Mosques, Medrassas, Mausoleums and Minarets, Bukhara, Uzbekistan

I don't think that this blog would ever be complete without some photos of the majestic architectural sights of Uzbekistan.

My favorite city by far in Uzbekistan was Bukhara, I'm not sure if it was because we stayed in a nice hotel there or if it really was a stand out from Khiva and Samarkand!

A bit of history for you....Officially Bukhara was founded in 500BC, however the region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennium. The city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion and is located on the Silk Road, otherwise we wouldn't have gone there of course.

The most famous of all the architectural wonders of Bukhara is the Po-i-Kalyan complex, which means "The foot of the Great". This is a square with the Kalyan minaret towering over it at 45.6 meters high. Back when the Uzbeks were still enforcing capital punishment (which is frighteningly not that long ago) they would march their criminals/victims to the top of the minaret, put them inside a sack and throw them from the top of the minaret. Literature reports of sacks twisting and turning through the air as the victim inside struggled to free themselves in vein.

There is apparently a depression in the square below the minaret where thousands of bodies thrown from the top over the years had started to wear a hole in the stone. It was a chilling thought knowing all this and gazing up at the towering minaret, a very beautiful structure with a somewhat grisly past. We did look for this depression in the stone but were unable to find it, but I guess bodies are a lot softer than stone and a hessian bag would have made it a lot easier to clean up the mess.

On the two sides Po-i-Kalyan are the Kalyan Mosque and Mir-i Arab Medrassa , Kalyan Mosque is a massive and beautiful structure and in Soviet times was used to store tractors and other farming machinery. In the 14th century when Amir Temur (otherwise known as Tamerlane) was rampaging across central Asia he slaughtered basically the entire population of Bukhara within this mosque. I read somewhere that once Temur had finished the mass slaughter his men were wading through the mosque in blood that came halfway up to their knees. Disturbing when you know how large the mosque is, its large, so large you could fit a football pitch inside it, I'll let you do the math yourselves on how much blood that would be.

Opposite the mosque is the Mir-i Arab Medrassa which was built in the 16th century presumably by then the population of Bukhara that had pretty much been wiped out by Timur had time to repopulate itself and build this imposing structure. The Medrassa is still a functioning facility for the training of religious minds in Uzbekistan today. It has a beautiful mosaic exterior, the fact that its still a functioning Medrassa means that you are not allowed inside past the entrance hall.

Also of note around Bukhara are the trading domes, where trading still happens. Uzbekistan is famous for its carpets, embroidery and ceramics and there is plenty of that to be found within the domes of Bukhara. I bargained so hard for some ceramics in a store that the lady who sole them asked me "Where are you from?", I said "Australia" she then proceeded to say "Australian women are hard women!" whilst clenching her fists and banging them together. I think I might have got a good deal!