By the beginning of the 19th century most of the sedentary areas of Central Asia were divided among three khanates, those of Bukhara, Khiva, and Qoqand, and each of them had a new dynasty of Özbek tribal origin.
The Khanate of Bukhara (to which its neighbors often referred as Mavarannahr or “Vilayat-i Turan”) occupied the Zerafshan and Qashqa-Darya valleys, the region in the middle course of the Amu-Darya, and the mountainous
regions between the Shirabad-Darya and the Panj. The rulers of the Manghït dynasty in Bukhara, founded in 1756 by Muhammad Rahim Khan (see map 30), beginning with Shah Murad, adopted amir as their chief title (although the title khan was also used in the full titulature).
The son and successor of Shah Murad, amir Haydar (1800-1826), had to fight the Khanate of Khiva in 1805-1806 (when the Khivan army was routed in Khorezm, on the bank of the Amu-Darya) and in 1822-23, when various regions of Mavarannahr were subjected to frequent Khivan raids and Bukharan troops suffered serious defeats. In 1823 Merv and its oasis were lost to Khiva. In 1821-1825 an uprising of two Özbek tribes, the Khitay and Qïpchaq, in the central part of the Zerafshan valley, was suppressed with great difficulty and weakened the khanate. By the end of amir Haydar’s rule there were still regions ruled by Özbek tribal chieftains, who recognized the authority of Bukhara only nominally, if at all (such as Shahrisabz, which belonged to the Keneges tribe). The son and successor of Haydar, amir Nasrallah (1827-1860), brutally suppressed his opponents and was a despotic ruler,
gaining the nickname “the Butcher Amir.” He fought Shahrisabz during most of his rule and only in 1856 was he able to conquer it. His war with the Khanate of Khiva in the early 1840s ended in a crushing defeat of the Bukharan troops in 1843 at Hazarasp, in Khorezm. Relations with the Khanate of Qoqand were also often hostile, the main bone of contention being the principality of Ura-Tübe, ruled by the chieftains of the Özbek tribe Yüz.
In 1842 Nasrallah even managed to capture Qoqand, but this victory was short-lived (see below). On the left bank of the Amu-Darya, the regions of Chahar Vilayat, with its capital in Maymana (ruled by the chieftains of the Özbek Ming tribe), and sometimes also Balkh, were Bukharan dependencies until the late 1840s, but in 1849-50 the Afghan ruler Dost Muhammad Khan conquered all these regions, and the Amu-Darya became again the Bukharan border with Afghanistan.