taliban, who viewed the statues as idols, brought
international attention to the shared geographic
and cultural history of these two religious tradi-
tions. Today there are Muslim communities in
regions with significant Buddhist populations,
such as china, Tibet, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri
Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Also, malaysia is
a Muslim country that has a significant Buddhist
population (20 percent), mostly ethnic Chinese.
See also hindUism and islam.
Megan Adamson Sijapati
Further reading: Ainslee T. Embree, Sources of Indian
Tradition, Volume One: From the Beginning to 1800 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Gray Henry,
ed., Islam in Tibet, Tibetan Caravans (Louisville, Ky.:
Fons Vitae, 1997).
Bukhara
Bukhara is a city dating to the fifth to fourth
century b.c.e. and is now located in the Repub-
lic of Uzbekistan. The principal city in a desert
oasis, Bukhara came under the rule of the Arab
Umayyad caliphate in 709. Over the next 700
years, Bukhara switched hands between Arabs,
Persians, Turks, and Mongols and came under the
control of tamerlane in the 14th century. Bukhara
became a famous center of Islamic learning, with
the naqshbandi sUFi order taking its name from
Baha al-Din Naqshband, who lived in Bukhara
in the 14th century. Bukhara became a principal
stop on the great Silk Road caravan routes. The
Timurid dynasties ruled from Samarqand until the
invasion of Uzbek tribes early in the 16th century.
In 1557, Abd Allah ibn Iskander Khan (d. 1598)
made Bukhara his capital, from which his state
took its name. During the period of the Bukhara
Khanate, the city reached its historical zenith and
featured some of the most magnificent examples
of Islamicate architectUre of the time. However,
internal feuding eventually weakened the khan-
ate, and in 1740, Bukhara fell to the Persians, only
to regain its independence in 1753, though greatly
reduced in size and power.
Bukhara was conquered by the Russians in
1868 and made a protectorate, allowing the rul-
ing dynasty to continue in power. With the turn
of the century, there arose a Muslim intellectual
reform movement, and these “Young Bukharans”
struggled against the conservative Ulama for influ-
ence, only to be rebuffed by the ruling emir. With
the Russian Revolution of 1917, Russian control
disappeared, only to reappear in 1920, when, with
the help of many of the Young Bukharans, Soviet
forces gained control, and the last emir fled into
exile. The Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic was
established and lasted until 1924, when it was dis-
membered and divided between the Uzbek, Tajik,
and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics. Over the
years of Soviet rule, Bukhara lost its political and
economic importance, though it continues to be a
regional seat of Islamic learning.
See also central asia and the caUcasUs.
David ReevesFurther reading: Audrey Burton, The Bukharans: A
Dynastic, Diplomatic and Commercial History 1550–1702
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Adeeb Khalid, The
Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1998); Attilio Petrocciolli, ed.,
Bukhara: The Myth and the Architecture (Cambridge,
Mass.: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture,
1999).Bukhari, Muhammad ibn Ismail See hadith.
Bumiputra
Bumiputra is an official designation for the native,
majority population of malaysia (about 58 per-
cent). A Sanskrit-Malay word meaning son of the
Earth, it is applied to ethnic Malays, although
there is some dispute as to exactly which of
Malaysia’s different indigenous groups are actu-Bumiputra 117 J