Description

In December 1838 Colonel Charles Stoddart arrived in Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan), where he had been sent on a mission by the British East India Company to try to arrange an alliance with the khanate against the Russian Empire, whose expansion into Central Asia was of concern to the British. The ruler of Bukhara, Nasrullah Khan (reigned 1827‒60), had Stoddart imprisoned in a vermin-infested dungeon under the Ark Fortress for failing to bow before him, bring gifts, and to show signs of respect that the emir regarded as his due ...