ABSTRACT
While it lost its political and economic significance, Bukhara did retain its symbolic importance and reputation – even while leading an existence in the periphery of the vast Soviet empire. It still retains this symbolic importance and reputation which are now part of the national heritage of the republic of Uzbekistan. ‘Bukhara is no less a city of the imagination than it is a real place’, as Theodore Levin (Levin 1996: 85) has so aptly put it.
