Bukhara

Day 19 and 20: Samarkand – Bukhara: After breakfast we had a short, by the standards of our trip, drive along the Royal Road to Bukhara. We passed an an old caravanserai along the way, but were for some reason permitted only a two minute stop here. Wild frontiers is more into shopping stops than photograph stops.

At Bukhara we were staying at "Sasha and Son", a very nice small hotel, right in the old town. We had a short walk round the town in the afternoon, a whirlwind tour with our surly Uzbek guide, a man who was clearly in the wrong job. Various adjectives come to mind - rude, supercilious, disinterested, unknowledgeable, uncaring. Yes, he really disliked both Western tourists and his job and he went to great pains to make sure that we knew it - perhaps the only bit of knowledge he imparted to us during our 5 days with him.

The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time. Located on the Silk Road, the city has long been a centre of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. The historic centre of Bukhara, which contains numerous mosques and madrassas, has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site

The things to see in Bukhara are

Ismaili Samani mausoleum (9th-10th century), one of the great sights of Central Asian architecture, was built as the resting-place of Ismail Samani - the founder of the Samanid dynasty, the last Persian dynasty to rule in Central Asia, which held the city in the 9th and 10th centuries. Although in the first instance the Samanids were Governors of Khorasan and Ma wara'u'n-nahr under the suzerainty of the Abbasid Caliphate, the dynasty soon established virtual independence from Baghdad.

Chashma-Ayub Mausoleum is located near the Samani Mausoleum. Its name means Job's well, due to the legend in which Job (Ayub) visited this place and made a well by striking the ground with his staff. The water of this well is still pure and is considered healing. The current building was constructed during the reign of Timur and features a Khwarazm-style conical dome uncommon in Bukhara. It is a Water Museum today.

Bolo Hauz Mosque (or the mosque of forty pillars, as its 20 pillars are reflected in the pool in front of it , to give you 40). Until the Soviet period there were many such ponds, which were the city's principal source of water, but they were notorious for spreading disease and were mostly cut off from water during the 1920s and 30s. The mosque is now fully restored and fully operating as a mosque.

Magoki-Attori Mosque. During excavations here the remains of two buildings were found: the first one was the ancient Zoroastrian temple, and the second, a Mosque, named “Magoki-Attori”. The Mosque was rebuilt in the 12th century, but only the southern facade and portals remain till now. An earthquake destroyed the Mosque in 1860 and the double dome collapsed; it was rebuilt in the 20th century.

The Ark where Connolly and Stoddart – two luckless British officers – met their deaths while playing the Great Game. The Ark is a massive fortress that was initially built and occupied around the 5th century AD. In addition to being a military structure, the Ark encompassed what was essentially a town that, during much of the fortress' history, was inhabited by the various royal courts that held sway over the region surrounding Bukhara. The Ark was used as a fortress until it fell to Russia in 1920. The Ark was badly damaged by the Bolsheviks during the brief siege of Bukhara in 1920 under the command of Mikhail Frunze. Frunze ordered the Ark bombed by aircraft, which left a large part of the structure in ruins. There is also reason to believe that the last Emir, Alim Khan (1880–1944), who escaped to Afghanistan with the royal treasury, ordered the Ark to be blown up so that its secret places (especially the harem) could not be desecrated by the Bolsheviks. And in fact the harem building did suffer great damage, being reduced to rubble to the extent that archaeologists have pronounced it incapable of restoration.

Contemporary London Times reports

Kalyan Minaret and the beautiful mosques and madrassas that lie around it. It is made in the form of a circular-pillar brick tower, narrowing upwards, of 9 meters diameter at the bottom, 6 meters at the top and 45.6 meters high. Also known as the Tower of Death, as for centuries criminals were executed by being tossed off the top. Kalyan Mosque completed in 1514, is equal to the Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand in size. Although they are of the same type of building, they are absolutely different in the way they have been built. Mir-i Arab Madrassah is ascribed to Sheikh Abdullah Yamani of Yemen, the spiritual mentor of early Shaybanids.

Bukhara being the crossroad of the Silk Road, was founded on trade. The Sheibanids dynasty, who ruled Bukhara in the 16 century, paid a great attention to the development trade by building trading domes. Five trading domes were build in Bukhara at that time. These domes were examples of civil architecture of the 16 c., but only three of them exist today. The domes were named according to what was sold in them. The shops in them demonstrate, and of course sell, anything from silk weaving and knife making to metal engraving.

In the afternoon we went back to the Silk Carpet warehouse, and bought from Sabina, an (expensive) double sided silk carpet. It was made by two girls knotting different patterns from each side of the rug. It is a magnificent example of the silk weavers craft and took over a year to make. .

Click on any of the thumbnail images to get a larger photo


En route we passed cotton fields in abundance and this last remaining example of a Caravanserai			Ensconced at Sasha & Son

It really is quite comfortable here, time to settle in before ..		..lunch, more food.	Walk around town. Original ..

puppet maker, lots of mass touristy things like T shirts, local crafts, and Russian Army memorabilia are aplenty.

Three of the old trading domes still exist and one can see craftsmen (and crafts children) at work hammering out their wares

Ismaili Samani mausoleum - using an ancient tradition of baked brick construction to a much higher standard than today .		We walked past a myriad of old mosques and madrassas..

..the town still functioned round them	Chashma-Ayub Mausoleum	Bolo Hauz Mosque (or the mosque of forty pillars, as its 20 pillars are reflected in the pool in front of it , to give you 40).

The Ark is a massive fortress that was built around the 5th century AD. And the gold market - weighing the gold for local buyers ..

..this stuff was not cheap, but there were only locals buying here.		Magoki-Attori Mosque	Kalyan Minaret and ..

..the beautiful mosques and madrassas that are scattered around it.

Where I bought my Silk Carpet. Well it was for the boys actually, they liked Sabina. It was a magic carpet and they flew home on it.

Around town, they still baked bread, and Chris had a real Hammam , but this is much more of a tourist town than most

The boys meanwhile enjoyed a walk round town and a ride on the donkey and all the other things that small bears do on holiday.

Our evening meal was here, but there were better places to eat.