenciled edition in the author’s hand at his expense in late 1315 Š./1936 or early 1937. Hedāyat had presumably…

BŪKĀN (Kurd. Bōkān), name of a town, a baḵš (district), and a river in the šahrestān (county) of Mahābād, West Azerbaijan. The town is situated on the eastern bank of the Sīmīnarūd (Tk. Tatahūčāy), known locally as Čōmī Bōkān, on the road between Saqqez and Mīān-do-āb at about 56 km…

BUKHARA  i. In Pre-Islamic Times. ii. From the Arab Invasions to the Mongols. iii. After the Mongol Invasion. iv. Khanate of Bukhara and Khorasan. v. Archeology and Monuments. vi. Bukharan School of Miniature Painting. vii. Bukharan Jews. viii. Historiography of the Khanate, 1500-1920.     Search terms:  بخارا bokhara boukhara …

BUKHARA i. In Pre-Islamic Times The site or town of Bukhara was one of many settlements in the large oasis formed by the mouths of the Zarafshan (Zarafšān) river in ancient Sogdiana. Since there is no evidence that the river reached the Oxus in historic times, it is a reasonable…

BUKHARA ii. From the Arab Invasions to the Mongols At the time of the Arab conquests in Transoxania, Bukhara was ruled by the indigenous Sogdian dynasty of the Boḵār-ḵodāts (see i, above). The first appearance of Arab armies there is traditionally placed in Moʿāwīa’s caliphate when, according to Naršaḵī (pp….

BUKHARA iii. After the Mongol Invasion The Mongol period. The city of Bukhara was con­quered by Chingiz Khan on 4 D¨uʾl-ḥejja 616/10 Feb­ruary 1220 (according to Ebn al-Aṯīr, XII, pp. 365-67), and the citadel fell twelve days later. All the inhabitants were driven out, their property pillaged, and the city…

BUKHARA iv. The Khanate of Bukhara and Khorasan The first distinctive political separation of Trans­oxania from Persia took place in 873/1469 when the Timurid empire was finally divided into two indepen­dent states, Transoxania and Khorasan, ruled by the descendants of Abū Saʿd and ʿOmar Shaikh, respect­ively. But it was only…

BUKHARA v. Archeology and Monuments According to new archeological data, the earliest settlement levels at Bukhara can be dated to the 5th-2nd centuries B.C. (Askarov and Usmanova, p. 10; Mukhamedzhanov, p. 39). During this period Bukhara consisted of a citadel (arg; ca. 2ha) on a hill and a large, sprawling…

BUKHARA vi. The Bukharan School of Miniature Painting As far as is known, illustrated manuscripts were produced in Bukhara only under the Shaibanid (905-1007/1500-98) and Janid (also known as Tughay­-Timurid; 1007-1199/1599-1785) dynasties. The Shaibanids. Partly as a result of frequent raids on Herat by ʿObayd-Allāh Khan (918-46/1512-39) Persian manuscripts, artists,…

BUKHARA vii. Bukharan Jews “Bukharan Jews” is the common appellation for the Jews of Central Asia whose native language is the Jewish dialect of Tajik. It was first adopted by Russian travelers to Central Asia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, then, apparently independently, by early 19th-century British…

BUKHARA viii. HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE KHANATE, 1500-1920 There are about 70 extant works of Persian historiography which focus on the politics of the Shïbanid–Abulkhayrid (Shaybanid) dynasty (r. 1500-99), the Janids (also known as Toqay-Timurids or Ashtarkhanids, r. 1599-1747), and the Manḡïts (r. 1747-1920). Their manuscripts are preserved in collections in…

BULAYÏQ, town in eastern Turkestan, modern Chinese Sinkiang, situated about ten km north of Turfan in the foothills of the Tien-shan. The name of the town is also conventionally applied to the nearby ruin of Shüī-pang (Figure 1), where a library of fragmentary Christian manuscripts was discovered in 1905 by…

BULLAE, the sealings, usually of clay or bitumen, on which were impressed the marks of seals showing ownership or witness to whatever was attached to the sealing. Bullae or clay sealings were used in ancient Mesopotamia, but strictly speaking bullae came into general use after the end of cuneiform writing….

BULSARA, SOHRAB JAMSHEDJI (1877-1945), Parsi scholar of Avestan, Pahlavi, Pazand, and Persian and Iranian history, born to a middle class family in Bulsar, Gujarat. He finished high school in 1896 and received his B.A. from Elphinstone College in 1900. In college, he turned his attention to the study of pre-Islamic…

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