The last emir of Bukhara fled across a river on a raft in 1920 and left three sons behind; two were shot and the third publicly renounced him

Alim Khan ruled the emirate of Bukhara from 1911. The Red Army took Bukhara in September 1920. Before he fled, he ordered the harem in the Ark citadel blown up; it is unclear whether the women were still inside. He crossed the Pyanj River into Afghanistan on a raft of wood and sheep gut. In an October 1920 letter to the British he wrote that he had had to leave Bukhara to its fate. His three young sons were trapped in Bukhara and taken to Moscow as hostages. The eldest, Sultanmurad, was suspected of British connections and shot. The youngest was shot trying to cross the Afghan border at the start of the Second World War. The middle son, Shahmurad, wrote a public letter to his father in Izvestia, around 1929 or 1930, under alleged Bolshevik pressure, saying he had come to hate him. He later served in the Soviet army. The British refused the emir a loan and permission to travel to India, Mecca or Jerusalem. Rumours say his gold earns interest in a Swiss bank^†. He died outside Kabul on 28 April 1944 and is buried in the Shuhadai Salahin cemetery in Kabul. His daughter, Shukria Raad Alimi, fled Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion and settled in North America.