When Russia took over Bukhara in 1868, it granted the Jewish population religious freedom as well as a monopoly in the silk and woven-goods trade. The more enterprising of them took excellent advantage of the opportunity and became wonderfully affluent. Indeed, when the first Bukharan immigrant reached Jerusalem in the early 1870s, he brought his wife, his children, and a servant to the Holy Land.
By the 1890’s about 200 Bukharan immigrants had reached Jerusalem and all of them lived inside the Old City. But they were crowded, and in 1891 they decided to put establish a neighborhood outside the Old City walls. Its design was unusual for Jerusalem: the plan called for spacious homes on tree-lined boulevards with main roads a generous width of 10.5 meters and side streets five meters wide. When it was complete, the Bukharim neighborhood boasted some of the grandest structures in the city.
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