🧿 Varakhsha

Varakhsha, also Varasha or Varahsha, was an ancient city in the Bukhara oasis in Sogdia, founded in the 1st century BCE. It is located 39 kilometers to the northwest of Bukhara. Varakhsha was the capital of the Sogdian dynasty of the kings of Bukhara, the Bukhar Khudahs. It ultimately never recovered from the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana. After British archaeologists began investigating the site in the 1820s, it became "the very first Sogdian archaeological site mentioned in European literature."