The Tajiks had been part of the Uzbek emirate of Bukhara, established in 1500 by a branch of the Shaybanid dynasty, which had won control of Transoxania from the Timurids in the late fifteenth and early sixteenh centuries.

The Shaybanids at Bukhara had been replaced successively by the Janid Dynasty (Astrakhanids or Ashtarkhanids) in 1599, and the Manghit, or Mangit, in 1785.

Power in southern Central Asia has already shifted to three energetic Uzbek tribal formations by the time the Ashtarkhanid dynasty is finally extinguished in 1785.