Tarikh-i Bukhara

The Tarikh-i Bukhara, or History of Bukhara, is a history of the city of Bukhara and its region by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ja'far al-Narshakhi, a historian of the Samanid period. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says nothing is known of his life except that he wrote this history in Arabic and presented it to the amir Nuh ibn Nasr in 332/943-4. It is the only book of his known. ¹

The Arabic original is not the text read today. Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Qubawi, from Quba in Farghana, put it into Persian in 522/1128 because, as the Persian version says, people did not want to read the Arabic. He left out passages he found tedious and carried the history down to 365/975-6. ¹

In 574/1178-9 a certain Muhammad ibn Zufar abridged this version, added information from other works and presented it to Burhan al-Din 'Abd al-'Aziz II ibn Muhammad, the head of the Hanafis of Bukhara. Finally, an unknown author added details from the Mongol period about the Mongol conquest of the city. The article concludes that the Persian text as we know it must be much altered from its original form and supplemented by other hands. ¹

The article lists an edition by Charles Schefer (Paris, 1892), one by Mudarris Radawi (Tehran, about 1939), a Russian translation by N. Likoshin (Tashkent, 1897) and the English translation with commentary by R. N. Frye, The History of Bukhara (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). ¹

The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls the work very valuable for the early Islamic history of Central Asia and for the Tahirid and Samanid periods there. It holds many details from local traditions going back to the pre-Islamic period, and information from works that are otherwise lost, among them a work by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad al-Nayshaburi, a Fasl al-khitab by a Hamadhani and the writings of al-Mada'ini on the Arab conquest of Transoxania and the rise of the Samanids. ¹

The Encyclopaedia's article on Bukhara draws repeatedly on Narshakhi. It says that the Bukhara of the Samanid period is described in detail by the Arab geographers and that much is also owed to Narshakhi and the later editors of his work. ² Among the details it takes from him:

• The first Arab army is said to have appeared before Bukhara in 54/674, when the ruler was a widow, who according to Narshakhi governed for fifteen years as regent for her infant son Tughshada. ³
• At the time of the Arab conquest the whole town consisted of the shahristan alone, with scattered settlements outside that were later absorbed. Narshakhi describes the shahristan's topography in some detail and, with the Arab geographers, gives the names of its seven gates. ²
• The shahristan was joined with the suburbs and surrounded by a wall in 235/849-50, according to Narshakhi. ²
• The Samanid Nasr II, who ruled 301-331/914-943, built in the Rigistan a palace with rooms for the ten state diwans, whose names Narshakhi gives. ²
• Narshakhi also describes the villages and the canals leading from the Zarafshan to water the fields, some built before Islam, and says that the long walls protecting the city and its villages from the Turks were begun in 166/782 and completed in 215/830. ⁴

The article's bibliography points readers to Frye's translation of Narshakhi for references on Bukhara down to the Mongol invasion. ⁵

Because the Persian text is a layered redaction, a statement in it cannot always be attributed to Narshakhi himself rather than to al-Qubawi, Ibn Zufar or the later Mongol-period author. The museum has not read the Persian text or Frye's translation, and relies only on the Encyclopaedia of Islam articles named above.