Uzbekistan: Bukhara: Street Scenes

Time for a walk.

If you're one of those people who love background, you should know that by 200 B.C. the core of Bukhara had been laid out on a grid, with each quadrant subdivided into eight blocks.  Though obscured, that tidiness is still discernible today.  Residents by 1900, however, were less likely to identify themselves with a block than with a neighborhood mosque.  By then, the city had about 200 operating ones, and accordingly there were 200 quarters, officially recognized by the kushbaigi, or head of urban administration.  The quarters ranged in size from 20 to 70 houses, each with eight or ten people.  The population of a quarter, therefore, ranged between roughly 200 and 700 people.