The 10th century was Bukhara's heyday. With a population
of 300,000 it was bigger  than
it is today, and its empire covered all of modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
and much of Iran and Afghanistan. Students came to its 250 madrasas from
the distant emirates of coastal Arabia and even from Moorish Spain. Its
45,000-volume royal library rivalled the largest in Baghdad and the medical
encyclopedia written there by Hussain ibn Abdullah ibn-Sina, known in the
West as Avicenna, made Bukhara the intellectual capital of the East.
Avicenna's book was a core medical text worldwide, and remained so
until the 19th century. He was also a poet, mathematician,
philosopher, musician and for several years grand vizier at the court.
Not much is known about the Samanids themselves. Why did
they choose Bukhara as their capital? What role did Islam play in holding
their empire together? The Karakhanids overran it in 999 and destroyed
the answers. All that remains of Samanid Bukhara is the emperors' mausoleum,
ignored by the Karakhanids, buried by 200 years of dust and thereby saved
from Genghis Khan.
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