rned bricks, and have flat roofs.

Bokhara has for ages been a centre of learning and religious life. The
mysticism which took hold on Persia in the middle ages spread also to
Bokhara, and later, when the Mongol invasions of the 13th century laid
waste Samarkand and other Moslem cities, Bokhara, remaining independent,
continued to be a chief seat of Islamitic learning. The _madrasa_
libraries, some of which were very rich, have been scattered and lost,
or confiscated by the emirs, or have perished in conflagrations. But
there are still treasures of literature concealed in private libraries,
and Afghan, Persian, Armenian and Turkish bibliophiles still repair to
Bokhara to buy rare books. Bokhara is, in fact, the principal
book-market of central Asia. The population is supposed by Russian
travellers not to exceed 50,000 or 60,000, but is otherwise estimated at
75,000 to 100,000. Amongst them is a large and ancient colony of Jews.
Bokhara is the most important trading town in central Asia. In the city
bazaars are made or sold silk stuffs, metal (especially copper) wares,
Kara-kul (i.e. astrakhan) lamb-skins and carpets.

_New Bokhara_, or _Kagan_, a Russian town near the railway station, 8 m.
from Bokhara itself, is rapidly growing, on a territory ceded by the
emir. Pop. 2000. (P. A. K.)

BOKSBURG, a town of the Transvaal; 14 m. E. of Johannesburg by rail.
Pop. of the municipality (1904) 14,757, of whom 4175 were whites. It is
the headquarters of the Witwatersrand coal mining industry. The
collieries extend from Boksburg eastward to Springs, 11 m. distant.
Brakpan, the largest colliery in South Africa, lies midway between the
places named.

BOLAN PASS, an important pass on the Baluch frontier, connecting
Jacobabad and Sibi with Quetta, which has always occupied an important
place in the history of British campaigns in Afghanistan. Since the
treaty of Gandamak, which was signed at the close of the first phase of
the Afghan War in 1879, the Bolan route has been brought directly under
British control, and it was selected for the first alignment of the
Sind-Pishin railway from the plains to the plateau. From Sibi the line
runs south-west, skirting the hills to Rindli, and originally followed
the course of the Bolan stream to its head on the plateau. The
destructive action of floods, however, led to the abandonment of this
alignment, and the railway now follows the Mashkaf valley (which
debouches into the pl