Shofirkon ( uz, Shofirkon/Шофиркон, fa, شاپورکام, russian: Шафиркан) is a city and seat of
Shofirkon District in
Bukhara Region
Bukhara Region (Buxoro Region) ( uz, Buxoro viloyati/Бухоро вилояти, بۇحارا ۋىلايەتى, russian: Бухарская область) is a region of Uzbekistan located in the southwest of the country. The Kyzyl Kum desert ...
in
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...
.
The town population was 9,594 people in 1989, and 14,000 in 2016.
History
Archaeological evidence suggests that the settlement on the territory of modern Shafirkan was founded in the early Middle Ages.
According to the Persian historiographer
Narshakhi
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Jafar Narshakhi (or Narshaki) (ca. 899–959), a Sogdian scholar from the village of Narshak in the Bukhara oasis is the first known historian in Central Asia. His unique ''History of Bukhara'' (''Tarikh-i Bukhara'') was writ ...
, the founder of the city was a
Sassanid
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
prince Shahpur, who lived in the 3rd century AD. Shahpur quarreled with his father, the then ruler of Persia, arrived in Bukhara, married the daughter of the ruler of Bukhara and received land as a gift in the floodplain of the Zarafshan River. He often hunted in these places, which he really liked. Here a canal was dug, called Shahpūrkām fa, شاپورکام (''Shāpūrkām'') which means "As Desired by Shahpur" in
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, and the Vardonze fortress was built in which Shahpur moved with his many retinue from Persia. Later, the fortress became the center of the state. The name Shā(h)pūrkām was then pronounced as Shafurkam by the locals and later as Shofirkon.
[Narshakhi, Muhammad ibn Ja'far, and Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Nasr Qubawi. 1939. Tarikh-i Bukhara. Tihran: Kitabfurushi-yi Sana'i. P.44]
The importance of Shapūrkām as the center of the region increased after the fall of the value of the ancient city of Vardanzi in the 1860s.
In 1926, Shafirkan became the district center of the Bukhara region of Uzbekistan.
By a resolution of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of March 7, 1933, a resolution was approved by the Central Executive Committee of the Uzbek SSR of November 3, 1932 on renaming the center of the Bauman district of the village of Khoja Arif to the village of Bauman.
The city has a pedagogical vocational college, a college of agriculture, an economic college, etc.
Currently, Shafirkan is a district center in the Bukhara region of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Representatives of various nationalities live here: Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Turkmens, etc.
References
Populated places in Bukhara Region
Cities in Uzbekistan
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