BUKHARIA, or BOKHARA, a large and opulent city, the capital of the above country, situated about twenty miles south-west of the Kohik, a tributary stream of the Oxus, from which river the city is distant about fifty miles. It occupies a rising ground, and is of very great extent; and though it is said to cover less ground within the walls than Isfahan, it contains only well-built and well-inhabited houses, without any intermixture of ruins. The houses are in general two, and even three stories high, built of raw brick, and often strengthened by wooden frame-work. Those of an inferior description are also constructed of frames of timber work, filled up with mud and fragments of brick. All are plastered over with a coat of lime cement, and many of them are handsomely decorated with painting, both inside and out. It is surrounded by a lofty wall of earth, faced and covered at the top with unburnt bricks, and having brick towers at certain distances from each other. The wall is not in good condition, and the earth has long been mouldering away; so that neither the wall nor towers could make any defence. The wall has twelve gates, from which a continuous line of bazars, with rows of houses and gardens, extends for ten or twelve miles into the country, the space inhabited without the walls greatly exceeding the space within. On the north-east of
the town stands a citadel, on an eminence, having sixteen guns and mortars, great and small, without carriages, lying on the ground; near it is a large well-built mosque, where the king himself, on Fridays, reads the service usually performed in the mosques, and acts as imaum. A market is held every day at noon before this mosque and citadel, where stands a gallows, on which murderers, highway robbers, and such as have robbed three times, are hanged by the king's orders. In the centre of the city is a large edifice, having a dome built of stone and lime, inside of which are four streets, one of them closed up at one end; and in it are all the shops of the booksellers. A market is held here every morning. There are, besides, several other bazars, which are chiefly roofed in from the weather, and numerous caravanserais for travellers. Bukharia has long been renowned among the eastern cities for its sanctity and learning, and it abounds in mosques and medressas or colleges beyond all other buildings. Among the former is still extant the mosque from which Ghenghis Khan harangued the people on his entrance into the city. There are about eighty colleges, chiefly built of stone, and containing from forty to two hundred and even three hundred chambers, each calculated to contain two students. Those colleges are supported by the rents of land or of shops in the bazar, amounting to from one hundred to five thousand rupees a year. To build and to endow colleges is reckoned a pious work, and wealthy men contribute liberally to such objects; and they are also promoted by the king, who gives to them, out of the taxes, from five to fifteen tillas a month, each tilla being of the value of 10s. 6d. The city also contains numerous tombs of pious devotees, which are visited from religious motives, and some of which are richly endowed and highly decorated. The town is chiefly supplied with water from the river Kohik, which passing, as already mentioned, about twenty miles to the north-east of it, after leaving the hills near Samarcand, feeds several canals, that water the town and all the adjacent gardens. Once in fifteen days water is made to flow into the reservoirs of the town; and it is on this supply that the inhabitants depend, as there are no wells in the surrounding plain. The water is said, however, not to be wholesome; and after using it during the spring and summer months, sickness begins to prevail; the guinea worm in the skin is so common, that few escape it; fevers and complaints of the bowels are common; and though there are numerous practitioners, the science of medicine is at a low ebb, being chiefly followed by ignorant pretenders.
Bukharia is a great emporium of trade, and an entrepôt for the productions of China and the countries of Eastern Asia, as well as for those of Persia and Western Asia, which are respectively interchanged for each other. The account of its extent and population given to Fraser, to whom we are indebted for all our knowledge of this great eastern city, was, that it contained within the walls a hundred and twenty thousand houses; and that in the suburbs and immediate dependencies it contained as much more. "This," says Fraser, "may be a great exaggeration; but there is," he adds, "no doubt that this city contains a population far exceeding that of any other city in Asia which we know of, except Pekin and some others in China, and Calcutta, with one or two others in India."
This great city was taken by Ghenghis Khan in the year 1220; and that cruel conqueror, after giving to the inhabitants assurances of immunity and protection, on conditions which were very strictly fulfilled by them, being enraged at discovering that some officers belonging to the hostile army of Mahommed Shah had been protected by certain of the townsmen, their relations, gave up the city to fire and sword; and the greater part of its habitations being
Bukharia. built of brick, its destruction was complete. "The sun," says Fraser, "which rose upon its rich and crowded bazzars and thickly inhabited edifices, went down at night upon a waste of smoking ashes, among which there was not one house standing except some mosques and public buildings, which being built of brick, survived the flames." The city was rebuilt by Octai Khan, the son of Ghenghis; and it gradually recovered its former prosperity, which it still retains. Long. 62. 45. E. Lat. 39. 27. N. (F.)