Bukharan Jews

Bukharan Jews, also known as Bukharian Jews, are the Mizrahi Jewish sub-group of Central Asia that dwelt predominantly in what is today Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. The group's name is derived from the Emirate of Bukhara, a polity that once had a sizable Jewish population.

Bukharan Jews are considered to be one of the oldest ethnoreligious groups in Central Asia, comprising a branch of Persian-speaking Jewry.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, most Bukharan Jews have emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, although small numbers remain in Tashkent, Bukhara and elsewhere across Central Asia.

Name

The name used by the community to refer to themselves originally was Bnei Israel.

The term Bukharan Jew or Jew of Bukhara was first written in documents by the Russian Empire. The Jewish community at the time lived in the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Khanate of Kokand, with the term "Bukharan" likely being coined as the Bukharan Emirate was the largest of the three khanates.

The local populace referred to them as Yahudi (یهودی) or Juhood (جهود)—the latter of which was a pejorative term.

Language

Up until the 19th century, Persian speakers in Central Asia (including Jews) had no name for the dialect/language and simply regarded themselves as speaking Farsi. By then, Bukharan Jews had dubbed their Judeo-Persian language "Bukharian" or Bukhori, which is most similar to the Tajiki and Dari dialects of Farsi, with linguistic elements of Hebrew and Aramaic to communicate among themselves.