Abdullah Khan II

Abdullah Khan II (1533/4–1598), known as Khan-i Buzurg, "The Great Khan", was an Uzbek ruler of the Khanate of Bukhara and the last uncontested Shaybanid khan of Bukhara, reigning from 1583 until his death. ¹ He was the son of Iskandar Khan, whom he served as the real power before succeeding him. ^{1 2}

He was born at Afarinkent, on an island in the Zarafshan river; the English article gives his birth as 1533 or 1534, while Encyclopaedia Iranica, following the Sharafnama-ye shahi, places it in the Year of the Dragon, 1532–33. ^{1 2} As governor of Kermine he led the resistance to the Tashkent khan, captured Bukhara in 1557 with the support of the Juybari shaikhs, and in 1561 proclaimed his father Iskandar supreme khan while keeping the conduct of affairs in his own hands. ^{1 2}

It took him until 1582 to unite the four Shaybanid appanages — Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Balkh — into a single state, and on his father's death in 1583 he was declared khan. ¹ He went on to take Badakhshan (1584) and Khorasan (from 1588), conquered Khwarazm in 1593–94, reformed the coinage in stages, and maintained relations with Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire and Russia, including a non-aggression pact with Akbar. ^{1 2}

He built widely — madrassas and khanqahs, markets, caravanserais, reservoirs and bridges — including Bukhara's Kosh-Madrasah, and surrounded himself with scholars, poets and chroniclers; he wrote poems himself under the pen name 'Avaz Gazi. ¹

Preparing to fight the Kazakhs, who had taken advantage of his son Abd al-Mumin's revolt, he died in 1598 — at Samarkand, according to Encyclopaedia Iranica — and was buried at the mausoleum of Bahauddin Naqshbandi near Bukhara. ^{1 2 3}

No source read names a school for him personally: the Arabic infobox gives his religion as Islam without qualification, and the others name none. His court was the centre of Sunni Shaybanid rule, closely supported by the Juybari Naqshbandi shaikhs, and his record keeps his faith at that documented level. ^{4 2 3}