Month: September 2020

Our final stop in Central Asia was Tashkent, the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan.  After the glories of Bukhara and Samarkand, Tashkent was a letdown.  Like the other two cities we had visited, it was a major stop on the Silk Route, but little was left of its pre-Soviet heritage.  A powerful earthquake in 1966 had leveled most of the old city, and it had been rebuilt as a “model Soviet city,” i.e. lackluster and boring.  Thus there was little of historical interest to see.  Nevertheless, we found plenty to do there.

I can’t remember the name of our hotel, and there was nothing much else memorable about it either, but at least it was a real hotel, with basic amenities like bathrooms.

Tashkent was quite open and spacious, with wide expanses between structures. Our hotel was located in an outlying residential district, situated amidst clusters of brand-new apartment buildings with children playing in the wide vacant spaces between the structures. In contrast to Bukhara and a lesser extent Samarkand, where we could walk from our hotel to many of the sights we wanted to see, in Tashkent we had to take the bus to get anywhere. (Sputnik did furnish tour buses in all the cities we visited, but only in Tashkent did we need it on a full-time basis.) Our tour schedule in Tashkent was leisurely, and since there was no place easy to get to by walking and public transportation was something of a mystery, we spent a lot of time in our rooms, from which we had excellent unobstructed views.

Chris Buck, who was my roommate in Tashkent as well as in Moscow, passed the time by reading the local newspapers. In one of them there was an article about a gang of criminals who had been apprehended after staging armed robberies of payroll offices in a number of large factories, including some where the gang’s members were employed. (In the USSR workers were generally paid in cash, so payroll offices tended to have large sums of cash on hand.) In the course of their crime spree the bandits had shot and killed people, so that when they were put on trial, some of them received death sentences. According to the newspaper article, just before pronouncing sentence on one of them, the judge asked him, “Why did you rob the very place where you worked? Didn’t you realize that your comrades couldn’t get paid?” “Yes, Comrade Judge,” replied the bandit, “but then I couldn’t get paid either.”

Perhaps because it was the capital of the Uzbek SSR – capital cities in the USSR always seemed to be better-provisioned – food in Tashkent seemed to be more plentiful and of a higher quality than elsewhere in Central Asia, and we took full advantage of this abundance. Above all we hogged out on plov – rice pilaf – which is the Uzbek national specialty. The basic recipe calls for chunks of meat, onions and grated carrots, often with other fruits and vegetables such as chickpeas, raisins, apricots, etc. in the mix, There are many different variations of plov, and the food stands and street vendors which were ubiquitous in the city (not to mention the restaurants) sold them all. We hardly ever ate in the city’s restaurants.

The earthquake that struck Tashkent in 1966 measured only 5.1 on the Richter scale, but its epicenter was in the center of the city, and buildings in the densely packed older quarters were especially vulnerable to the tremors. Relatively few people perished in the quake, although official Soviet figures of 15 killed are considered untrustworthy, and other estimates place the number at anywhere from 200 to 5,500. Over 80% of the city was destroyed, including somewhere between 75,000 and 95,000 homes and most of the old mosques and other historic buildings.

The Soviet government responded to the disaster with a massive rebuilding effort, dispatching considerable resources and large numbers of workers from other Soviet republics to participate. Many of the workers who came to the city in that period stayed, resulting in a net increase in the population of the city and a change in its ethnic makeup. By 1970 100,000 new homes had been built, more than enough to replace those lost in the earthquake, but still not enough to accommodate the new arrivals, and more were needed.

When we visited, seven years after the earthquake, it seemed that the reconstruction efforts had not slackened. New buildings were going up all over Tashkent, and construction was proceeding at an especially frenzied pace as one ventured into the city center. All kinds of structures – office buildings, shopping centers, hotels, etc. were going up, many of them quite massive, but few, it seemed, of any special distinction or interest. A major exception was the Lenin Museum, seen in the picture below.

That the most original and striking new architectural work in the capital of Uzbekistan should be dedicated to Lenin, who never set foot in the place, would seem to be not only outlandish but rather an affront to the Uzbek people, who have their own proud history; so it is not surprising that when Uzbekistan became independent, the name was changed to the State Historical Museum of Uzbekistan. As I recall, although the exterior of the Museum was certainly worth a picture, none of our party went inside to view its contents, which would have been unlikely to include anything that we had not seen in Moscow or Leningrad.

There was some irony, especially after we had seen Bukhara and Samarkand, in the fact that so many of the attractions we saw in Tashkent, including those which had survived the earthquake, were structures built by Russians. One such was the palace or mansion of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich. Grandson of Tsar Nicholas I, nephew of Tsar Alexander II, he was the proverbial dissolute scion of the royal family. A prodigious womanizer, he became involved in an affair with an American actress, Fanny Lear; having spent all his money on her, and unable to borrow more, he stole some diamonds from the revetment (frame) of a treasured family icon. The theft was discovered, and to hush up the scandal, Nikolai was declared insane and banished to Tashkent, where he spent the rest of his life.

Once in Tashkent, he seems to have turned over a new leaf, and committed himself to good works, such as building canals, schools and a theater. He also built a magnificent mansion to house and showcase his large and magnificent art collection. He died in Tashkent in 1918, and the Soviet regime nationalized his mansion and its contents. The mansion for a while became a museum, but in 1935 his collection was moved elsewhere, and is now in the national Museum of Art of Uzbekistan. The mansion is now used as a reception hall for the Uzbekistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Not all of the Islamic monuments dating from before the Russian conquest were destroyed in the earthquake, but as far as I can recall our tour did not include any of them. On one occasion, I vividly recall, we were on the tour bus with an Uzbek native guide who started to talk about some of the more interesting historical sites, when another, more senior guide, apparently an ethnic Russian, got on the bus and quite literally shoved the Uzbek guide aside, started talking about Tashkent’s newest and most palatial hotel (not the one where we were staying), how many rooms it had, how much it cost to build, how spiffy and wonderful it was, etc. I wonder if this turkey ever realized how close he came to being lynched.

The final and most memorable stop on our itinerary in Tashkent, at least for me, was the Museum of Applied Arts. It was noteworthy not only for the contents of the museum, but even more so because of the building in which it was housed. It was beautifully furnished and decorated, both inside and out. The exterior was remarkable not only for its amazing ganch carvings framing the windows and door, but also, and most unusually, for the Stars of David which appear on either side of the transom above the entrance doorway, as seen in the following photograph.

I don’t recall whether the museum staff told us anything about the history of the house. They may have mentioned that before the 1917 Revolution it belonged to a Russian diplomat, who had it remodeled in a manner reflecting his taste for Asian art and furnishings. But it seemed quite unlikely that a Russian diplomat would have his house decorated with Stars of David, and if the museum staff had any explanation for it, I have long since forgotten. Only recently, when I began the online research for this account, did I come across information which shed some light on the subject. It’s a long and complicated story, though, and may not be of interest to all readers; so before I get into it, let me finish my account of our visit to the Museum of Applied Arts.

When we went inside the Museum, it turned out that the exhibits included not only antiques but also a good deal of recent work by Central Asian artists – ceramics, fabrics, metalwork, leather, etc. – which was of exceptionally high workmanship. Not only that, but the museum staff assured us, the same type and quality were on sale in local shops and bazaars, readily available. This was especially intriguing to many of us as up until then we had seen practically nothing worthy of attention for sale in any of the places we had been so far. Indeed, it was puzzling that the Soviets were missing out on a potentially very lucrative opportunity to pull in some foreign currency by marketing products of native craftsmen as souvenirs. So, after leaving the museum, we spent some of our remaining time in Tashkent scouring the local shops and bazaars in search of the kinds of beautiful and exotic wares we had encountered in the museum.

We were to be bitterly disappointed. I don’t know whether the museum staff was lying to us or whether the types of items on show in the museum were only accessible in stores not accessible to us as student travelers (such stores did indeed exist in the Soviet Union), but most of the merchandise we encountered was junk – inferior stuff, crudely made, perhaps as training exercises by children. However, I did manage to come away with a couple of trinkets that, while not representative of the best craftmanship, at least served as pleasant mementos of the trip. One was a tapestry embroidered with complex geometric designs; it may appear to be hand-made from silk at first glance, but is actually machine-made from artificial fabrics.

The other was a serving platter, made of I don’t know what, with complex lacquered designs including both human and animal as well as geometric figures. I don’t suppose that it is authentic traditional craftsmanship by any means, but it is representative of the better sort of merchandise available in the ordinary bazaars.

Returning to the subject of the museum house, I found several sources online which illuminated its origins. It was originally a private house which belonged to a Russian business magnate, Nikolai Ivanovich Ivanov. Ivanov was an interesting person in his own right, an industrial pioneer who was involved in a variety of industries, including breweries, wineries and distilleries, pharmaceuticals, coal, transportation, etc., in Tashkent and indeed throughout Russian Turkestan. After building himself a new mansion, he sold his old house to a Russian named Alexander Alexandrovich Polovtsev.

But my sources diverge as to who exactly was this Polovtsev. There were two Alexander Alexandrovich Polovtsevs, father and son. The father was a leading figure in the government of Tsar Alexander III and Nicholas II; he served as State Secretary, was a member of the State Council, and one of his areas of responsibility was the overseeing the settlement (of Russians) in Central Asia. (He was also a founder of the Russian Historical Society and served as its chairman from 1879 to 1909.) According to an account by one Arslan Tashpulatovich Jabbarov, writing in the online publication Letters about Tashkent (Письма о Ташкенте), it was he who bought the house. However, another source, an anonymously written article in Wikipedia, ascribes the purchase to the son. Although the Wikipedia article has less depth, I judge it to be more trustworthy, for reasons which will shortly become apparent.

In 1896 Polovtsev arrived in Tashkent on a special assignment from the Ministry of the Interior to study the progress of Russian resettlement in Central Asia and the Caucasus. This must have been Polovtsev Junior, because the father was far too senior an official to undertake such a relatively low-level assignment. But since the task was within his area of responsibility, he would likely have been responsible for selecting the person to be entrusted with it, and an obvious candidate for the job would have been Polovtsev Junior. The younger Polovtsev at some point entered the diplomatic service, and was eventually appointed as Russian Consul-General in Bombay, India; again, this would not be an appropriate assignment for such a highly-placed personage as the elder Polovtsev. My guess is that the latter selected his son for the mission to Central Asia and the Caucasus as a means of cutting his teeth in the diplomatic service, since these areas were in some sense foreign countries, populated by non-Russian, non-Slavic peoples only recently incorporated into the Russian Empire.

In any case, upon arriving in Tashkent, Polovtsev found that he needed an assistant who knew the area, and for this purpose he hired Mikhail Stepanovich Andreev. Andreev was a remarkable figure in his own right; a Russian born in Tashkent, the grandson of a common soldier, he had attended the Tashkent Teachers’ Seminary, the only school where Central Asian languages such as Tadzhik and Uzbek were taught, and had demonstrated considerable aptitude for them. After graduation he soon gained a reputation as a talented linguist, educator and ethnographer and became well-known to local officials, one of whom recommended him to Polovtsev.

Andreev soon became not only indispensable to Polovtsev but his constant companion as well, eventually even accompanying him on diplomatic assignments abroad in Paris and India. Polovtsev was an aesthete, an avid traveler and collector of art, and shared Andreev’s interest in the cultures of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Having become fully conversant with his patron’s preferences, Andreev arranged the purchase of Ivanov’s house, had it remodeled in accordance with Polovtsev’s tastes and sensibilities, and filled it with treasures from Polovtsev’s collections.

The senior Polovtsev died in 1909. According to Jabbarov, just before he died, he donated the house in Tashkent to the municipal government. However, this seems unlikely if in fact the younger Polovstev – who lived on until 1944 – was the actual owner of the house; and indeed, this is affirmed by some of the comments posted on Jabbar’s article in Letters about Tashkent. Moreover one commentator (who identifies himself as “David”), referring to an unspecified archive, states that the “final purchaser” of the house was a Jew from Bukhara, who remodeled it yet again and added not two but six Stars of David. David does not say when the sale took place or why, and the Wikipedia article on the Museum does not mention the sale at all, mentioning only that in World War I the house served as quarters for captured Austro-Hungarian officers, and after the Revolution, having been nationalized, it served as an orphanage until 1937.

It is unclear when and how Andreev’s association with Polovtsev ended—evidently it was over by 1914, when Andreev returned to Turkestan and resumed his earlier career as an educator, taking a position as a regional school administrator in Samarkand. But the Revolution of 1917 opened up new opportunities for him. For many years he had cherished a dream of establishing an institute for the study of Asian languages in Tashkent. In 1918 the new Soviet regime invited him to organize just such an institution, which became the Tashkent Oriental Institute, and eventually the Department of Asian Studies of the Central Asian State University, with Andreev as its chairman.

Like many other leading Soviet scholars, Andreev became the target of Stalinist persecution in the 1930s. He was first arrested in 1933, but was soon released and returned to Tashkent. In 1937 he managed to exert his influence to save the Polovtsev house, which had deteriorated badly during the intervening years, by persuading the authorities to turn it into a museum of Central Asian handicrafts. It underwent restoration on several occasions thereafter, and in 1960 was renamed “Permanent Exhibition of Applied Arts of Uzbekistan.” By the time I visited in 1973, it had been more or less restored to the condition in which its final private owner had left it, with at least two of its Stars of David intact (if the other four had survived, I didn’t see them). In 1997, after being taken over by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Uzbekistan, it was again renamed, this time to “State Museum of Applied Art”.

Andreev was arrested again in 1938, on the accusation of spying for the British. This time he managed to talk his way out of the clutches of the “organs” by convincing the head of the Uzbekistan NKVD that he had important secret information which he had collected for Soviet intelligence while traveling in India and Afghanistan in the 20s. He survived the purges and the war, and was even elected to the Uzbek Academy of Sciences in 1943. But in the postwar period, when Stalin was cracking down again, Andreev transferred to the newly-founded University of Stalinabad (now Dushanbe, the capital of Tadzhikistan), which oddly enough was lacking in Tadzhik language instruction, in order to escape the watchful eyes of the Tashkent NKVD. There, sadly, he was done to death not by the “organs” but by a crazed woman with an axe, whose romantic overtures he had rejected. I should caution that I found this tale of Andreev’s demise only in Jabbar’s not-always-trustworthy account, and not in the Wikipedia articles.

At the end of our stay in Tashkent, we embarked on our first flight on a Soviet jet airliner, which was to carry us to the fabled city of Tbilisi, capital of the Soviet republic of Georgia.

Samarkand, our second stop in Central Asia, is another Silk Road city in existence since time immemorial, i.e. the 8th or 7th century BCE. It first entered history as the capital of the Sogdian satrapy (province) of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BCE. Thereafter it was ruled by a succession of Iranian and Turkish rulers until 1220 BCE, when it fell to the Mongols of Genghis Khan. After Genghis Khan’s death, his empire became divided up into semi-autonomous, and later independent, khanates such as the Golden Horde in Russia, the Ilkhanate of Persia, and the Chagatai Khanate (named after Genghis Khan’s second son, its first ruler), which extended from the Aral Sea to the borders of China, and included the cities of Bokhara and Samarkand.

But Samarkand is indelibly associated with the name of one of history’s most formidable conquerors, Timur the Lame or Tamerlane, under whom Samarkand reached the apex of its glory. Timur reunited the lands of the Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate and the Chagatai Khanate, devastated large areas of the Middle East, and was on his way to invade China when he died in 1405. He was notorious for leaving huge pyramids of skulls on the sites of the cities he conquered, and his campaigns are estimated to have caused the deaths of around 17 million people, about 5% of the world’s population at the time.

Born in relatively modest circumstances near Samarkand sometime in the 1320s, Timur first rose to prominence as a general under the Chagatai khans, rose in their service, and eventually turned the Khan into a puppet ruler before casting off the pretense and assuming power in his own name. By 1370 he had made Samarkand his capital and begun a construction program aiming at making it the wonder of the world.

Timur’s last and most ambitious project, the Bibi-Khanym mosque, was constructed from 1399-1405, ostensibly in memory of the mother of his wife. Beyond that, his intent was not only to create a mosque which would be one of the largest and most magnificent in the world, but also to host the entire male population of Samarkand, a city of 150,000, for Friday prayers.

The Bibi-Khanym Mosque enclosed an area 167 meters (548 feet) long and 107 meters (358 feet) wide, oriented northeast by southwest (conforming to the Qibia, i.e. direction of Mecca). No less than eight minarets graced the perimeter.

Entering from the northeast via a vast parade portal, 35 meters (115 feet) high, one found oneself in a great courtyard, at the other end of which stood the massive main iwan. An iwan is a feature of traditional Persian architecture described as “a rectangular hall or space, usually vaulted, walled on three sides, with one end entirely open,” and a formal gateway called a pishtaq, or projecting portal. Beyond the main iwan was the main dome, which was not visible from the courtyard.

The sides of the courtyard were framed by two smaller iwans, each with its own dome. In the center of the courtyard was a massive stone stand which was designed to hold a very large Koran.

Unfortunately, Timur’s specifications for construction of the mosque exceeded the technological capabilities of his architects and engineers, and right from the day of its completion the mosque began to fall apart, with bricks falling out of the main dome.

Timur’s successors made attempts to repair and reinforce the mosque, but by the the 16th century the Timurid dynasty had been replaced by the Shaybanids, ruling from Bukhara, and they evinced little interest in maintaining the monuments of Samarkand. The Bibi-Khanym continued to deteriorate, and for centuries the local inhabitants plundered it for building materials. In 1897 a great earthquake demolished much of what was left. At the time I visited in 1973, it was in sorry shape, but at least some scaffolding had been erected to retard the continuing disintegration of the main iwan.

Restoration efforts began in the 1970s, gained momentum after Uzbekistan became fully independent in 1991, and continue down to the present. From what I can gather the exterior of the mosque has regained much of its original appearance.

Our next stop in Samarkand was Registan Square, the heart of old Samarkand, which is bounded by three great madrasas: the Ulugh Beg, the Tilya-Kori, and the Sher-Dor. If I recall correctly, the first two were in early stages of restoration and covered in scaffolding, so our attention focused mainly on the third.

After Timur’s death in 1405, his son and successor, Shah Rukh, moved the capital of the Timurid Empire to Herat, in modern-day Afghanistan, and left Samarkand in charge of his son Ulugh Beg, who set about to make Samarkand the intellectual and cultural center of the Timurid Empire. He built the madrasah which bears his name in 1417-1420 and invited some of the foremost scholars and intellectuals of the Islamic world to teach there, especially astronomers and mathematicians.

In the 17th century the then ruler of Samarkand, Amir Yalangtush Bakhodur, ordered the construction of the Sher-Dor Madrasah on the east side of Registan Square, opposite the Ulugh Beg Madrasah. Construction began in 1619 and was completed in 1636. Ten years later work began on the Tilya-Kori Madrasah, which was completed in 1660.

The Sher-Dor Madrasah is very similar in exterior appearance to the Ulugh-Beg Madrasah, but there are some important differences. Both have enormous Persian-style facades and are flanked by flat-topped minarets, but the Sher-Dor has two large domes, one on either side of the facade, which are absent from the Ulugh Beg. Also, whereas the Ulugh Beg facade is adorned with orthodox Islamic geometrical figures, the Sher-Dor facade flouts the Islamic prohibition against depicting living creatures, with mosaics depicting tigers and other animals on the facade.

The animal mosaics may represent some late Persian Mithraic or Zoroastrian influence.

Critics consider the architecture of the Sher-Dor represents a degenerate form by comparison with the “golden age” of the fifteenth century, as embodied in the Ulugh-beg Madrassah, but it is still impressive.

The third of the great Registan Square madrasahs is the Tilya-Kori, which as already mentioned was undergoing restoration and closed to the public. It stood on the north side of the square and had a somewhat different plan from its neighbors. It still had an iwan-type facade, but the corner towers of the structure were not as tall and the building plan was asymmetric. It served as both a mosque and a residential college for students; the mosque section was on the west side and was crowned with a dome. The name Tilya-Kori means “gilded”, and the interior of the mosque was abundantly covered with gold.

We did not have as much time to stroll around the residential areas of Samarkand as we did in Bukhara; I have the impression that the city seemed a little more prosperous than Bukhara.

On one of the several days we spent in Samarkand, we visited the observatory built by Timur’s grandson Ulugh-Beg in 1428. Ulugh-Beg had become interested in astronomy at an early age after visiting the famous Maragheh Observatory of Persia, built in 1259 under the patronage of the Mongol Ilkan Hulagu; and he is said to have modeled his observatory on the Maragheh.

Ulugh Beg’s observatory of course was unable to benefit from using telescopes, which would only be invented nearly two hundred years later. Astronomers of the fifteenth century had to make do with other instruments, such as the sextant, a device for measuring the altitude of a celestial object above the horizon. The centerpiece of Ulugh Beg’s observatory was the giant Fakhri sextant, which was used to make very exact measurements of transit altitudes of stars, from which their precise coordinates in the sky could be calculated. Ulugh Beg used these measurements to compile a catalog of stars and their locations which was far in advance of anything previously available.

The Fakhri sextant was constructed with one segment and a supporting structure above ground, and the rest underground. Only the latter part has survived. In 1447 Ulugh Beg’s father, Shah Rukh, died, and in the ensuing struggle for succession Ulugh Beg was defeated and dethroned by his own son, who subsequently had him assassinated. His scientific activities had aroused the enmity of Islamic obscurantists, who after his death succeeded in having his observatory dismantled. It was only rediscovered in 1908.

Shah-i-Zinda, on the northeast of Samarkand, is a necropolis, a complex of tombs and mausoleums. The name means “the living king” and is associated with a cousin of the prophet Muhammad who supposedly came with Arab invaders in the 7th century CE to convert the population of Samarkand to Islam and was beheaded by the locals for his trouble. The legend has it that he did not die but instead escaped into a well, where he has lived ever since. Eventually, in the 11th century a shrine was eventually erected over the well, initiating the development of the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis. The complex continued to expand thereafter, with the most important additions occurring in the 14th and 15th centuries under the Timurids.

About 1435 Ulugh-Beg had a monumental main entrance gate to the ensemble built. A tradition now somewhat in doubt holds that he also commissioned a large two-domed mausoleum for the scientist and astronomer Qazizadeh Rumi, the first director of his observatory.

Entering the complex from the south, through the grand archway, after passing by the Qazizadeh Rumi mausoleum, one comes to a stone staircase leading to another archway. Beyond that is a group of mausolea in part associated with the female relatives of Timur, in particular his sister, Shad-i Mulk Aga, and his niece, Shirin Biqa Aga. There is also the Tughlu Tekin mausoleum, built by a friend of Timur for his mother, and the Amirzadeh mausoleum, built in 1386 by an unidentified party.

 Here, in the middle group, one first encounters the incredible tilework that I found to be the most memorable feature of the Shah-i-Zinda complex.

Particularly striking to me were the deep-relief inscriptions featuring verses from the Koran and other sacred texts; from what I can gather, these were produced by applying dozens of layers of lacquer and then carving through the layers. This must have required an astounding level of skill and a great deal of expenditure to pay for it; it seems to have flourished mainly in the era of the Timurids, i.e. mid-14th – early 15th centuries, and some have found evidence of Chinese influence in it.

I have not been able to ascertain who commissioned the Amirzadeh Mausoleum or who is buried in it, but an inscription on the front dates its construction to 1386. It is also known as the Octahedron, because of the eight-sided structure on which the dome rests.

The Shad-i Mulk Mausoleum, built for the sister of Timur, was perhaps the best-preserved structure in the complex, with exquisite terracotta tile in and around the archway, including some of the deep-relief Koranic embedded inscriptions.

A close examination of the facade of the Shad-i Mulk Aqa reinforced my initial impression – this was tilework of unsurpassed artistry and craftsmanship.

Located at the north end of the complex are the oldest structures, including the Khwaja Ahmad Mausoleum, an anonymous mausoleum of 1361 possibly built for one of Timur’s first wives, Qutlugh Ata, and others, most notably the shrine of Qutham ibn Abbas. Unfortunately, I do not have any surviving photos of the shrine; I also don’t have any photos of the interiors of any of the structures, because my camera was not equipped with a flash. I don’t remember whether any of the buildings were open to go inside when I was there.

The Khwaja Ahmad Mausoleum, not to be confused with the Mausoleum of Khwaja Ahmad Yasawi in Kazakhstan, was built in the 1340s, and closes off the north end of the Shah-i-Zinda complex. Although the interior was said to be in ruins (we didn’t get a look at it), the exterior featured some of the most original and outstanding tilework in the complex.

In particular, one of the outstanding examples of the deep-relief calligraphic tile in the Shah-i-Zinda complex decorates the facade of the Khwaja Ahmad Mausoleum.

The 1361 Qutlugh Ata Mausoleum was especially noteworthy for the muqarna over its doorway. An archetypal feature of Islamic architecture, a muqarna is an ornamental vault, a self-supporting arched honeycomb form intended to provide a smooth, decorative transition from a wall to a ceiling and thus enliven what would otherwise be a bare, uninteresting space.

Our final stop in Samarkand was Gur-i-Amir, the mausoleum of Timur. It is a monumental work, well-preserved, visible from afar, and the model for many subsequent tombs, such as the Taj Mahal.

Gur-e Amir contains not only the tomb of Tamerlane, but also those of his sons and grandsons. Timur had originally built a smaller tomb for himself in his native city of Shahrisabz, south of Samarkand, and he began Gur-e Amir as a tomb for his grandson and heir apparent Muhammad Sultan, who predeceased him in 1403. However, when Timur himself died in 1405, Shahrisabz was inaccessible because the passes to it were blocked with snow, so he was buried in Gur-e Amir instead. Later, his other grandson Ulugh Beg made Gur-e Amir the family crypt, and Timur’s sons Miran Shah and Shah Rukh were buried there, as well as Ulugh Beg himself.

Like the other monuments of Samarkand, the Gur-e Amir fell into disrepair once the glory days of Samarkand were over. However, it was the first of the major structures to undergo restoration; the Soviets government undertook some early efforts in that direction just before the war with Germany began in 1941, as we shall shortly see, and after the war work began in earnest, with much being accomplished in the 1950s and after. Thus, by the time I visited in 1973, Gur-e Amir was in a much better state of preservation than most of the other monuments of Samarkand, and it was a glorious sight indeed.

Timur’s tomb was engraved with two inscriptions. One read “When I Rise From the Dead, The World Shall Tremble”; the other, “Whosoever Disturbs My Tomb Will Unleash an Invader More Terrible than I’. In June, 1941, an expedition led by Soviet scientist Tashmuhammed Kari-Niyazov began excavations in Gur-e Amir and on June 20, 1941, the excavators opened the tomb of Timur. On June 22, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Supposedly, after a month or two of horrific reverses Joseph Stalin started to believe in the curse and ordered the remains of Timur reburied, which was done in December 1942. Legend also has it that Stalin ordered a plane to fly over the front lines at Stalingrad for a month with the remains of Timur, and that the Muslim soldiers fighting there with the Red Army were fully informed of this to stimulate their zeal for fighting the Germans. In January 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered, giving the Soviets the victory in one of the decisive battles of history.

All of this, of course, is coincidence. World War II began in 1939 with the invasion of Poland; Hitler had always intended to destroy the Soviet Union, and began planning the invasion in 1940. I am not in a position either to verify or refute the legend about the plane flying over the Stalingrad battlefield with the remains of Timur, but I am certain of one thing: even though the exhumation of Tamerlane’s remains did not “unleash” him, and even though he lost in the end, Hitler was indeed a more terrible conqueror than Tamerlane. If indeed Timur was responsible for the deaths of 17 million people, he was still no match for Hitler, who accounted for far more than that. Also, Timur sponsored the creation of some wonderful masterpieces of art and architecture. Hitler only caused destruction and ruin.

In April, 1973 most of the American IREX students signed up for a trip to Central Asia and the Caucasus. We boarded an Aeroflot IL-18 four-engine turboprop at Domodedovo airport for the first leg of the trip. It was a long, noisy, uncomfortable, boring flight, about 12 hours if I remember correctly. The chicken served as an in-flight dinner really was made of rubber and could not be eaten. The plane shook and rattled its way to Samarkand, where we transferred to an AN-24 twin-engine turboprop headed for Bukhara.

When we arrived in Bukhara, it was rainy and cold. Our first stop, after dropping our luggage off at our hostel, was the Amir’s Palace. The amirs are long gone, of course, the last one having been deposed by the Bolsheviks in 1920. His summer palace, the one we visited, is now a museum.

Bukhara is an ancient city, founded in 500 AD, and for much of its history has been an important outpost of Persian civilization. After the Arab conquest of the Persian Sassanid Empire in the 7th century CE, Bukhara fell under Arab domination for a while, but in the ninth century it became a center of the revival of Iranian language and culture as the capital of the Samanid Empire. In medieval times, as a major stop on the Silk Road, Bukhara profited greatly from the silk trade.

In 1220 it was destroyed by the Mongols. After the Mongol conquests, Central Asia became increasingly dominated by Turkic peoples, and in the 16th century Bukhara became subject to the rule of Turkic Uzbek rulers, who remained in control until the advent of the Russians in the 19th century. In 1873 the Emirate of Bukhara became a Russian protectorate, but continued to remain under the rule of the amirs until 1920.

In 1920, the Red Army invaded and occupied Bukhara, and the People’s Republic of Bukhara was established under its aegis. This lasted until 1925, when Bukhara was incorporated into the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.

Currently Bukhara is a city of about a quarter of a million people; I do not know how many people were living there when I visited in 1973, but I would guess that the city was somewhat smaller then.

There seems to be some controversy regarding the ethnic composition of the population of Bukhara. Official statistics of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the city’s population is composed of 82% Uzbeks, the majority ethnic group of the country, 6% Russians, 4% Tajiks, and 8% various other ethnic groups. But some sources maintain that the majority of the population actually consists of Tajiks who have been misidentified as Uzbeks for various reasons.

From the Amir’s palace we proceeded next to an old fort on the outskirts of town. This was part of a series of defensive outworks that protected the city before the Russian conquest. Although not particularly interesting, it did provide an opportunity for some fresh air and exercise after our long plane and bus rides.

While we scrambled among the ruins, I used the opportunity to snap pictures of some of my fellow-travelers.

During our stay in Bukhara, we were housed in a madrasah, the front part of which is a famous mosque known as Char Minar. One of the most striking structures in Bukhara, the Char Minar has four towers, each with a slightly different decorative motif. On top of the rightmost rear tower perched an odd, irregular structure apparently made of sticks, like a large basket. It turned out that this was a stork’s nest, one of many we would see in the following days.

Adjoining the rear of the mosque was the madrasah, known as the Madrasah of Khalif Niyaz-kul after the wealthy merchant who was responsible for building both in the early 19th century.

Although a madrasah generally is a school for Islamic instruction, some madrasahs served primarily as hostels, and this was one of them. It was a two-story structure built around a central courtyard, with rooms on both stories.

Construction of the structure was extremely solid, and so contrived that the rooms were relatively warm in winter and remained cool in the heat of summer. The quarters were comfortable though rather spartan. We were billeted three to a room.

The hostel’s major shortcoming was the lack of bath or toilet facilities on the premises. There were only public latrines in the otherwise vacant fields next to the madrasah. This was particularly hard on the ladies, who during our excursions kept an eye out for actual toilets. On one occasion they found a school nearby, which they thought would surely have real toilets. They boldly marched into the hallways and found that the school did indeed have toilets, but they had long since fallen into disrepair, were filled with trash and debris and were completely unusable.

To me, the lack of amenities was more than compensated by the opportunity to spend a few nights in a historic architectural treasure.

The city of Bukhara was not large, and most of the major attractions were located near enough to the center that they were accessible by foot. As it turned out, we had lots of time to explore the city unsupervised, providing plenty of opportunity to get into trouble.

Not far from our hostel there was a pond surrounded by an architectural complex known as the Lyab-i-Haus (“by the pond” in Persian), where people gathered to relax and socialize. The pond was the last remaining of several which had existed before the 20th century, but had been found to be vectors of disease and filled in. The Lyab-i Hauz consists of a large 16th-century madrasah, the Kukeldash on the north side, and a smaller 17th-century madrasah and a guest house on the eastern and western sides; on the south is an open area where the locals sat and sipped tea, gossiped and played chess.

Bukhara is home to many architectural treasures, of which the most massive and imposing is the Ark, a great citadel constituting a city within a city. Built on the site of the original settlement, the Ark was in existence at least since 500 CE. According to the great Islamic Persian scholar Avicenna, in medieval times it contained one of the world’s greatest libraries. The library was probably destroyed at the time of the Mongol conquest, along with the Ark and the rest of the city. The Ark was rebuilt, without the library, and survived into modern times; but it was badly damaged when the Red Army assaulted the city in 1920. It had still not been restored at the time of our visit, and was closed to the public, so we were able only to view the exterior. However, I understand that since then it has been reopened and now houses several museums and exhibits.

Opposite the gate of the Ark stands the Bolo Hauz Mosque, the official place of worship of the amirs of Bukhara, built in 1712. Its most noteworthy feature is the carved and painted wood columns holding up the porch roof.

To the west of the Ark lies the Chashma Ayub Mausoleum, built in the 12th century with a peculiar tent-like roof, rare in Central Asia. The name Chashma Ayub means “Job’s Spring,” and legend has it that on this site the biblical Job smote the ground with his staff, causing a spring to gush forth which cured him of his ailments. It was not open when we were there, but nowadays it houses an exhibit devoted to water management in Bukhara.

Nearby the Chashma Ayub was a kolkhoz (collective farm) market where, despite all pretensions to modernity, local farmers sold their produce directly to consumers as they had for centuries.

Strolling around the city, we encountered many sharp contrasts between past and present. The city center consisted of broad, spacious streets and boulevards showcasing the architectural masterpieces of the centuries….

…whereas the residential districts featured shabby tenements densely packed in narrow streets.

Mercifully, vehicular traffic seemed to be absent from the old residential districts, since it would have been extremely hazardous to pedestrians, especially children playing in the streets.

However, modern amenities were not entirely lacking. I don’t know what the inhabitants had for sanitary facilities, but at least they had gas for cooking. The gas lines ran overhead along the outside of the houses, supported by tall posts, an arrangement which would probably be considered very hazardous in developed countries, but here there was probably no other option.

I got the impression that basically Bukhara was a quiet provincial town where not much ever happened and there was little excitement or entertainment to be had. Many inhabitants seemed to be hanging around with little to do and the atmosphere was very relaxed, with a few exceptions, which I’ll come to later.

One of the most delightful features of Bukhara, to me, was the abundance of storks’ nests. As a native of California I have never seen storks in the United States; they are mostly found in subtropical areas of the Southeast, but in Europe and Asia they are plentiful. Unfortunately, at the time of year we visited, the storks themselves were absent, not yet having forsaken their winter quarters in the south. But it gave me great pleasure to see their nests in high places all over town, not only in trees but also, most irreverently, on the tops of mosques, madrasahs and minarets.

The most lively sector of the city was the central commercial district, in which was located the Tim Abdullah Khan Trading Dome, a market featuring carpets and coffee.

Interestingly, many of the Uzbek women liked to braid their hair in long, thin, twisted braids, much like Afro-American women in the West. In one of the shops, we encountered a man, apparently in his 20s or 30s, who asked us where we were from. People in Bukhara were always asking us where we were from, and some of the group, had taken to responding that we were from Moscow – this was because they had become tired of answering the barrage of questions invariably evoked by a truthful answer, not to mention the inevitable entreaties for handouts which followed. When this particular gentleman received the answer “Iz Moskvy” (From Moscow), he rejoined, “Eto menya ne ystraivaet” (loosely translated, “That’s not what I wanted to hear”). In other words – quite understandably, since we looked like what we were, foreign tourists – he didn’t believe us, and continued to pester us for more information. This sort of thing happened more than once.

The centerpiece of the commercial district was the Toqi Zargaron, an imposing multi-domed structure dating from the 16th century, perhaps the earliest example of an indoor shopping mall I have ever seen.

Between our hostel, the Char Minar Madrasah, and the Ark lies the Poi Kalyan (“Great Foundation” in Persian) complex, which hosts some of the most striking architectural gems of Bukhara. From the approaches, as seen in the picture below, it didn’t look too promising, but up close it was quite imposing.

The Poi Kalyan contains three major attractions – the Miri Arab Madrasah, the Kalyan Mosque, and the Kalyan Minaret. If I recall correctly, the Miri Arab was in an early stage of restoration and not open to the public at the time of our visit. The Kalyan Mosque was also undergoing restoration, but was open, or at least so we thought.

“Kalyan” means “great” in Persian and the Mosque, built in the 16th century, was intended to accommodate 10,000 people. In Soviet times it was used as a warehouse and only reopened as a place of worship after the breakup of the USSR in 1991.

The Kalyan Minaret was built in 1127, during the reign of Arslan Khan, a ruler of the Turkic Karakhanid dynasty, which supplanted the Iranian Samanid rulers in the 11th century. At the time of its construction it was the tallest building in Central Asia, at 47 meters (154 feet) tall. Genghis Khan was said to have been so awed by it that he spared it from the destruction inflicted on the rest of the city. Inside is a spiral staircase with 150 steps, leading to a rotunda with 16 windows, which in turn is surmounted by a “stalactite cornice”, a conical pillar, which inevitably had a stork’s nest on top, giving it somewhat the appearance of a rearing cobra from afar. The Kalyan Minaret is also known as the Tower of Death, because according to legend criminals were executed by being thrown off the top.

The Kalyan Mosque and Minaret very nearly became the scene of grief for some of our party, too. Five of us, of which I was one, entered the courtyard of the mosque, and while we were checking it out, three of us decided that it would be fun to climb to the top of the minaret. I refrained from doing so, as did one other of our group, Jerman Rose, because I knew what would happen. Jerman and I continued to snoop around the mosque while the others made the ascent. A while later, when the three making the climb didn’t return, Jerman and I went to the entrance to the minaret staircase, where we heard shouting and banging on the door. It turned out that someone had barred the door from outside, preventing them from getting out of the minaret. Fortunately there was no lock, and Jerman and I simply unbarred the door so that they could escape. As we exited the mosque we encountered an old man, looking very much like the one in the next picture, who was muttering curses and imprecations and threatening to call the police. He was the one who had barred the door, and evidently, even though the mosque was not then functioning as a place of worship, he evidently considered it a sacrilege for infidels to be violating its precincts. We didn’t wait to find out whether we were indeed violating some local ordinance or other, and hastily evacuated the area.

Back in our rooms in the Char Minar, we packed up and waited on the benches for the bus to take us to the airport and begin the next stage of our odyssey, to the fabled city of Samarkand.