The khanates of Bukhara and Khiva had much in common, but depictions of their relationship with one another vary dramatically between historical sources. Some accounts convey deep rivalries between them, while in other sources they appear as easily traversable sub-regions within a broader, socially and culturally integrated landscape. How might we explain these wildly divergent images? This essay considers a wide range of sources to forward one simple argument: our understanding of the relationship between Bukhara and Khiva is fundamentally shaped by textual genre. Some genres—such as chronicles and legal writing—were well equipped to articulate rivalry and difference. Others—such as Sufi hagiography or chancellery documents—contained the tools for transcending these two polities. Since all of these genres were predominantly written by a single social group (the ʿolemā), this contradictory imagery was not the product of discrete constituencies with different viewpoints, but rather a single milieu performing diverse genres.

布哈拉和希瓦的汗国有很多共同点，但是在历史渊源之间，关于彼此之间关系的描述却大相径庭。一些账户在它们之间传达了深远的竞争，而在另一些来源中，它们却在更广泛的，社会和文化融合的格局中表现为易于穿越的次区域。我们如何解释这些大相径庭的图像？本文考虑了广泛的资料来提出一个简单的论点：我们对布哈拉与希瓦之间关系的理解从根本上取决于文字体裁。某些类型（例如编年史和法律写作）都可以很好地表达竞争和差异。其他工具（例如Sufi照相术或总理府文件）包含了超越这两个政体的工具。（ʿolemā），这种矛盾的意象不是具有不同观点的离散选区的产物，而是表现出不同体裁的单个环境。