20 Tenga - Muhammad Alim Khan bin Abdul-Ahad

Muhammad Alim Khan was the last Emir of Bukhara, and this brass issue belongs to the final, chaotic stretch of his rule. By 1918, the Emirate was caught between the Bolshevik-controlled Tashkent Soviet pressing hard on its borders and internal reformist movements the Emir was actively suppressing. Brass coinage of this period reflects the severe disruption to silver supplies that came with regional trade collapse and Bolshevik economic interference.

The Emirate fell in September 1920 when Red Army forces under Mikhail Frunze stormed Bukhara in a assault lasting roughly four days. Alim Khan fled to Afghanistan, where he died in 1944.