Uzbekistan | Samarkand | Shah-i-Zinda

Wandered by the Shah-i-Zinda (The Living Prince) complex in Samarkand, built in large part by Amir Timur (a.k.a Tamerlane, 1336–1405) as a burial place for his female relatives, although others are also buried here.  The entrance portal was added later by his grandson Ulugh Beg ((1394–1449). 

Entrance Portal (click on photos for enlargements)

 Entrance Portal and front of complex

 Steps leading from the Entrance Portal to the mausolems

 Front of one of the mausolems

 Detail of front of one of the mausolems

 Detail of front of one of the mausolems

Detail of front of one of the mausolems

 Detail of front of one of the mausolems

Detail of front of one of the mausolems

Detail of front of one of the mausolems

 Detail of front of one of the mausolems

 Detail of front of one of the mausolems

Interior of one of the mausoleums. Buried here were Amir Timur’s favorite niece, her sister Turkhan Aka, and two others, one apparently a child. Not clear which tomb is which. 

 Interior of the mausoleum of Amir Timur’s favorite niece

  Interior of the mausoleum of Amir Timur’s favorite niece

 Dome of the mausoleum of Amir Timur’s favorite niece. Due to a curious optical illusion it looks convex. It is of course concave. 

 Interior of the mausoleum of Amir Timur’s favorite niece

 Interior of the mausoleum of Amir Timur’s favorite niece

 Apparently the tomb of one of Amir Timur’s wives

An unusual octagon shaped tomb

Base of the Octagon Tomb. Historians say this was the foundation of a building which pre-dated the Mongol Invasion of Samarkand in 1220. The original building was destroyed in the invasion. 

 More mausoleums

More mausoleums

 Detail of mausoleums

 Detail of mausoleums

 Detail of mausoleums

Looking back toward the entrance

 Another mausoleum

  Detail of mausoleum

Looking toward the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas Mosque complex

Wooden door to the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas Mosque complex

Detail of wooden door to the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas Mosque complex

Detail of the door. The inscription on the column gives the name of the man who carved the door and when it was made: 1404-05

The complex is said to have included some structures which survived the destruction by the Mongols of the original buildings which stood on this site . For instance, just inside the main door is the base and entryway to a minaret said to date to the pre-Mongol era. The top of the minaret itself was destroyed by the Chingisids but the base and entryway were incorporated into the now-existing structures.

 Woman praying in the mosque part of the complex

This door is said to led to an underground chamber where Sufis used to do 40-day meditation retreats

Interior of the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas Mausolem. According to legend he was a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad who accompanying a raiding party to Samarkand in 676. He was killed and buried here. His original mausoleum was apparently destroyed by the Mongols. The current mausoleum probably dates to the Timurid era. 

Details of the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas Mausoleum

The tomb of the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas is behind the wooden fretwork.

 Another mausoleum behind the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas complex

  Detail of mausoleum behind the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas complex

  Detail of mausoleum behind the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas complex

   Detail of mausoleum behind the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas complex

  Detail of mausoleum behind the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas complex

  Detail of mausoleum behind the Kussam-Ibn-Abbas complex

I don’t usually take photos of people at places like this, but as I was leaving this guy came up to me and insisted that I take a photo of him and his family. 

Love those bangs!

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Third Nine Nine | Gurvan Ükhrii Ever Khöldönö

The Third of The Nine-Nines—the Nine-Nines being nine periods of nine days each, each period characterized by a certain type of winter weather—begins today, January 8. Gurvan Ükhrii Ever Khöldönö is the nine-day period of Winter when the horns of three year-old cows freeze. This period is supposed to be colder than the First of the Nine Nines and the Second of the Nine Nines. At 8:30 this morning it was 33 below 0º F (that’s minus 36º C for you incorrigible Celsius fans), about normal for this time of the year. Certainly cold enough to freeze the horns of three-year old cows, to say nothing of the balls on a brass monkey.

Those of you who like to get out early to view the Heavens are in for a real treat the next couple days. On the morning of the 10th Venus will be cuddling up with a Sliver Moon. I may not be able to see this phenomenon from my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi because of the high ridges of Bogd Khan Uul to the southeast, but if I get inspired I might just climb to The Mountain In Front of My Hovel for a better look.

Graphic Courtesy of Sky And Telescope

Mongolia | Second Nine Nine | Khorz Arkhi Khöldönö

I mentioned earlier that the First of the Nine-Nines—the Nine-Nines being nine periods of nine days each, each period characterized by a certain type of winter weather—started on the day of the Winter Solstice, which occurred here in Mongolia on December 21, according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Second of the Nine Nines begins today, December 30. Known as Khorz Arkhi Khöldönö, this is the time when twice-distilled homemade Mongolian arkhi (vodka) freezes. As you will recall, the first of the Nine-Nines was the time when regular, or once distilled, arkhi freezes. As this indicates, the second period should be colder than the first, since twice distilled arkhi obviously has a much higher alcohol content. This morning at 8:30 it was a relatively balmy Minus 22°F /-30º C, however, and it is supposed to get up to minus 4º F / -20º C today, so we seem to be having a bit of a warm spell. The Third Nine-Nine starts on January 8.

Mongolia | Second Nine Nine | Khorz Arkhi Khöldönö

I mentioned earlier that the First of the Nine-Nines—the Nine-Nines being nine periods of nine days each, each period characterized by a certain type of winter weather—started on the day of the Winter Solstice, which occurred here in Mongolia on December 21, according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Second of the Nine Nines begins today, December 30. Known as Khorz Arkhi Khöldönö, this is the time when twice-distilled homemade Mongolian arkhi (vodka) freezes. As you will recall, the first of the Nine-Nines was the time when regular, or once distilled, arkhi freezes. As this indicates, the second period should be colder than the first, since twice distilled arkhi obviously has a much higher alcohol content. This morning at 8:30 it was a relatively balmy Minus 22°F /-30º C, however, and it is supposed to get up to minus 4º F / -20º C today, so we seem to be having a bit of a warm spell. The Third Nine-Nine starts on January 8.

Uzbekistan | Bukhara | Arab Invasion

By the end of the sixth century Bukhara Was Flourishing, but dangers lurked just beyond the horizon. It was probably around this time that the Sogdians constructed the Kanpirak, or “Old Woman”, the 150 or-more-long wall which surrounded most of the Bukhara Oasis and served as a bulwark against the hostile Turkish nomads who inhabited the deserts and steppes to the north. The invaders who would bring down Sogdiana and forever change the way of life in the Land Beyond the River came not from the north, however, but from the south, in form of Arabs who came proclaiming the new religion of Islam.

The Prophet Muhammed died in June of 632 a.d. Abu Bakr, his father-in-law and senior companion, assumed leadership of the Prophet’s followers and became the first of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs.  The Caliph and his successors had a simple mandate: the spread of Islam, by military conquest if necessary, to the far corners of the world. In the spring of 633 Arab General Khalid ibn Walid, acting under orders from Abu Bakr,  invaded Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), then part of the vast Sassanian Empire stretching from near the shores of the Mediterranean to the Indus River. The incursion faltered after the death of Abu Bakr in 1634, but under this successor the second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab the invasion continued and in September of 636 the Arabs defeated a huge Sassanian army in a three-day battle at the small town of Qadisiyyah, just east of Kufa and about one hundred miles southeast of Baghdad. Not long after the Sassanian imperial capital of Ctesiphon, eighteen miles southeast of Baghdad, surrendered without a fight, and the Sassanian emperor Yazdgird III along with his family and entourage fled eastward, taking refuge behind the natural border of the Zagros Mountains, which separated Mesopotamia from the Iranian Plateau.  In 642 Caliph Umar ordered his Muslim armies over the Zagros Mountains into the Sassanian heartland. Although vastly outnumbered the Arabs soon scored a stunning victory at Nahāvand, about forty miles south of Hamadan in what is now Iran. The Battle of Nahāvand was a death blow to the Sassanians. According to Islamic historian al-Tabari (838–923), “from that day on, there was no further unity among them [the Persians] and the people of the individual provinces fought their own enemies on their own territory.”

Yazdgird III, accompanied by thousands of relatives, hangers-on, and a small contingent of still-loyal troops fled farther eastward to Khorasan, passing through Nishapur and finally reached the then-already ancient city of Merv (fifty-five miles northwest of Mary in current-day Turkmenistan). Envoys which he had dispatched to Sogdians and Turk tribesmen north of the Amu Darya and to the Tang  Dynasty in China seeking aid to renew the battle against the Arabs came away empty-handed. Abandoned by the remainder of his troops, he again took flight and ended up hiding in the flour mill of a Christian miller on the banks of the Mugrab River south of Merv. In 651 he was assassinated, perhaps by the miller himself. After 427 years the Sassanian Empire was finally extinguished.

The same year Arab armies occupied Merv, 120 miles south of the Amu Darya, and Herat, on the western edge of Khorasan, and the following year Balkh, in Tokharistan  (current day northern Afghanistan), just thirty-five miles south of the Amu Darya. The Arabs invaders, now colonists, set up a governorship in Merv and used it as a base for further military forays to the north. Small raiding parties operating out of Merv may have penetrated  Khorezm on the lower Amu Darya in the 660s, but the first substantial campaign north of the Amu Darya took place in 673, when the governor of Khorasan Ubaidullah b. Ziyad led a force across the river to Bukhara. The Arabs were now in Transoxiania, or as they called it, Mawarannahr, literally “that which is beyond the river.”

 At this time Bukhara was still a Sogdian city and according to some accounts it was ruled by a khatun, or queen, who was the mother of the young Tugshada, the nominal Bukhar Khudat (ruler of Bukhara). She negotiated a truce with the Arabs and after paying them tribute of a million dirhams and 4,000 slaves they retreated back south of the river.

 For the next thirty years the Arabs continued to raid Bukhara and other cities in Mawarannahr and Khorezm but after demanding tribute from the local rulers, plundering the countryside, and enslaving Sogdians they continued to return to their bases south of the Amu Darya. In 705 al-Walid I ibn Abd al-Malik became the new Umayyads Caliph in Damascus, and under his reign the actual conquest of Mawarannahr began. Qutaiba b. Muslim, newly appointed governor of Khorasan, led an Arab army across the Amu Darya at Amul and in 706 attacked the city of Paikend at the very southern edge of the Bukhara Oasis.

After a two-month siege the city  fell. Qutaiba left a small garrison of troops and returned to Merv, but soon after his departure the Arab troops were expelled from the city. Qutaiba returned and wrecked horrific revenge, putting the fighting men to death, enslaving the women, and  completely plundering the city. Enormous amounts of booty was seized, including armor and weapons the quality of which amazed the Arabs. The message to the rest of the Zerafshan Valley was clear; submit and pay tribute or face annihilation.

With the destruction of Paikend the way was clear to Bukhara, thirty-one miles to the  northeast. Assaults on Bukhara in 707 and 708 failed, but 709 Bukhara and several other cities in Mawarannahr finally surrendered to Qutaiba. From the Bukharans he  collected tribute of 200,000 dirhams for the Caliph back in Damascus and 20,000 for the governor of Khorasan. A garrison was stationed in the city and every homeowner was made to house and presumably feed Arab troops.

 In 712 Qutaiba built the first mosque in Bukhara on the former site of a temple in the Ark, marking the introduction of Islam into the city. The temple may be been Zoroastrian, or possible even Buddhist. Apparently the local people did not immediately accept Islam, since, according to tenth-century historian of Bukhara Narshakhi, Qutaiba had proclaimed, “Whoever is present at the Friday prayer, I will give two dirhams.” The Quran had to be read in Sogdian, since none of the local people understood Arabic.

For the next hundred years Arabs maintained tenuous control of Bukhara and other cities in Mawarannahr. Revolts by the indigenous Sogdians were frequent, and in 729 they succeeded in expelling the Arabs from Bukhara altogether, although the city was taken a few months later. In the 740s the Abbasids (descendants of Abbas, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad) attempted to seize control of the Islamic geo-sphere from the Umayyads. Their lieutenant in Khorasan and Mawarannahr, Abu Muslim, defeated the Umayyads in 747–748, and local people, believing they were being liberated,  flocked to his banner. They soon realized, however, that the Abbasids, who finally seized the Caliphate in 750,  were no better than the  Umayyads. Revolts and rebellions against the ruling Arabs continued. 

Uzbekistan | Bukhara | Arab Invasion

By the end of the sixth century Bukhara Was Flourishing, but dangers lurked just beyond the horizon. It was probably around this time that the Sogdians constructed the Kanpirak, or “Old Woman”, the 150 or-more-long wall which surrounded most of the Bukhara Oasis and served as a bulwark against the hostile Turkish nomads who inhabited the deserts and steppes to the north. The invaders who would bring down Sogdiana and forever change the way of life in the Land Beyond the River came not from the north, however, but from the south, in form of Arabs who came proclaiming the new religion of Islam.

The Prophet Muhammed died in June of 632 a.d. Abu Bakr, his father-in-law and senior companion, assumed leadership of the Prophet’s followers and became the first of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs.  The Caliph and his successors had a simple mandate: the spread of Islam, by military conquest if necessary, to the far corners of the world. In the spring of 633 Arab General Khalid ibn Walid, acting under orders from Abu Bakr,  invaded Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), then part of the vast Sassanian Empire stretching from near the shores of the Mediterranean to the Indus River. The incursion faltered after the death of Abu Bakr in 1634, but under this successor the second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab the invasion continued and in September of 636 the Arabs defeated a huge Sassanian army in a three-day battle at the small town of Qadisiyyah, just east of Kufa and about one hundred miles southeast of Baghdad. Not long after the Sassanian imperial capital of Ctesiphon, eighteen miles southeast of Baghdad, surrendered without a fight, and the Sassanian emperor Yazdgird III along with his family and entourage fled eastward, taking refuge behind the natural border of the Zagros Mountains, which separated Mesopotamia from the Iranian Plateau.  In 642 Caliph Umar ordered his Muslim armies over the Zagros Mountains into the Sassanian heartland. Although vastly outnumbered the Arabs soon scored a stunning victory at Nahāvand, about forty miles south of Hamadan in what is now Iran. The Battle of Nahāvand was a death blow to the Sassanians. According to Islamic historian al-Tabari (838–923), “from that day on, there was no further unity among them [the Persians] and the people of the individual provinces fought their own enemies on their own territory.”

Yazdgird III, accompanied by thousands of relatives, hangers-on, and a small contingent of still-loyal troops fled farther eastward to Khorasan, passing through Nishapur and finally reached the then-already ancient city of Merv (fifty-five miles northwest of Mary in current-day Turkmenistan). Envoys which he had dispatched to Sogdians and Turk tribesmen north of the Amu Darya and to the Tang  Dynasty in China seeking aid to renew the battle against the Arabs came away empty-handed. Abandoned by the remainder of his troops, he again took flight and ended up hiding in the flour mill of a Christian miller on the banks of the Mugrab River south of Merv. In 651 he was assassinated, perhaps by the miller himself. After 427 years the Sassanian Empire was finally extinguished.

The same year Arab armies occupied Merv, 120 miles south of the Amu Darya, and Herat, on the western edge of Khorasan, and the following year Balkh, in Tokharistan  (current day northern Afghanistan), just thirty-five miles south of the Amu Darya. The Arabs invaders, now colonists, set up a governorship in Merv and used it as a base for further military forays to the north. Small raiding parties operating out of Merv may have penetrated  Khorezm on the lower Amu Darya in the 660s, but the first substantial campaign north of the Amu Darya took place in 673, when the governor of Khorasan Ubaidullah b. Ziyad led a force across the river to Bukhara. The Arabs were now in Transoxiania, or as they called it, Mawarannahr, literally “that which is beyond the river.”

 At this time Bukhara was still a Sogdian city and according to some accounts it was ruled by a khatun, or queen, who was the mother of the young Tugshada, the nominal Bukhar Khudat (ruler of Bukhara). She negotiated a truce with the Arabs and after paying them tribute of a million dirhams and 4,000 slaves they retreated back south of the river.

 For the next thirty years the Arabs continued to raid Bukhara and other cities in Mawarannahr and Khorezm but after demanding tribute from the local rulers, plundering the countryside, and enslaving Sogdians they continued to return to their bases south of the Amu Darya. In 705 al-Walid I ibn Abd al-Malik became the new Umayyads Caliph in Damascus, and under his reign the actual conquest of Mawarannahr began. Qutaiba b. Muslim, newly appointed governor of Khorasan, led an Arab army across the Amu Darya at Amul and in 706 attacked the city of Paikend at the very southern edge of the Bukhara Oasis.

After a two-month siege the city  fell. Qutaiba left a small garrison of troops and returned to Merv, but soon after his departure the Arab troops were expelled from the city. Qutaiba returned and wrecked horrific revenge, putting the fighting men to death, enslaving the women, and  completely plundering the city. Enormous amounts of booty was seized, including armor and weapons the quality of which amazed the Arabs. The message to the rest of the Zerafshan Valley was clear; submit and pay tribute or face annihilation.

With the destruction of Paikend the way was clear to Bukhara, thirty-one miles to the  northeast. Assaults on Bukhara in 707 and 708 failed, but 709 Bukhara and several other cities in Mawarannahr finally surrendered to Qutaiba. From the Bukharans he  collected tribute of 200,000 dirhams for the Caliph back in Damascus and 20,000 for the governor of Khorasan. A garrison was stationed in the city and every homeowner was made to house and presumably feed Arab troops.

 In 712 Qutaiba built the first mosque in Bukhara on the former site of a temple in the Ark, marking the introduction of Islam into the city. The temple may be been Zoroastrian, or possible even Buddhist. Apparently the local people did not immediately accept Islam, since, according to tenth-century historian of Bukhara Narshakhi, Qutaiba had proclaimed, “Whoever is present at the Friday prayer, I will give two dirhams.” The Quran had to be read in Sogdian, since none of the local people understood Arabic.

For the next hundred years Arabs maintained tenuous control of Bukhara and other cities in Mawarannahr. Revolts by the indigenous Sogdians were frequent, and in 729 they succeeded in expelling the Arabs from Bukhara altogether, although the city was taken a few months later. In the 740s the Abbasids (descendants of Abbas, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad) attempted to seize control of the Islamic geo-sphere from the Umayyads. Their lieutenant in Khorasan and Mawarannahr, Abu Muslim, defeated the Umayyads in 747–748, and local people, believing they were being liberated,  flocked to his banner. They soon realized, however, that the Abbasids, who finally seized the Caliphate in 750,  were no better than the  Umayyads. Revolts and rebellions against the ruling Arabs continued. 

Tajikistan | More On Rudaki

Still trying to straighten out where 10th century Persian Poet Rudaki was born and buried. As noted earlier, a source in Samarkand indicated that he may have been born near the Town of Urgut in Uzbekistan, very close to the Tajikistan border. Most written sources indicate, however, that he was born and buried in the village of Panjrud (also spelled Panj Rud, Panjrudak, Panj Rudak, etc.) in Tajikistan. Traveler Nicholas Jubber was apparently in Panj Rud and in his book Drinking Arak Off An Ayatollah’s Beard says that Rudaki is buried there, but says nothing about where he was born. This Panj Rud is about twenty-six miles east-southeast of Panjkend, up the valley of a tributary of the Zerafshan River.

Map showing location of Panj Rud (click on image for enlargement)

This Site shows photos of what is apparently Panj Rud, although unfortunately there are no captions (photos below from the website).

 Mountains looming above what is apparently the village of Panj Rud

 Presumably the Mausoleum of Rudaki in Panj Rud

 Presumably a statue of Rudaki in Panj Rud

A billboard in Panj Rud with what is presumably an example of Rudaki’s poetry. It reads “There is no happiness in this world greater than a glimpse of a friend’s face”. Thanks to Abbas Daiyar for the translation.)

 There is also a monument and statue to Rudaki in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. 

I have never been in Tajikistan, but the last time I was in Samarkand I was told that tourist agencies  there could get a one-day Tajikistan visa for people who want to visit the famous ruins of Panjakend, thirty-seven miles east of Samarkand and eleven miles within Tajikistan. They also arrange for you to get back into Uzbekistan at the end of the day if you have only a single-entry Uzbek visa. Presumably one could also visit Panj Rud in one day also. I might just try this the next time I am in Samarkand.