Talk:Bukhara
Discussion page of Bukhara
More actions
Talk
Discussion for: Bukhara • View • Links • Related changes
Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.
Page scope
Bukhara is a Growing Area in the Zarafshan Valley growing region. It covers the irrigated oasis of the lower Zarafshan round the city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. The city is the subject of Bukhara (city) and the province of Bukhara Region; Uzbek drug law is treated at Uzbekistan.
Data verification
Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
Why Bukhara is a growing area
- Burnes (1834, vol. 2, pp. 166–167), the Brockhaus and Efron entry on the khanate (1891) and Olufsen (1911, p. 496) describe hemp grown in the Bukhara khanate. Each writes of the khanate as a whole and names no village or district. The khanate stretched far beyond the oasis: Olufsen's "Bokhara" of 1899 ran east to Karategin, and Burnes's kingdom of 1832 still held Samarkand. The page states what each says at the scale they say it.
- The area is drawn on the oasis, not on the khanate, because the oasis round the capital is the part of the khanate that the later sources place cannabis in: the police reports of 2026 name Jondor and Bukhara districts, both in the oasis.
- Captain Ramsay's sentence of 1888, "It grows at Bokhara and other places in Turkestan", quoted by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (vol. I, ch. VII), does not say whether he meant the city or the khanate. His statement in the same sentence that the Russians had prohibited the cultivation rests, in his words, on what he had been informed.
The name
The bare name goes to the growing area. The city would be Bukhara (city); the province is Bukhara Region. Bokhara is the spelling of Burnes, Olufsen and the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission; Buxoro is the Uzbek form.
Growing status
The status is Active: Podrobno.uz (30 May 2026) reports cannabis grown at a house plot in Jondor district, and Zamon.uz (16 September 2026) cannabis grown in two households in Bukhara district. No source says that growing has ended.
How the border is drawn
- The border traces the irrigated oasis itself. It was built from OpenStreetMap: every canal, ditch and drain and every village, town and city in Bukhara Region (relation 1670973) was widened by 1 km, farmland, orchards and built-up land were added, narrow strips across the sand were removed, and the gaps between neighbouring villages were closed. The largest single piece was kept, about 3,600 km², the figure in the infobox. It takes in the land round Bukhara, Gʻijduvon, Vobkent, Romitan, Shofirkon, Jondor, Kogon, Qorakoʻl and Olot.
- The oasis districts of Bukhara Region reach far north into the Kyzylkum; drawn on whole districts the area would be about 37,400 km², most of it desert. The traced oasis is used instead.
- Small separate patches of irrigated land, round Qorovulbozor and along canals in the desert, are left out.
- The infobox point (39.82, 64.26) is the centre of the traced oasis. The border is not drawn from accession or news points.
Accessions and news
No accession on the wiki comes from the oasis. The interior ministry's report of 16 September 2026 (Qoradori-2026) is attached here and to Samarkand.
Sources
- Olufsen (1911): read in full in the Internet Archive text. The hemp on p. 217, in a "well watered oasis", is the Khiva oasis on the road to Urgench, not Bukhara, and is not used here. Olufsen's beng "made of flax" (p. 465) is given as he wrote it.
- Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894): vol. I, paras. 293 and 300 (pp. 111 and 113). Para. 244 lists charas specimens from Bokhara among those described in Punjab Products, and para. 274 a witness who said Bokhara charas kept for six years in India; neither is used.
- Podrobno.uz (30 May 2026): the count of more than 600 plants covers cannabis and opium poppy together; the report does not separate them.