Even if the rulers were Uzbeks, the court language was Persian at Bukhara and Kokand, in other words the language of the Tajiks, which at the time was seen as the main cultured language. The idea of associating a territory with an ethnic group defined by language was alien to the political ideas of the Muslims of Central Asia. These populations were, and still are widely intermingled, so that infra-ethnic identitics (tribal, clan, locality, family, etc) were more important in determining loyalties than strictly ethnic origin. The populations of Transoxiania shared one culture up until Sovietisation: the Persian and Muslim civilisation which was during the course of the eighth and ninth centuries…
Persian was the language of civilisation par excellence from Delhi to Samarkand, passing via Lahore and Kabul, and this remained the case until the early twentieth century. The emirates of Kokand and Bukhara had Persian as their official language right up to their dissolution (in 1876 and 1920 respectively)
