WOMEN'S SOCIAL ACTIVITY AND PUBLIC ROLE DURING THE PERIOD OF THE BUKHARA KHANATE AND EMIRATE

Abstract

This article examines the social activity and public role of women during the period of the Bukhara Khanate (16th–18th centuries) and the Bukhara Emirate (1785–1920), a topic that remains insufficiently studied within the broader historiography of Central Asian social history. Although traditional historical accounts have often portrayed women of this era as confined exclusively to the domestic sphere, archival, ethnographic, and narrative sources reveal a considerably more nuanced picture, in which women participated in economic production, religious and charitable institutions, informal education, and, in select cases, court and administrative affairs. Using a comparative-historical method combined with critical analysis of waqf (charitable endowment) documents, travelers' accounts, and biographical sources, the study reconstructs the legal status, economic functions, educational opportunities, and religious activities of women within the Manghit-era social structure. The findings indicate that while Sharia-based family law and the institution of seclusion (purdah) structurally limited women's participation in public political life, women nonetheless exercised meaningful informal authority within household economies, craft production, the otin oyi tradition of religious instruction, and as founders or beneficiaries of waqf endowments. The article argues that women's agency in Bukharan society should be understood not as an absence of activity but as a distinct, gender-segregated sphere of social influence operating largely through religious, familial, and economic networks rather than formal political institutions. These findings contribute to a more balanced historiographical understanding of gender relations in pre-colonial and colonial-era Central Asian polities and provide a foundation for further archival research into women's history in the region.