West of the city, a large necropolis called Char Bakr was the burial ground of the Jabari clan. There are two large seventeenth-century khanigas (one serving as a mosque), a small minaret, a cemetery and a small mausoleum of Khoja Islam, also built c.1660. North of the city, the mausoleum of Hazret Baha’ud din Nakshbendi, dating from the mid-fourteenth century, was converted under the Soviets into a museum of atheism. (See 31.) It is now an important pilgrim place of the Nakshbendi order. Sitorai Mohi Khosa is the palace of the last emir and now houses a small museum.
The minaret in Vabkent, in the vicinity of Bukhara, was built in 1196–98, and is very similar to the minaret Kalan. The difference is mainly in the decorative bands. There are not so many motifs, flat ornaments are more emphasised than relief, which seems to be the tendency of the period, and there is considerable progress in the use of glazed tiles.
Travelling further beyond Vabkent on the old road to Khorezm, we come to a strange place on the fringe of the Kyzyl Kum desert. Here an ‘artificial’ saxaul forest was planted some decades ago to prevent the sands from moving; by now the forest has completely covered the ruins of an ancient town, Vardana, or Vardanzi, which was swallowed by the desert about 100 years ago.
The rulers of Wardana bore the title of Wardan-Khudats and were until the eighth century the rivals of the Bukhar-Khudats. Wardana was even considered to be older than Bukhara. The village was of great importance strategically as a frontier point against the Turkish nomads, commercially and industrially. In later times, this locality was the tümen or district of Vardanzi, a considerable portion of which was buried by sand in 1868.47
There is no life now at Vardanzi, only the strong scent and silent movements of the leafless saxauls and tamarisks.
On the same road to Khorezm, one day’s journey into the desert but still within the great wall of Bukhara, was the castle and village of Varaksha. This was, from very ancient times, the private property of the Bukhar-Khudats, and was reckoned to be a more ancient town than Bukhara. Here was the old palace of the Bukhar-Khudats, which had existed, according to tradition, for more than 1,000 years. In the eighth century it was restored, but was later confiscated by the Samanids, who intended to convert the palace into a mosque. It was finally destroyed by order of one of the last Samanids, who wanted material for the construction of a palace in Bukhara.48 The site can now be found about 19 miles north-west of Bukhara, in the eastern Kyzyl Kum. Archaeological investigation has shown that in ancient times the whole area, covering 200 square miles, was densely populated, and that it fell into its present state of desolation between the eleventh and twelfth century. This therefore confirms the written sources quoted by Barthold. The surface of the desert is dotted with numerous tepes that conceal the remains of towns and villages or of large isolated buildings, forts, or castles. Traces of an elaborate irrigation system can still be detected. Varakhsha is the largest site in the area, covering about 22 acres. In some places it rises to a height of 60ft above the surrounding plain. It was the object of several expeditions led by Professor V.A. Shishkin, begun in 1938 and continued after the war. The site is composed of several layers ranging from the first century BC or AD until the tenth or eleventh century. There was a citadel, a large palace and the city. The citadel, built probably in the fourth or fifth century on an artificial mound, was reconstructed several times. It was surrounded by a triangular wall. The palace too, was built in around the fifth century. It seems it had three storeys and its walls were lined with alabaster and stucco. The lower layers of the city go back to the Kushan period.
The most important results were produced by the excavation of the palace. Particularly interesting among these results is a series of wall paintings found in three rooms, described as Red Room, East Room and West Room. The style of both the architecture and the paintings strongly resembles those of Samarkand – Afrasiyab and Pendzhikent. Here again we find fairly large rooms (for example 39ft by 26ft), with benches running along the walls and with paintings covering the walls from these benches right up to the roof. They were preserved, however, only up to between 6ft to 7ft. The figures are painted against a red background and are divided into two bands. The lower band consists of a series of hunting scenes, with hunters mounted on elephants and dressed in loose cloaks fluttering in the wind. Their headdresses are richly ornamented. The elephants are being attacked by large cats and fantastic animals (winged griffins). The principal wall of the second room was occupied by a large and crowded scene representing a state ceremonial reception. The room (56ft by 38ft) was obviously the throne room, and the centre of the picture is also occupied by a high throne. Similar in this respect to Pendzhikent and to Balalyk-Tepe, the Varakhsha paintings do not appear to be focused on one single creed. Although reminiscent of India, Buddhism appears to be absent from them, and with one exception the paintings may be considered secular.49 They can be seen in the museums of Bukhara and Tashkent.
The excavation also yielded striking specimens of decorative stucco work, of which a great mass of fragments was found. Originally the stucco panels had covered the upper parts of the walls. There were a great number of geometrical and vegetal ornaments, but also many other subjects, such as animals, birds and hunting scenes. Shishkin noticed in this alabaster decoration the absence of meticulous finish, a rather sketchy manner ‘which puts it into a completely different category from later examples of this kind’, and he explicitly points out the design of human faces. ‘The mouth is sketched in with a few strokes of knife; the eyes are often represented only by almond-shaped convexities…’. This may well require comment. The kind of representation, the same strange expressiveness, can be found in several small statuettes, now kept in the museum of Samarkand and ascribed to the Hephthalite Huns of the fifth and sixth century. One of them, a striking example reproduced in plate 2, has a necklace of nine beads; it is known that nine was a sacred number to the Mongols and most probably also to their predecessors, the Huns. On the other hand, several animals from the alabaster friezes of Varakhsha have a distinct note of the ‘animal style’, of the steppe art that had been traditional with the nomads since early Scythian times. This may indicate that, some time in the fifth to sixth century, Varakhsha was a residence of the Hephthalite king and reverted to the Bukhar-Khudats only after the fall of the Hephthalite Empire. Only then did this type of architectural decoration acquire ‘the painstaking, scrupulous finish of each trifling detail carried to a pitch of extreme virtuosity’.50 On the external walls the decoration consists of paired half-columns, the tops of each pair being linked by a small arch. This is exactly the same decoration that we saw, for instance, at Rabat-i Malik, from the eleventh century. On the whole, the palace of Varakhsha was a typical large Soghdian kushk (castle), as was admirably shown by the reconstruction of V.A. Nilsen.
* * *
NOTES ON CHAPTER VII
Full details of abbreviations and publications are in the Bibliography
1 Barthold, Turkestan, p.84.
2 Belenistsky, The Ancient Civilisation of Central Asia, p.53.
3 Le Strange (tr), Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane, pp.285–86, 289–90.
4 Ibn Haukal, quoted by Barthold in Turkestan, p.91.
5 Barthold, Turkestan, p.91.
6 Cohn-Wiener, Turan, p.233.
7 The mosque has recently collapsed and is now being restored. A beautifully carved door with an inscription in Thulth opens the corridor leading to the mosque.
8 Rempel, Ornament, p.270.
9 Le Strange, Clavijo, p.280.
10 Pugachenkova, G.A., Pamyatniki arkhitektury Srednei Azii, p.75.
11 There is some confusion about the identity of Omar Sheikh. This one is believed by some to have been a holy man while Timur’s son of the same name may have been buried in Shahrisabz next to his brother, Jahangir.
12 Hookham, Tamburlaine, pp.9, 83.
13 Pope, Architecture, p.197.
14 Le Strange, Clavijo, p.279.
15 Hookham, Tamburlaine, p.7.
16 Le Strange, Clavijo, p.209.
17 Pope, Architecture, p.193.
18 Cohn-Wiener, Turan, p.28.
19 Rempel, Ornament, p.276.
20 Le Strange, Clavijo, p.207.
21 Belenitsky, Civilisation, p.155.
22 Frumkin, CAR XII, p.177.
23 Belenitsky, Civilisation, p.158.
24 Frumkin, CAR XII, p.177.
25 Now in the Museum of Pendzhikent.
26 Frumkin, CAR XII p.178.
27 Pope, Architecture, p.129.
28 Pope, Architecture, p.238.
29 Rempel, Ornament, p.154.
30 Barthold, Turkestan, p.103.
31 Gibb, Ibn Battuta, pp.171–72.
32 Jenkinson, Voyages, p.83.
33 Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.115.
34 Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.121.
35 Pope, Architecture, p.81.
36 Pope, Architecture, p.85.
37 Rempel, Ornament, p.148.
38 Pope, Architecture, p.85.
39 Rempel, Ornament, p.152.
40 Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.124.
41 Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.135.
42 Cohn-Wiener, Turan, p.13.
43 It is supposed that this was the site of a bazaar, Mogh, or Moon Bazaar, where pictures of folk deities were sold on certain feast days (see Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.167).
44 Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.168.
45 Rempel, Ornament, p.164.
46 Pugachenkova, Pamyatniki, p.180.
47 Barthold, Turkestan, p.113.
48 Barthold, Turkestan, p.115.
49 Frumkin, CAR XIII, p.249.
50 Shishkin, Goroda Uzbekistana, p.167.
49 Mausoleum Hakim al-Termezi (interior)
50 Mausoleum of Ismail Samanid, Bukhara
51 Char Minar, Bukhara
52 Minar-i Kalan, Bukhara
53 Minaret Imin, Turfan
54 The Green Mosque, Balkh
VIII
TURKMENISTAN
The ancient caravan route, roughly followed by the present railway line, brings us south-west of Bukhara to the Amu Darya and to the important crossing at Chardzhou, the medieval Amul. On the way lie the ruins of Paykend, which, in pre-Muslim times, was a large trading centre and also a garrison town. It was called ‘The Copper City’ or ‘The City of Merchants’. The local merchants engaged in trade with China, and even engaged in maritime trade, probably with the trans-Caspian provinces. Each village in the province of Bukhara possessed a rabat, or caravanserai, near the gate of Paykend. There were more than 1,000 such barracks, and in them were kept detachments for the purpose of countering Turkish assaults. In the ninth century, when the country became more secure, circumstances changed; the barracks were abandoned and fell into ruin, although the town itself flourished. Paykend, which was surrounded by a strong wall with only one gate, was on the edge of the steppes, and there were no villages in the neighbourhood.1 After the fall of the Samanid Empire, Paykend was virtually extinct, and Barthold tells us the following story of an attempt to revive Paykend in the twelfth century:
Arslan Khan (the Karakhanid ruler of Bukhara) built himself a palace here and wished to dig a new aryk (irrigation canal) for the town. The town was situated on a hill but not a high one. The Khan ordered it be cut through to provide a channel for the water. But it turned out that the hill was composed of stony strata and after vain attempts which swallowed much money and cost many lives, the enterprise was abandoned. Shortly afterwards, the palace was in ruins, and some Turkmen families were living there.
The tiny oasis of Karakul is the last place to be watered by the Zarafshan. Beyond it the river disappears in marshes. A stretch of desert separates the River Zarafshan from its ancient confluent, the Amu Darya. Following the railway south-west from Chardzhou into Turkmenistan, the first oasis is the township of Mary on the River Murghab, in medieval times the splendid city of Merv, ‘the Pearl of the East’, one of the four important cities of Khorassan and for centuries the seat of the caliph’s governor-general. In Achaemenid times the province of Merv was called Margiana. Politically, Merv was always part of Khorassan, which, apart from Merv, comprised also the provinces of Balkh, Herat and Nishapur, had close links with Persia, but was never an integral part of it. Khorassan ceased to exist as a political unit in the mid-eighteenth century, when it was divided between Persia, which retained the province of Nishapur, and Afghanistan, which took the province of Balkh. The province of Herat was divided between the two countries, with the city of Herat in Afghan territory. The province of Merv became a kind of no-man’s-land; it was in the hands of warlike nomad Turkmen tribes until the Russian conquest, which culminated in the battle of Gök-Tepe in 1881 and the occupation of Merv in 1884.
Fig. 21 Turkmenistan
Merv has always been one of the most important Central Asian cities, and a cultural centre of the lands west of the Oxus. We find early testimonies of its importance in the Zend-Avesta, at a time when Bukhara did not even exist. The present ruins, which cover a total area of 50 square miles, are the remains of five walled cities, dating from five different periods.
The oldest, in the north, is called Erg-Kala. (See 42.) It was an Achaemenid city with a huge citadel in the centre. It was conquered by Alexander the Great and subsequently called Alexandria Margiana. The Parthians added a fortress on its sourhern perimeter. It is entirely surrounded by a square Sasanian city, called Giaur Kala (The City of the Infidels) by the Arabs. After the Arab conquest Merv became for a time the principal city of the Eastern Caliphate and second only to Baghdad. It was described in considerable detail by Istakhri. The Seljuks in the eleventh century added another city on the western side, called Sultan Kala, which was described by Yakut. The Mongols destroyed it completely, and it was not repopulated until the beginning of the fifteenth century when Shahrukh, the son of Timur, founded on its southern edge another city called Abdullah Khan Kala. This was much smaller, and never regained the fame and splendour of its predecessors. However, it was still dependent for its water on the huge dam and canal built by the Seljukid sultan Sanjar on the River Murghab. The dam was in existence until 1795, when it was destroyed by the Emir of Bukhara, after which the city was soon reduced to a sandy mound in the Kara Kum desert.
Erg Kala was circular in shape and surrounded by high ramparts with no obvious access. It is believed that access was by a drawbridge across a moat. There are many marks of excavations on the citadel mound, as well as in the area between the citadel and the walls. The walls of Giaur Kala had towers at regular distances and enclosed a space of some 1.5 square miles. The whole complex of Erg Kala probably served as its citadel. In the north-eastern corner of Giaur Kala is an unidentified oval-shaped building consisting of thirty-three rooms constructed around a courtyard on a raised platform and dated to the Sasanian period. Its purpose remains to be found. In the south-eastern corner an unexpected discovery in 1962 revealed the remnants of a Buddhist monastery with a red-coloured stupa and a gigantic statue of Buddha of which only the head was found. This is especially interesting because Margiana was believed to have been outside the Buddhist sphere of influence. Kushan coins from the second century AD were also found here.
Fig. 22 The site of Merv
In the centre of Giaur Kala can be seen remnants of a seventh-century mosque over which the Seljuks built a somewhat larger mosque in the eleventh or twelfth century. Next to it was a sardoba (cistern), which had a diameter of some 18ft and a depth of over 25ft. A metallurgical workshop was recently uncovered, surrounded by small heaps of slag and with an interestingly patterned floor.
In the north-eastern corner of Sultan Kala is a complex of buildings called Shahriar Ark, separated from the city by a wall. This was most probably a fortified palace built on two floors around a courtyard with an iwan on each side. The ruin of a kushk can be seen nearby. In the very centre of Sultan Kala stands an 80ft-high building, partly preserved, which on the basis of Yakut’s description can be id
entified as the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar, who died in 1157. It is one of the most significant monuments in Central Asia and even now, seen in the bleak sandy environment, makes an extremely strong impression. (See 43.)
Apparently, the mausoleum was not an isolated structure but formed part of a larger religious complex described by Yakut in 1219. It is a classic example of a Central Asian mazar, which Pope describes as:
… a ponderous and solemn cubical chamber, about 90 feet square, which was surmounted by a blue-tiled dome (this was restored in 1911) also about 90 feet high. The interlocking framework of the ribs seen on the interior seems to carry the weight of the dome, but in reality it is probably more decorative than structural. The crucial transition from sanctuary block to dome above was beautifully achieved by means of corner galleries which concealed the squinch, so awkwardly exposed on the exterior of earlier Seljuk domes. The circular drum of the dome is similarly arcaded and the galleries, decorated with pierced brick in ornamental lays, mitigate the severity of the mass without compromising the simplicity of the structure as a whole… The main entrance is on the east facing the rising sun. A comparable opening on the west was closed by a grill. The other two sides are blank. The plain walls are enriched with a typical Seljuk plaster coating marked out in simulated brick bonding with decorative insets of terra-cotta. This mausoleum is the last, and one of the finest, examples of Seljuk architecture.2
The tomb inside is not that of Sultan Sanjar but a nineteenth-century cenotaph. A short distance from the mausoleum are two kushks (castles or fortified manor houses), the Great and Little Kyz Kala. The walls of the Great Kyz Kala are made of a series of octagonal half-columns, a decorative element already seen at Rabat-i Malik and also at the small kushk at Shahriar Ark. A barrel-vaulted corridor or staircase can be seen in the Little Kyz Kala. (See colour plate 15.)
Treasures of the Great Silk Road Page 18