Shaybanids founded Bukhara’s khanate in 1501
From 1501 to 1785 an Uzbek court ruled Central Asia from Bukhara under Muhammad Shaybani’s Abu’l-Khayrid line, advertising Genghisid credentials. He took Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, and Andijan about 1500–1503 while fighting Babur. Later Janid or Ashtarkhanid khans were the last Chinggisids on that throne.
Shaybani’s decisive win over Babur, the Timurid prince of Fergana, came at Sar-i Pul in spring 1501; the loser fled to Kabul and eventually turned south to found the Mughal Empire in India. After a ten-month siege Shaybani took Urgench in 1505, annexing Khwarazm, then seized Balkh in 1506 and Herat in 1507 as a Timurid coalition fell apart. Safavid Shah Ismail I, coveting those lands and angered by Shaybani’s staunch Sunnism, invaded Khorasan and killed him near Merv in 1510.
A kurultai then chose Shaybani’s uncle Kuchkonji, eighth son of Abu’l-Khayr, as supreme khan and carved the conquests into appanages centred on Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Balkh. Their holders collected taxes and raised troops, so a khan’s strength rested on managing them, and for most of the century there was no fixed capital. Only under Abdullah, who reigned from 1581 to 1598, did rule centralise and Bukhara become the permanent seat.
The Janids who followed descended from Yar Muhammad, who fled Astrakhan when it fell to Russia; Baqi Muhammad founded the line in earnest in 1599. The era produced the poet Mashrab, writing in Chagatai and Persian, and Persian-language histories. After Ubaydullah Khan’s assassination in March 1711 the state splintered, and some reports say his successor controlled little beyond the citadel.
Nader Shah of Iran conquered the khanate in 1740, and real power passed to ataliqs of the Uzbek Manghit clan, who made later khans their puppets. In 1785 Shah Murad formalised Manghit rule; lacking Genghisid descent, the family took the Islamic title emir, and the Emirate of Bukhara lasted until 1920.
Source: Khanate of Bukhara
