Khanate of Bukhara

The Khanate of Bukhara was the Uzbek state of Transoxiana from 1500 to 1785, Samarkand and Bukhara under steppe khans turned city kings. Muhammad Shaybani, grandson of the steppe ruler Abu'l Khayr, broke with the Kazakh split, swept down in 1500 and took Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent and Herat from the Timurids' heirs, killing the last Timurid resistance with Babur watching from exile. The Shaybanids made Bukhara their mint and mosque: madrasas multiplied, the Kalon minaret watched caravans, and Abdullah II, reigning 1583 to 1598, pushed the borders to Kashgar and Khwarazm and made the khanate the power of Central Asia. The line failed with him; the Ashtarkhanids from Astrakhan took over and slowly bled authority to the Uzbek clans, to Khiva and Kokand breaking away, and to Nader Shah's sack in 1740. By 1785 the Manghit ataliqs, ministers in all but name, dropped the fiction: Shah Murad took the title emir instead of khan, and the khanate became the emirate that Russia would swallow in the Great Game, its blue domes intact above the change of masters.