Take a step back in time and see what life was like for Muslims more than a century ago with these photos made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948:
Two prisoners are seen shackled together in chains.
Nomadic Kirghiz on the Golodnaia Steppe (present-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan).
Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (Khiva, now a part of modern Uzbekistan) seated outdoors with full uniform.
A group of women in traditional clothing from Dagestan.
The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan (1880-1944), poses solemnly for his portrait, taken in 1911 shortly after his accession. As ruler of an autonomous city-state in Islamic Central Asia, the Emir presided over the internal affairs of his emirate as absolute monarch, although since the mid-1800s Bukhara had been a vassal state of the Russian Empire. With the establishment of Soviet power in Bukhara in 1920, the Emir fled to Afghanistan where he died in 1944.
A Sart woman in purdah in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Until the Russian revolution of 1917, “Sart” was the name for Uzbeks living in Kazakhstan.
A kebab house in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
A water-carrier in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
An elderly man carrying birds in the snow.
A bureaucrat in Bukhara poses for the camera.
A cloth merchant in Samarkan (present-day Uzbekistan) sits in his stall.
A fruit seller sits in his market stall.
Shepherd pauses near a hillside, Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
Two men sit in a mosque in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
Students study with their teacher in a Madrassah (religious school) in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
Students sit outside their Madrassah (religious school) in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
A religious teacher with his two daughters.
Worshipers are seen outside a Mosque in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan).
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