Khan, Emir Muhammad Alim

(1880–1944)

   Emir Muhammad Alim Khan was the last ruler of the Bukharan state in Central Eurasia. Khan ruled as Emir of Bukhara from 1911 until Bolshevik conquest in 1920. The Bukharans had pledged allegiance to the Russian state and an economic accord in 1868, in the wake of military defeats at Khojand, Samarkand, and other places. Bukhara became an official protectorate of the Russian Empire in 1873. Alim Khan took over rule of the Bukharan state after the death of his father, Emir Abdulahad Khan.

   Alim Khan’s rule was initially reform-based, but evolved into a more traditionally Islamic administration. Alim Khan’s Bukharan state was destroyed during the Basmachi revolt and the ensuing Russian conquest of Bukhara in 1920. The emir saw his regime crumble amid growing support for both Enver Pasha’s Basmachis and the opposing Russian Bolsheviks. Alim Khan fled his crumbling regime to Afghanistan in 1920, where he lived until his death in Kabul in 1944.

   FURTHER READING:

    Holdsworth, Mary. Turkestan in the Nineteenth Century: A Brief History of the Khanates of Bukhara, Kokand and Khiva. Oxford: St. Anthony’s College (Oxford) Soviet Affairs Study Group, 1959.

   SCOTT C. BAILEY