From the first stones laid for an Emir to a state-protected museum
Under Amir Nasrulla-khan the site north of Bukhara is chosen and the engineering basis of a future palace is laid down. The country keeps internal stability while its foreign policy slides towards Russia — and Bukharan rulers begin to make their wealth visible through buildings.
Under Amir Muzaffar-khan the project of the future palace is drawn up by master architect Ostonqul Hafizov — one of the gifted builders of his generation who tries to braid Eastern tradition with European modernity. Earlier masters — usta Hoji Hafiz and usta Nasrulloboy — work the initial designs of the gardens and courtyards. Construction is not yet complete, but the palace’s shape on paper is already set.
Amir Abdulahad Bahodir-khan turns the modest residence into a full complex. The main buildings, ayvans, rose gardens and courtyards rise; the two marble lions at the entrance — carved from Nurata stone — are commissioned by local masters. European volume meets Bukharan ornament, and the place is given its name: Sitorai Mohi Xosa — “the palace of a star resembling the moon”.
Two years of carving by Usto Shirin Muradov and thirty masters. Mirror set into ganch multiplies a single candle into forty reflections. Outside in the Banquet Hall, Bukharan carvers Abdulla G‘afurov and Qori Cho‘bin work the figured ceiling; German fireplaces are installed, a Russian cabinet with Venetian glass arrives. Master architect Mirzo Ustomiddin Sarkor signs off on the whole structure.
Six hundred candles, no electric light. The Emir’s photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky says afterwards he has never seen a room so full of light from so few sources. Three years later the emirate is gone.
On 2 September 1920 the rule of Sayyid Olim-khan formally ends. Red Army troops take the palace; ornamental trees and the rose gardens are trampled, the gateway portal is shot at and the architectural ornaments damaged in dozens of places. To stop the looting, Fayzulla Xoʻjayev — head of the Bukhara People’s Republic — turns the building into the official government residence, and the first Congress of the Republic is held in its halls that October. Usto Shirin Muradov refuses to flee with the Emir to Afghanistan and stays.
On 8 November 1922 the city’s first official museum opens in the former Russo-Chinese bank building — Bukhara State Museum. The proposal at the opening: name it after Qori Yoʻldosh. Five rooms, a theatre, a library and a club share the building.
After the government moves back to the city centre the palace is left empty. In autumn 1923 peasants carelessly burning hay set fire to some of the buildings — it takes five hours for the villagers to put it out. The episode lays bare the absence of any fire-safety arrangement or legal protection. The Bukhara Central Executive Committee is forced to issue an emergency directive.
On the initiative of Muso Saidjonov (Minister of Education), Abdurauf Fitrat and Abdulvohid Burhonov, the «Sredazkomstaris» committee opens the first branch museum here — «Life of the Last Emirs’ Dynasty». Display cases show jewellery, gold-thread embroidery, pottery and coppersmith work. Funds and qualified curators are scarce, but the foundation of professional museum work in Bukhara is laid.
Sitorai Mohi Xosa begins life as a museum. The garden is partially turned into a sanatorium. The household goods, jewellery and ethnographic objects of the Emir’s court — those that survived inventory — go on display for a public visiting where their owners once banqueted.
Architect-restorer Vinogradov, an academician, draws the palace sheet by sheet — walls of two and one storeys, the deep niches and ayvans, the carved ceilings. His blueprints become the reference document for every restoration that follows.
By government resolution, parts of the palace and most of the garden are handed over to a workers’ rest house. Native trees are cut down and replaced with Russian decorative species; palace rooms — harem, kanizakxona, even Xonai Xasht — are converted into kitchens and dormitories. Unprofessional reconstruction permanently alters the architecture. Only ministerial intervention saves 9 halls (565 m²) for the Folk Decorative Art Museum.
On 1 December 1977 every piece of precious metal in the Bukhara museum holdings is weighed. The inventory reports: 1 162.85 g of gold, 249 522.5 g of silver, 359 diamonds, 272 carats of brilliants, 40 emeralds and 35 corals. The number on paper is at last equal to the number in the cases — a long-overdue accounting of what survived the Emirate, the Soviet redistribution and four decades of museum care.
By resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Uzbek SSR (16 May 1983, No. 308), the museum becomes the Bukhara State Historical-Architectural Museum-Reserve. More than a thousand cultural monuments and 603 state-protected objects fall under its care.
R. V. Almeyev is appointed director of the Bukhara museum. Under him many of the objects that the Soviet authorities had quietly transferred to other regional collections are returned to Bukhara. New branches open, several monuments themselves are turned into museums, and ethnographic field expeditions are organised in Romitan, Peshku, Shafirkan, Qiziltepa, Vobkent and Gijduvon.
President Mirziyoyev’s visit in March 2017 sets in motion a programme to expand Bukhara’s tourism potential and to restore the Ark citadel to its original form. By Resolution No. 975, the body becomes the “Bukhara State Museum-Reserve”. On 11 December the Cabinet of Ministers approves the 2017–2027 programme to upgrade state museums. Today the reserve’s collection holds more than 150 000 objects across 16 branches and 2 permanent exhibitions.
Restoration work begins on the reception hall, the guest rooms, the kanizakxona and the Xonai Xasht pavilion. Non-specialist craftsmen are brought in: ancient tiles and patterns on the staircases and ayvans are damaged, the original windows replaced with low-quality wood. The late mayor of Bukhara Karim Kamolov, together with the Regional Cultural Heritage Department, demands a halt. After warnings, formal letters and a report to the prosecutor’s office, construction is finally stopped in March 2020. The case becomes the textbook example in Uzbekistan of why heritage restoration needs scientific oversight.
Sitorai Mohi Xossa now operates as the Folk Decorative Art Museum. Reconstructed rooms with mannequins and video panels bring the period of the emirate back interactively. Research-grounded expositions tie every object to its provenance, function and historical context. The lineage of P. A. Goncharova and L. I. Rempel — the 1930s curators who first put attribution and catalogue on a scientific footing — runs through it still.
Source: master’s dissertation by Sh.K. Roziqulova on the museification of Sitorai Mohi Xossa (XX–XXI cc.), National Institute of Painting and Design named after K. Behzod, Tashkent, 2026.