Regulatory Infrastructure of The Protectorate and Bukhara’s “Procedural Sovereignty” Under Emir Abdulahad Khan: A Comparative Analysis of Russian And English-Language Descriptions (1880s–1910s)

The article offers a comparative analysis of Russian and English-language descriptions of the Bukhara Emirate under Emir Abdulahad Khan through the lens of “procedural sovereignty”: a set of rules, regulations, and access practices that made it possible to preserve an external form of autonomy while being embedded in mechanisms of Russian control. Within the Russian-language body of sources, normative-documentary materials and publicistic evidence are used. The English-language corpus is represented by travel narratives and overview publications that record practices of control, access, and “dual” governance. The study shows that Russian sources tend to emphasize the legal and procedural formalization of joint regimes, whereas English-language observers more often describe the same mechanisms as everyday practices of filtering access, controlling movement, and managing images of power. The article concludes that the political profile of Abdulahad Khan in these sources can be captured as that of a ruler of a protectorate whose authority was realized largely not through reforming institutions, but through participation in procedural circuits in which the Russian political agency acted as the key arbiter.

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