Samarkand, Bukhara & Khiva: Heart of the Silk Road
The great cities of Samarkand and Bukhara flaunt their magnificent Timurid architecture, whilst remote Khiva beguiles the Silk Road traveller.
Shah-I-Zinda, Samarkand
For many travellers, Uzbekistan holds the very heart of the Central Asian Silk Road. Its three main historical centres – Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva – all resonate deeply with the weight of history, whilst its bazaars and teahouses still carry echoes of its fabulous past.
Uzbekistan
The name Uzbekistan comes from ancient Persian control meaning the “Land of the Uzbeks”, but many other labels have been used to identify the region between the Oxus (the modern-day Amu Darya river) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya river). The Greeks arriving under Alexander the Great in the 3rd century BC called it Transoxiana; whilst a thousand years later the invading Arabs knew it as Mawarannahr, the “Land across the River”. It is here that the last spurs of the Chinese Tian Shan and Pamir mountains slope westwards towards the desolate plains and forbidding sands of the Karakum and Kyzylkum – the ‘black’ and ‘red’ deserts. All of which had to be conquered to get silk and other Eastern luxuries to the west.
Map of the Caucasus and Central Asia
After the rigours of crossing the rugged snow-capped mountains from the East, the Fergana Valley must have appeared as a verdant paradise to weary merchants and pack animals alike. The valley is warm, flat, fertile and full of bazaars overflowing with fruit, produce and animals, which played a key role in the opening of the Silk Road in the 1st century BC. Its famed “blood-sweating” horses (believed by the Chinese to be descended from dragons) were in such demand that China forced open its first diplomatic trade missions specifically for a supply of the steeds, to give it a military advantage over its northern marauding neighbours. The Central Asian Turkic-speaking horsemen were experts in breeding the finest horses and horse trading remained central to the Silk Road’s importance long after the secret of silk production had spread from China to the west.
Home to one-third of Uzbekistan’s population, the modern Fergana Valley is the most densely populated part of Central Asia and a religiously active centre. This is also in essence a cultural meeting point: of Turkic and Persian, nomad and settler, Uzbek and Tajik. Between the lush oases are vast areas of desert studded with remote caravan trading posts, made rich with trade and plunder, dominated by Zoroastrians, Sogdians, Parthians and Sassanians until the arrival of Islam in the 7th century.
The country is above all the homeland of the 14th century warlord Timur the Great (better known to Westerners as Tamerlane), who has bequeathed modern Uzbekistan with some of the Islamic world’s most stunning architecture. Most of the madrassas and mosques to be seen in Uzbekistan date from this era including the famous Registan in Samarkand. Timur’s ambitions began in his hometown of Shahrisabz on today’s Uzbek/Tajik border, but he was soon to make nearby Samarkand the powerbase for his Timurid Empire. From here he took control of much of Asia which had previously been conquered by Genghis Khan and his Ilkhanid descendants. Today, Timur is the undisputed national hero with three large statues of him in Shahrisabz, Samarkand and the modern capital Tashkent.
Monument to Amir Timur, 14th Century Turko-Mongol military leader who conquered most of the Muslim world, central Asia, and parts of India
Samarkand
More so than any other location in Central Asia, Samarkand’s name drips with an exotic romanticism, whose resonance can be largely attributed to the immortal lines of James Elroy Flecker’s 1913 verse play ‘Hassan’:
We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
Set at a trade crossroads and fed by the Zerafshan River, Samarkand has been a trading centre since the earliest times when it was known as Afrosiab. Alexander the Great visited in 329 BC, when it was the Sogdian city of Marakanda, part of the Achaemenid (Ancient Persian) Empire. “Everything I have heard about Marakanda is true,” said Alexander, “except it is even more beautiful than I had imagined.”
Samarkand’s Registan is without doubt the single most dramatic architectural ensemble in Central Asia. Three towering madrassas, saturated from head to toe in mesmerising tilework, rise around open ground to form an irresistible symmetry. When he looked upon the scene in 1888 the British traveller, MP and future viceroy of India, George Curzon called it “the noblest public square in the world”.
Registan, heart of the ancient city of Samarkand of the Timurid Empire
Timur is buried 500m away at the Gur-i-Emir, another jaw-dropping display of Islamic Art that would become the architectural inspiration for the Taj Mahal two centuries later.
Ancient Mausoleum Gur Emir, a family tomb of Tamerlane (Amir Timur) and his successors,
Amongst Samarkand’s other great artistic highlights is the Shah-i-Zinda, a visually absorbing necropolis and one of the great masterpieces of Timurid art. The line of tombs along the narrow curving street are decorated with every shade of blue carried here by the merchants – turquoise from Persia, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and cobalt from beyond the Caspian Sea. Constructed from 1372 to 1460 the tombs house a veritable “Who’s Who” of Timurid aristocracy, including many of Timur’s wives, sisters and nieces. It remains a holy place of pilgrimage for many Uzbeks who believe that the oldest tomb at the far end is the resting place of Qusam Ibn Abbas (a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed) who is credited with introducing Islam into the region. Accessed by a flight of steps it can be found behind the Registan and Bibi Khanum mosque, opposite the main fresh produce bazaar.
Shah-i-Zinda or Shohizinda (The Living King), a necropolis in Samarkand
Bukhara
Known for centuries as Bukhoro-i-sharif (Bukhara the Noble), and the “Dome of Islam”, the holy city of Bukhara (Buxoro in Uzbek) is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, stretching back some 2,500 years. At its peak the city boasted 250 madrassas, 200 minarets and a mosque for every day of the Islamic year.
Chor Minor Madrasa (1807). The Chor Minor (literally, "four towers") is a historic gatehouse for a now-destroyed madrasa in the city of Bukhara
According to the Persian epic Shahnameh, the hero Siyavush founded the city after marrying the daughter of the king of Afrosiab. The town thrived at a crossroads with city gates pointing to Merv, Gurganj, Herat, Khiva and Samarkand - five days by camel train to the east.
In the early days Bukhara was eclipsed by great cities now lost in the surrounding deserts. For example, all that remains of Varakhsha, once the richest caravan stop in the region, are the superb Sogdian murals (now preserved in a local museum) of hunters battling leopards and a court scene flanked by winged griffins. The Hephthalite capital of Paikend, another of the great regional trading centres, was destroyed during the Arab invasion.
Wall Paintings from the Palace at Varakhsha, now found in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
Bukhara hit its high point in the 9th and 10th centuries under the Samanid Dynasty during what is known as the Silk Road’s Golden Age, when the city’s vast wealth enabled a great centre of Persian culture, science and education to develop. Thinkers such as al-Biruni, the poet Rudaki and Bukhara’s grand vizier/medic Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in the west) were drawn here to consult and interact with other great minds. All of them enjoyed access to Bukhara’s “Treasury of Wisdom”, a library surpassed in the Islamic world only by the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.
The city was largely destroyed by the Mongols in 1220. Genghis Khan addressed the trembling citizens of Bukhara with a perverse sense of logic: “If you had not committed great sins,” he said, “God would not have sent a punishment like me.” When the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta arrived in Bukhara a century later in 1333, the city was still in ruins.
Sunset over the famous Kalyan Poi Kalon and Kalon Mosque with courtyard in the old town of Bukhara
The khanate (and later emirate) was revived in the 16th century under the extensive building programmes of Abdullah Khan, but by the Astrakhanid Dynasty the decline of the Silk Road had isolated Bukhara. The city began a gradual slide into decay and fanaticism until Russian interest in the 19th century during ‘The Great Game’ period.
The heart of ancient Bukhara is the Ark, a 2,000-year-old fortress around which the city formed. Fortified, destroyed and rebuilt many times over the years, the “city within a city” became home to the emirs of Bukhara, evolving into a complex warren of chambers, mosques, reception rooms, servants’ quarters, mint, jail, armoury and lookouts. What remains today is only about 30 percent of the original; peek around the back to see the ruins left by the Red Army artillery of General Frunze in 1920.
The walls of the Ark fortress, Bukhara
A five-minute walk west of the Ark brings you to Samani Park, home to one of Central Asia’s great architectural highlights, the small but beautiful Ismail Samani Mausoleum. This 10th century gem houses the tomb of Ismail Samani, founder of the cultured Samanid Dynasty that oversaw Bukhara’s cultural highpoint. The genius of the cubed building lies in its elegant basket-weave brickwork - featuring many Zoroastrian symbols - which glows in full glory in the afternoon light. The central trading domes which cover the intersections of ancient walkways are still hubs of activity, as much today as they have always been.
The Samanid Mausoleum, dating from the 10th century, is the oldest Muslim monument in the city of Bukhara
Khiva
Hidden in the deserts of northwest Uzbekistan, an 18-day journey by camel from Bukhara (or 45-minute flight from Tashkent), the oasis caravan town of Khiva (Xiva in Uzbek) has always been the remotest of the three khanates.
Itchan Kala, walled inner town of the city of Khiva
Though local legend has the town founded by Shem, son of Noah, Khiva is not the most ancient town in the northern region, near to the Aral Sea and the modern border with Kazakhstan. Like its great brethren rivers - the Indus, Nile and Euphrates - the nearby Oxus Delta has long nourished some of Asia’s great centres of antiquity. Most of these abandoned cities now lie neglected, lost and baking in the desert sands, though the former capital of Gurganj (Konye-Urgench) can still be visited in neighbouring Turkmenistan.
Konye-Urgench also known as Old Urgench or Urganj, is a city of about 30,000 inhabitants in north Turkmenistan, just south from its border with Uzbekistan
Khiva prospered after both the Mongols and Timur flattened Gurganj, and it eventually became the region’s capital in 1592. The oasis town provided a vital pit stop for caravans heading to Merv, also in Turkmenistan. Trade with the Russian Volga - particularly in Astrakhan - added to the city’s wealth and filled its caravanserais with samovars, furs, guns, rare minerals, karakul pelts and Turkestani melons. Isolated and lawless, the city also grew rich on plunder and, importantly, the slave trade of captured soldiers and prisoners. The UNESCO protected palaces, citadels and mausoleums of the mudbrick Old City remain as lively as ever, but nowadays with modern adventurers keen to experience a true desert city.
Wandering through the Bazaar in Khiva
The teahouses of Uzbekistan are perhaps the best places in the region to soak up Central Asian culture. Factor in some time to stroll the bustling modern bazaars, sip green tea on a tapchan (tea bed) under the shade of a mulberry tree and dine on shashlyk (mutton kebabs) and freshly baked naan bread.
Traditional tea house in Lyabi-Hauz square, Bukhara
Uzbeks everywhere wear the doppi skullcap with pride, and the fabulously photogenic elders, known respectfully as aksakal or “white beards”, still wear the striped cloaks known as a khalat or chapan. The women of the region are a riot of colour, the older ones often dressed in shimmering ikat cloth and sporting mouthfuls of gold teeth.
Uzbek women in colorful dresses sit and rest in Khiva
Journey through Central Asia with Christopher Bradley…
UZBEKISTAN & TURKMENISTAN
Journey across these two central Asian countries, the so-called Stans, and discover their long, variegated history, impressive sites and exotic ambience. An optional six-night, post-tour extension to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan is available with this tour.
