Tashkent (Tāshkend and Tashkend in Arabic and Persian manuscripts) in the Chirchik oasis of Central Asia is today the capital of Uzbekistan. No surviving historical evidence points to the existence of a Jewish community in Tashkent, then known as Shāsh or al-Shāsh, during the Islamic Middle Ages.

Jewish traders from Bukhara began to appear in Tashkent on a regular basis n the first two decades of the nineteenth century, living temporarily in two of the town’s caravanserais. According to oral tradition, a Bukharan Jew nicknamed “Pucha” established a Jewish cemetery near Tashkent as …