Iran | Tabriz | Church of St. Stephanos

At ten I met Hamid and Masud in the lobby for our trip to the Church  of St. Stephanos. Although of course mainly concerned with the history of the Ilkhanate in Iran, I am also interested in monuments which pre-date the Mongol occupation and have managed to survive down to the present day. There are wildly differing opinions about how old St. Stephanos Church is, but it is possible that at least some parts of it were built before the Ilkhanate period. 

An inch of fresh snow has fallen overnight, but the roads are bare by the time we start out. Just beyond our hotel we pass by a large parking lot where an Ashura ceremony is taking place. In front of a flat-bed truck with loudspeakers a group of actors in notionally seventh century costumes play out the deaths of Muhammad’s grandson Husain and his family and supporters at the hands of the Umayyads. The Umayyad villains are dressed in red. In a ring around the actors are several hundred spectators, almost all the women dressed in black chadors. Hamid does not offer to stop, and I do not ask to. I get the feeling this ceremony is not intended as a spectator event for non-Muslim foreigners. I read to him Evliya’s account of Ashura from 1640s, and he points outs the ritual blood-letting described by Evliya was outlawed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the president of Iran from 1981 to 1989, although it is still practiced in some other countries. 

The city of Tabriz sits in a bowl surrounded by rust-covered hills, now lightly dusted with snow. North of the city we emerge out onto rolling steppe broken up by outcroppings and ridges of red rock. When the Mongols first arrived in this region in 1220 the expansive steppe had immediately caught their attention, since it provided adequate grazing for their horses, something not always available in other parts of Persia. Also, the terrain was very similar to some areas of Mongolia, which may have helped assuage any homesickness they were experiencing on a long campaign far from their homeland. 

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After passing through several small towns we arrive at the small city of Julfa, on south bank of the Aras River, about seventy miles northwest of Tabriz. The river here is the border between Iran and Azerbaijan, or, more precisely, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an exclave separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by a southern extension of Armenia, which joins with the Iranian border about twenty-seven miles east of here. Although considered a part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan, covering 2120 square miles—almost twice the size of Rhode Island—and with a population of 410,000, has been an autonomous region since 1990 and is governed by its own elected legislature. On the north side of the Aras River is the Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan) city of Julfa. This Julfa made international headlines back in the 1990s when the nearby Armenian Christian cemetery containing thousands of elaborately carved tombstones, many considered historical monuments, were reportedly destroyed by Azerbaijanis, despite the protests of UNESCO and other international bodies. 

Map courtesy of Nationsonline (click on photos for enlargements)

According to legend, the Julfa on the north side of the Aras was found by Tigranes I, King of Armenia from 115 b.c. to 95 b.c. It would have been part of the Kingdom of Greater Armenia, which lasted from  321 b.c to 428 a.d., and at its height stretched from the the Caspian Sea in the east to near the Black Sea in the west and from Georgia in the north to the Mesopotamian plain in the south. 

Greater Armenia (© Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons)

By the time the Mongols arrived in the thirteenth century it was a sizable city populated almost entirely by Armenians. In the following centuries it became a major trade entrepôt linking the Iranian Plateau, Inner Asia, and India with Russia, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Basin. In the late sixteenth century is was captured by the expansionist Ottoman Turks. In 1603 the Safavid ruler Abbas Shah retook the city, but he soon realized he could not hold it against the continuing onslaughts of the Ottomans. In 1605 he deported the citizens of the city—over three thousand families —deep into Safavid territory, most of them eventually taking up resident near Esfahan, and burned the city to the ground rather than let it slip into Ottoman hands. Later a village grew up amidst the ruins and a larger settlement was established adjacent to it. The Persians eventually retook the area, and this new settlement became part of the Nakhchivan Khanate, a Persian vassal state. Following the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828 the Khanate was ceded to Russia, and Sulfa became an official border crossing point between Persia and the Russian Empire. In time the Iranian city of Sulja grew up on the south side the Aras River. The two Julfas are currently linked by a road bridge and a railway bridge. 

Iranian Julfa is now the center of the Aras Free Trade Zone (AFTZ), established by the Iranian government in 2003. The thirty-seven square-mile free trade zone, which borders on the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan, serves as a conduit for goods to and from Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the UAE, and Taiwan. Machinery parts, electrical   appliances, helicopters, glassware, glue, tea, turmeric, various types of dried nuts, clothes, tires, and much else pass through the free trade zone, but perhaps the most important trade items, and certainly the most visible, are cars. The approaches to Julfa are lined with car dealers with hundred of cars lined up on their lots. Hamid, it turns out, is a car buff. His dream, he says, is to own the latest model BMW. He ogles the cars on the lots and at one point shouts, “Look at that! An American muscle-car!” (I didn’t catch the make, and I forgot to ask what a “muscle car” actually is). He asks if on our return from Church of St. Stephanos he can make a couple of quick stops at car dealers to check prices. Expensive cars, like Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, he claims, are five to ten thousand dollars cheaper here than in Tehran, where he lives. 

In Julfa itself we drive by another Ashura ceremony much like the one we saw in Tabriz. In front of a flatbed truck with loudspeakers a group of costumed actors, the Umayyad villains in red, play out the solemn drama of the deaths of Muhammad’s grandson Husain and his family and supporters. Several hundred spectators surround the actors. Just past the Ashura ceremony our driver spots a crowd of men in front of a one-story shopping center. Many are holding plastic clamshell containers in their hands and shoveling what looks like rice into their mouths with their fingers. Apparently part of the Ashura ceremony involves dispensing free food to the public. Evliya Celebi commented on this practice in Tabriz in the 1640s:

Another marvelous and noteworthy spectacle is the Ashura ceremony held every year on the tenth day of Muharram. All the notables and citizens, young and old, come out to [the] polo grounds where they pitch their tents and stay for three days and three nights. They boil innumerable cauldrons of Ashura pudding, in remembrance of the martyrs in the plain of Karbala, and distribute it among rich and poor alike, devoting the religious merit accrued thereby to those martyrs’ spirits.

 “You should try the Ashura meal. It’s free!” says Hamid. In the vestibule of the shopping center four men are ladling a simple rice and mutton plov out of an enormous basin. The leader spots me, an obvious foreigner, and asks Hamid where I am from. Hamid says I am an American. “From America!” shouts the man, “Tell him if he accepts this food he must convert to Islam!” This was apparently meant as a jest, since many of the bystanders burst out laughing. He handed me my clamshell portion with a big smile on his face. Several men came forward to shake my hand. A couple guys insist I pose with them while their friends take photos with their cell phones. Another guy hurries up with spoons for the city guys and their foreign guest who of course cannot be expected to eat with their fingers. Masud has instant coffee, tea bags, a thermos of hot water, and a big box of Persian pastries in the trunk of our car. We stand around the open trunk and enjoy our impromptu lunch of rice and mutton. I am reminded of the rice with raisins often handed out during ceremonies at Buddhist temples in Mongolia. 

About two miles west of Julfa, hard by the banks of the Aras River, we stop at the Khajeh Nasar Caravanserai. Usually, Hamid claims, it is possible to enter the interior of the caravanserai, but today the big entrance door is closed and locked, perhaps because of Ashura, and we must be content with viewing the outside of the structure. The caravanserai had been built by the Armenian trader Khajeh Nazar Armani. He was one of the Armenians deported, as mentioned earlier, to the Esfahan area by Shah Abbas back at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In Esfahan Khajeh Nazar Armani flourished as a trader, amassing a sizable fortune, and soon caught the attention of Shah Abbas himself. With Shah Abbas’s approval he returned to his homeland and built two caravanserais, the one here and another directly across the river. The caravanserai on the north side of the river apparently no longer exists. The remaining caravanserai, measuring about 130 feet by 200 feet, consists a courtyard lined on three sides by quarters for traveling merchants and storage rooms. A handsome structure of brick and cut stone, it no doubt rated the seventeenth century equivalent of five stars. In the seventeenth century the next stop south of the caravanserai was reportedly the town of Shoja, about six and half miles away. This may indicate the the Iranian town of Julfa, now three miles from the caravanserai, may not have existed at this time. 

Khajeh Nasar Caravanserai. The cliffs in the distance are in Azerbaijan.

Unable to enter the building I stroll to the bank of the Aras to take photos. About two hundred yards away two soldiers step out of a checkpoint guardhouse and stare in my direction. “We better go,” says Hamid, “Taking photos of the caravanserai is OK, but they may wonder why you are taking photos of Azerbaijan, across the river.” 

Aras River, with the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on the other side

We drive on to checkpoint, where we are stopped, but Masud banters with the two young conscripts, who look to be teenagers, and they wave us on without asking to see our papers. Not far past the checkpoint, at the base of the cliffs on the left, a stone tower with a cone-shaped roof looms above high stone walls. This is the Nakheirchi Church. Hamid explains that in Azeri, the language of Azerbaijan which is spoken by most people in this area, nakheir means “herd of cattle”. A nakheirchi is a cattle herder. According to local legend a cattle herder built this church so that his fellow herders would have a place to pray while they were out tending their cattle. The gate to the high-walled compound is locked, whether for Ashura or not Hamid does not know, so we drive on. 

Nakheirchi Church

The Aras River valley narrows here, flanked on either side by barren rust and mustard-tinted cliffs and ramparts. I would like to take photos, but Hamid points to the  manned guard towers on the Azerbaijani side of the river and suggests that this is not a good idea. Another six miles west up the Aras valley a defile lined with trees leads into the soaring ramparts to our left. We turn off on a narrow lane and half a mile later come to the Church of St. Stephanos parking lot. It is deserted except for a guy with a broom sitting on a bench. He informs us that church grounds are open, but the church itself is closed for Ashura. 

Lane leading to the church

A short walk up a tree-lined lane brings us to the substantial walls of of the church compound. Off to the right is a prodigious spring which debouches into pond where a small flock of ducks gambol. This spring is no doubt why the church was originally established on this site. Scattered among the trees are benches and picnic areas. Hamid, who had been here before, says that the lush oasis-like surroundings tucked in here amidst the otherwise sere and barren terrain  attract day-trippers from as far away as Tabriz and beyond. On other holidays the place can get quite crowded. This is first time he has ever seen the place deserted. We check the large gates leading into the church compound, but they are indeed locked. I will have to be content with viewing the church from outside the compound.

 Spring with wonderful water; no doubt why the church was founded here.

Pond fed by the spring

Fortress-like walls of the Church compound

 Church behind the fortress walls

 Entrance to the church compound

Front of the church

Greater Armenia, which included the valley of the Aras River, became Christian in a.d. 301, making it the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion. (The little known statelet of Osrhoene, in what is now southeastern Turkey, with its capital in Edessa (modern-day Sanliurfa), may have actually been the first officially Christian state, but it proved so ephemeral that most historians ignore it and credit Armenia). In the centuries following its adoption of Christianity Armenia would have been in the heartland of the Faith, not an outlier as it is today. The name of the church here in the Aras valley links it to the very earliest days of Christianity. Stephen (Greek = Stephanos), was one of the seven deacons appointed by the Twelve Apostles to distribute food to the poor and needy. According to the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, he was stoned to death after he made a speech which was deemed blasphemous by the local Jewish authorities. This won him the title of Protomartyr, the very first martyr of Christianity. Saul of Tarsus, later the Apostle Paul, witnessed the execution, and Stephen’s steadfast devotion to Christianity may have had something to do with his own eventual conversion to the faith. 

According to legend, a church was founded on this spot in the first century a.d. by Saint Bartholomew, one of the original Twelve Apostles. This tale is no doubt apocryphal; in any case, no one is claiming that any of the current structures date from this era. According to a sign post on the grounds at least one part of the church does date back to at the seventh century. Other sources, most of them admittedly ephemeral (scholarly literature on the subject is scarce), make no mention of this seventh century edifice but instead claim that the complex was built sometime in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, or twelfth centuries. 

It is tempting to think that the St. Stephanos complex was built during the rule of the Bagratuni Dynasty (884–1045) when Armenia freed itself from Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate and went on to enjoy more than a century and a half of independence. During this period Armenia experienced a cultural renaissance, especially in the field of architecture. The capital city of Ani (now in Turkey) became known as the city of “40 gates and 1001 churches.” Among the churches was a magnificent cathedral built in 998-1000 under the direction of the renowned architect Tiridates. There is, however, no direct evidence linking the Church of St. Stephanos to the Bagratid era. 

Bagratuni Armenia (© Sémhur / Wikimedia Commons)

In 1236 Armenia, then ruled by the Zakarian Dynasty, became a vassal state of the Mongols, who had arrived in the area as early as 1220. At first Christianity flourished under the Mongols. Sorqaqtani, the mother of the first Ilkhan, Khülegü, was a staunch Nestorian Christian, as was Khülegü’s wife, Dokuz Khatun, who like a true nomad maintained a movable church in her camp. Khülegü’s son, the second Ilkhan Abaqa, likewise encouraged Christianity, although he himself apparently leaned toward Buddhism. He did marry a Christian, the Byzantine princess Mary Palaiologina, the illegitimate daughter of Byzantine emperor Michael VIII. Christianity’s favored status in the Ilkhanate ended with the accession of the Ilkhan Ghazan in 1295. He converted to Islam the same year and almost immediately launched a campaign against other religions. Buddhists, not being “People of the Book”— followers of the Abrahamic religions who have a revealed scripture and recognize one and only one God—were ordered to convert to Islam or leave the territory of the Ilkhanate and their temples were destroyed. Christians and Jews lost the privileges they had enjoyed earlier and were forced to pay a special poll-tax. In effect, they  became second class citizens. Apparently they were allowed to keep their churches and synagogues, so it is possible that the Church and Monastery of Stephanos survived the Mongol era intact. 

One Armenian scholar goes on to claim, however, that over the centuries many of the original buildings in the complex, including those which survived the Ilkhanate, were destroyed by earthquakes and that most of the now remaining structures were built or rebuilt during the reign of the Safavid Shah Abbas the Second (1642–1666). Thus the history of this notable landmark—it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site—remains surprisingly speculative. 

According to one modern source:

The beautiful murals on the dome and the relief works above and below it are crafted with a precision that must place this work among the few artistic marvels of the world. Not limited to the domes, the murals, and the ornamentation of the vaults and arches at the entry, this beautiful artistry extends to all the arches and vaults of the western walls, to the pillars, columns and capitals, and to the decorative work both in the interior and exterior of the building.

Unfortunately, none of this is visible from outside the compound walls. I climb the hill behind the complex in hopes of getting a view of the interior of the compound. I am rewarded with panoramic view of the church set against the background of the colorful cliffs on the other side of the Aras River, but few of the details of the church itself or the monastery buildings can be seen. I tell Hamid to go back to the car and wait for me while I spend an hour mediating on the thousand years or more of history encapsulated here. A kaleidoscopic array of images flit through my mind, but when I try to envision what will be here one thousand years hence my mind comes up blank.

 View of church from above

 Detail of church 

 Detail of church. Notice how the stones of the steeple seem to mimic the colors in the cliffs beyond. 

Iran | Tabriz | Covered Bazaar | Tea

Wandered by Tabriz, a city of some 1.7 million souls—the fifth largest city in Iran. In 1655 the legendary Turkish gadabout Evliya Çelebi ((1611–1682; his mammoth Book of Travels—ten volumes, only eight have survived—is what his translator calls “probably the longest and most ambitious travel account by any writer in any language.”) spent two months in Tabriz and observed:

. . . in the entire kingdom of Persia there is no city and no countryside as fine as Tabriz, the ravisher of hearts . . . It is a large and ancient city with delightful climate, lovely boys and girls, lofty buildings and numerous foundations and institutions. May God allow that it will once again belong to the Ottomans [the Ottoman Turks had occupied Tabriz from 1585 to 1603] . . . may God Most High cause it to flourish forever!

Hotel in Tabriz where I stayed (click on photos for enlargements)

View of Tabriz from my hotel room

While in the city I visited the famous Tabriz Bazaar, said to be the largest covered bazaar in the world. It covers 66.7 acres, with 3.41 miles of passageways and 5500 shops. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, while ranking as the biggest single tourist attraction in the world, with over 91,000,000 visitors a year, has between three and four thousand shops. The largest mall in the United States, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota covers more space than the Tabriz Bazaar—96.4 acres total with 56.8 acres devoted to 530-some shops—but many would argue that it is not a covered bazaar in the classic sense of the term but rather a New World mutation.

Gallery in the Tabriz Bazaar

Of course I gravitated to the tea shops. Here tea is sold by the kilo out of big wooden bins, as God intended, not in ridiculous little tea bags.

Tea for sale in the Tabriz Bazaar

 Green tea (Chai Sabz) grown in Lahijan, a city in Gilan Province in northern Iran, just south of the Caspian Sea). The sign indicates that this tea is Chin Bahara (spring pick). I like that they say when the tea is picked. Freshness is crucial with green tea.

Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage | Flora |Black-eyed and Brown-eyed Susans

See Black-eyed and Brown-eyed Susans over at Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage.

Brown-eyed Susan

Iran | Sultaniyya | Mausoleum of Ilkhan Ölziit

Wandered by the town of Sultaniyya, site of the mausoleum of Öljeitü (Ölziit in Mongolian), the eighth Ilkhan. Ölziit was the great-grandson Khülegü Khan, founder of the Ilkhanate, and the great-great-great-grandson of Chingis Khan. It was Ölziit (r. 1305–1316) who had moved the capital of the Ilkhanate from Tabriz to Sultaniyya, 175 miles to the southeast. At the insistence of his mother Uruk Khatun, a Nestorian Christian, he had been baptized as a Christian and given the name Nicholas. When he was still in his teens, however, he married a Muslim girl, and apparently under her influence he converted to Islam. At first he was a Sunni Muslim, but he eventually became disillusioned by Nit-Picking Sunni Jurists and switched to Shiism. Perhaps to burnish his credentials as a Shiite he hatched a scheme to move the bodies of the two proto-martyrs of Shiism, Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and Ali’s son Husain, from their shrines in Iraq to Sultaniyya and house them in an enormous mausoleum of his own making. It is not quite clear if he also intended the building to be a mausoleum for himself.  The mausoleum was built, but the plan to move the remains of Ali and Husain to Sultaniyya came to naught.  The building ended up as the repository for Ölziit’s own remains. 

The structure is 161 feet high, with a dome eighty-four feet in diameter, reportedly the third largest brick dome in the world. Larger are the brick domes of the Cathedral of Florence in Italy (138 feet), and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (103 feet). Apart from brick domes, the largest dome in the world is the steel dome of Cowboys Stadium in Texas, built by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the Khülegü of our age (click on photos for enlargements).

For comparison, here is the dome of Hagia Sophia

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

Mausoleum of Ölziit

The vast interior of the mausoleum is undergoing renovation 

Interior of the mausoleum

The interior of the mausoleum was once covered with decoration. This eight-foot high panel is one of few surviving examples.

Catacomb under the mausoleum. This space may have been built for the remains of Ali and Husain.

The open walkway just below the dome

The open walkway just below the dome

Decoration of walkway

Decoration of walkway

Detail of decoration

View of Sultaniyya from open walkway.  Sultaniyya, once the capital of the Ilkhanate, is now a sleepy little town with a population of just over 5000. The freeway from Tehran to Tabriz passes by three miles away and many people make a side trip to Sultaniyya for its justly famous kebabs. We had  mutton kebabs in Sultaniyya and they certainly lived up to their reputation.  

Iran | Alamut | Assassins

Wandered by Alamut, the old stronghold of the Nizari Ismailis, better known in the Occident as the Assassins. The fortress was founded in 1090 by Hassan-i Sabbah and lasted until 1256, when it was finally conquered by Khülegü Khan, grandson of Chingis Khan. 

Elburz Mountains west of Alamut (click on photos for enlargements)

The village of Gazor Khan on the left and the Alamut massif on the right

Sign welcoming tourists to Gazor Khan

The Alamut Massif

When we arrived at the village we were told by local people that there had been a big snow storm the week before and the backside of the massif was still covered with deep drifts. They claimed it was impossible to reach the fortress at the top. We decided to try anyhow and started up the first of the staircases leading to the summit.  We had not gone far when a group of Iranian tourists, three men and two women from Tehran, came stumbling down. They confirmed that it was impossible to reach the fortress because of the snow. This was quite a disappointment, considering that visiting the ruins of Alamut was one of my main reasons for coming to Iran.   

The first staircase. Although it does not look so daunting in this photo, it was actually quite treacherous. Above this staircase, the back side of the mountain was completely drifted shut.

The massif of Alamut in the foreground

Another view of the massif. The fortress buildings can just be seen at the top

Another view of the fortress at the top of the massif

Another view of the fortress at the top of the massif (middle of photo). The column-like structures on the snow covered ridge behind the massif look manmade, but actually they are natural rock formations. 

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Seventh Nine Nine | Doviin Tolgoi Borlono

The Seventh of the so-called Nine-Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—began on February 14. The Seventh of the Nine-Nines is Doviin Tolgoi Borlono, the “time when the tops of the hills become brown.” It is still relatively cold,—18ºF at 4:oo AM with an expected high of 18ºF this afternoon,  but snow has melted off a lot of hilltops, including the top of Zaisan Tolgoi (Nobleman’s Hill),  the hill that gives my neighborhood its name. 

Zaisan Tolgoi

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Sixth Nine-Nine | Zuraasan Zam Garnai

The sixth of the so-called Nine Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—begins February 5. This is Zuraasan Zam Garnai, the Time When the Trail of the Road Appears. This description would seem to indicate a slight warming from the previous Nine-Nines, a time when well-traveled trails become free from ice and snow. We did have a slight warm spell, with temperatures getting up to the high teens on some afternoons. At 4:00 AM today the temperature was —20ºF with a high of —4ºF expected this afternoon. 

Actually, in days past it has been warmer here than in the town nearest to my Summer Retreat in the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania. 

Mongolia | New Book | Wanders in the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia | Burkhan Khaldun of the Uriangkhai and Chingis Khan’s Hitching Post

I made my first trip into the Khentii Mountains in 1997. While we were riding up the east bank of the Kherlen Gol Zevgee pointed out to our left the summit of 7534-foot Erdene Uul. On the ridgeline just south of the summit could be seen a protuberance of rock that Zevgee said was known as Chingis Khan’s Hitching Post. According to local legend Chingis and the rest of his army tied their horses to this stone hitching post. “What was a whole army doing near the summit of a 7,534-foot mountain?” I wondered. “No, no,” Zevgee had replied, “Only Chingis Khan tied his horse to the Hitching Post. Look other there,” he went on, pointing to a mountain on the other side of the valley six or seven miles away. “That mountain is called Dash Norov. On the ridge to the left you can see another rock that was used as a hitching post.” Indeed, there was a small bump on the ridge. “Chingis Khan’s armies stretched a rope between the rock on Erdene Uul and the rock on Dash Norov and to this rope they tethered their horses.” I burst out laughing. I had thought he had been referring to actual hitching posts, but obviously this is just a phantasmagorical legend. But when my translator explained why I was laughing Zevgee replied enigmatically, “Who knows? Maybe things were different in those days.” 

Passing by Erdene Uul that first time I had asked Zevgee if it was possible to ride horses up to Chingis Khan‘s Hitching Post. He had been there himself, he said, the trail was difficult but doable. I filed this information away for the future. When l later learned that the authors of the Chinggis Khan Atlas had posited that Erdene Uul was the Burkhan Khaldun of Uriangkhai and that it was on this mountain that Temüjin, the future Chingis Khan, had escaped from the Merkids who had kidnapped his wife I decided to return and ascend the mountain myself.

I showed up at Zevgee’s ger at the confluence of the Kherlen Gol and the Terelj Gol, ten miles northeast of the village of Möngönmort, unannounced. With me was Delgermaa, a woman in her early twenties whom I had enlisted as translator and factotum. I figured the ascent of Erdene Uul, which was only fourteen miles north of Zevgee’s ger, should take no more than three days. By that time Zevgee had turned over the handling of his sheep, cow, and horse herds to his sons, and I was hoping that he would have free time to do the trip. We retired to Zevgee’s ger where I offered his wife Tumen-Ölzii a kilo of hard candies and a large watermelon I had brought along from Ulaanbaatar. As we refreshed ourselves with milk tea, homemade cheese (byaslag ), and fried bread (boortsog) I explained to Zevgee that I wanted to make a horse trip to Chingis Khan’s Hitching Post on Erdene Uul, which he had pointed out to me on our first trip together. He laughed and said, “I knew you would come back someday to visit that mountain . . .” Continued.

Erdene Uul

Chingis Khan’s Hitching Post

Wanders in the Khentii Mountains

of Mongolia

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Full Moon

The Full Snow Moon occurs here today at 6:09 AM. The Moon will be 230,536 miles from the Earth at this time. 

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac:

Other names for this month’s Moon have historically had a connection to animals. The Cree traditionally called this the Bald Eagle Moon or Eagle Moon. The Ojibwe Bear Moon and Tlingit Black Bear Moon refer to the time when bear cubs are born. The Dakota also call this the Raccoon Moon; certain Algonquin peoples named it the Groundhog Moon, and the Haida named it Goose Moon. Another theme of this month’s Moon names is scarcity. The Cherokee names of Month of the Bony Moon and Hungry Moon give evidence to the fact that food was hard to come by at this time.

Lunar Forecast for tonight:

Starts Feb 2, 2026 06:20 PM

Ends Feb 3, 2026 07:40 PM

Undertaking:

After a stormy second phase of the moon, on the sixteenth day is a day of peace and tranquility. It is not necessary to begin large and complex affairs that require great effort. Devote this day to beginning uncomplicated small projects. With the new lunar phase it is good to introduce new habits. Start changing your schedule to suit your biorhythms and see how your productivity changes. You can get good results if you start working on your health: signing up for a workout, starting a treatment regimen, etc. Avoid losing sense of calm and balance. Avoid negative thoughts, aggression, screaming and anger, hate and jealousy, being provocative and loud. Animal food is not recommended. Sex is not recommended.

Mongolia | Khentii Mountains | New Book | Burkhan Khaldun Khora

The Khentii Mountain Range includes the headwaters of the Tuul, Onon, and Kherlen rivers—an area known as the Three Rivers Region.

In 1997 I did a ten-day horse trip to the Onon Hot Springs and the beginning of the Onon River in Khentii Aimag, northeast of Ulaanbaatar, as described in my book Wanders in Northern Mongolia. On the return leg of the trip I ascended 7,749-foot Burkhan Khaldun, also known as Khentii Khan Uul, arguably the most sacred mountain in Mongolia. The mountain is mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century account of the rise of the Mongols under Chingis Khan, and it was here, according to the Secret History, that Temüjin—the future Chingis Khan—hid from the Merkid tribesmen who had kidnapped his wife and wanted to capture him. According to legend, Chingis Khan also came here to pray before embarking on his military campaigns. Later the mountain would be inextricably bound up in the cult of Chingis Khan and also become a pilgrimage site for Buddhists. Still later some would claim that Chingis Khan was born near Burkhan Khaldun and was buried on its summit.

Not long after my trip two Mongolian historians, D. Bazargür and D. Enkhbayar, published a book entitled Chinggis Khaan Atlas. The Atlas contained thirty-seven maps (including insets) depicting in great detail the locations of many places and events mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols. After I had studied the Atlas in detail and interviewed Bazargür and Enkhbayar I decided that I would return to the Burkhan Khaldun area and visit some of the places shown on the maps. 

In the meantime I had made a pilgrimage to 21,778-foot Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain in Tibet worshipped by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Bönpos (followers of the Bön religion), shamans, and others, and by then also a favorite destination for adventure tourism. No one is allowed to climb to the summit of Mount Kailash, but thousands of people a year circumambulate the mountain via a thirty-two-mile-long path. A pilgrimage circuit of a sacred place like Kailash is known as a khora. Khoras are always done clockwise around the sacred place or object, unless you are a contrarian Bönpo, who do khoras counter-clockwise (I encountered several Bönpos walking counter-clockwise around Mount Kailash). The Kailash khora, the high point of which is the 18,200-foot Drölma Pass, is a strenuous endeavor. The week I was in the Kailash area at least ten people perished while circumambulating the mountain. Several, reportedly, were elderly Hindus from India who may have come here, consciously or unconsciously, to transmigrate at this sacred place. Some hardy Tibetans, however, do the khora in one day. Most people take two or three days (I made it in two and a half days).

Mount Kailash

After returning from Kailash I got the idea of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun, which without stretching the imagination too much could be considered Mongolia’s equivalent of Mount Kailash. I would of course not do the khora on foot but by horse, the traditional mode of travel in Mongolia. From what I could determine in Ulaanbaatar from talking to knowledgeable people, including several lamas familiar with sacred mountains, there was no tradition of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun. I was assured, however, that there was no law, custom, or tradition forbidding a khora of the mountain. Burkhan Khaldun was within the boundaries of the 4,740 square-mile Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, the Mongolian equivalent of a national park, and permits were needed to make extended trips in the area, but these could be easily obtained from the Strictly Protected Area offices in Ulaanbaatar . . . Continued.

Route of Burkhan Khaldun Khora

Approaching the summit of Burkhan Khaldun

Wanders in the Khentii Mountains
of Mongolia

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | Flora | Asters

See Asters over at Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail.

Azure Aster

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Fifth Nine-Nine | Waxing Gibbous Moon | Tavisan Budaa Khöldökhgui

The Fifth of the Nine-Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—began on January 27. This is Tavisan Budaa Khöldökhgui, the time when “Cooked Rice Cannot Be Frozen.” I must admit I really don’t understand the definition of this period. Maybe someone can explain it to me? Anyhow, this morning, the fourth day of the fifth Nine-Nine, the temperature at 4:00 AM was  —20º F with a high this afternoon projected to be 7ºF. This is considerable warmer than the Fourth Nine-Nine, when temperatures got down to –44ºF, so maybe we are over the hump as far as cold weather is concerned. 

Today is also the 12th Moon Day. The Waxing Gibbous Moon is 87.5% illuminated.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

The Full Snow Moon will occur here on February 2 at 6:09 AM.