Day 6 - Bukhara

We return to some of sites we arrived at too late to visit on our first day, but not without doing some ‘old’ book shopping. I end up leaving more money than I had planned to in a small shop in an alcove of the Abdul Aziz Khan Medressa, to buy 19^th century hand-written versions of the Quran, a Ferdosi poetry book and a little red booklet with passages from Omar al Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. Beautifully decorated leather covers and the Quran written on very fine silk paper. I’m thrilled to have made these findsJ.

Next to the Kalon (Great) Minaret stand the beautiful 16^th century Kalon Mosque and Mir-i-Arab Medrassa. We can’t access the latter, but are able to look into the courtyard of the building, which still operates as a religious school. The mosque has an enormous courtyard, which can take 10,000 people. I am fascinated by the beautiful tilework and ‘mihrab’ (the prayer niche facing Mecca).

On the square in front of the mosque, we are roped into a photo session with a group of engineering students and their professor. Uzbeks like to have their photo taken with tourists and in our case even more so. My friend Sejal is of Indian origin and Uzbeks love Bollywood movies. People stop her to ask whether she comes from ‘Hindustan’ and then proceed to recite a list of all the Bollywood stars they love. I suspect they think she’s a movie star….

We make a quick stop at the Hoja Zayniddin Mosque, one of the oldest in Bukhara and spend a few minutes gazing at the beautiful mosaics of this small mosque.

Our next destination is the mausoleum of Ismail Samani dating back to the 10^th century. The style of the building is very different from anything else we’ve seen this far. The thick terracotta walled square building is not ornately decorated in colours and tiles, but earth coloured with carved geometrical motifs, which are reminiscent of more ancient cults such as the Zoroastrian. Its interior, housing the tomb of the founder of the Samanid dynasty, is dark and mystical, with the perforated windows letting in feeble shafts of light.

It’s the warmest day of the holiday and the cool interlude comes at the right time.

On the way to the mausoleum we jumped into what we thought was a taxi. The driver turned out not to have a clue about where he was taking us to and was accompanied by a gold-toothed (quite common in Uzbekistan) sleazy friend who decided to welcome me by kissing my hand… We got out of there fast! The vodka vapours were hanging in the air, as they were at the decaying mosque we visited next, where the merry caretaker seemed to have had half a bottle of the stuff at breakfast. Not the last time we will ‘sniff’ vodka vapours around us…

At 2.30 we meet our guide, Zinnat, in the main Lyabi Haiz square. Zinnat is an interesting mix of Persian, Azeri and Tajik. The Persian and Tajik influence is very strong in Bukhara and Samarkand (Tajik is spoken more widely than Uzbek). Following a policy of ‘divide and rule’, the Soviet Socialist Republics created in the late 1920s are a mixture of ethnicities and languages, to avoid too strong a feeling of nationalism forming in any of the Soviet –Stans.
Zinnat takes us on a journey of discovery through the streets of the Old Jewish Quarter in Bukhara. Until the early 1990s 10,000 Jews lived in Bukhara, having come from Shiraz in Persia in the 15^th century. Even though they controlled much of the commerce in Bukhara they didn’t lead an easy life in the crammed streets of the old town, and when the Iron Curtain came down they left for a better future in Israel, Germany and Queens New York. There are only 40 families left today.
It’s an area of town that is being modernised at a rapid pace, but with Zinnat’s help we are lucky enough to find some of the little gems that are still hidden behind the high mud brick walls.

We knock on a thick, wonderfully engraved wooden door and enter the courtyard of a house that belonged to a rich Jewish merchant family. At the centre of the courtyard are two Tandurs (yes, very similar to the Indian Tandoor clay oven), probably used to bake bread. There are a summer and a winter room, alternatively used by the family depending on the season. Through the front ‘aivan’ (portal) we enter the summer room, with its high beamed ceilings and  walls decorated in a mixture of oriental blue and 19^th century French style floral designs. The small arches of the wall niches are adorned by white muqqarna (stalactite like alabaster decorations similar to those found in many mosques) and filled with vases, china, small ‘samovars’ and pots. A feast for the eyes…

We re-enter the hustle and bustle of the old town streets and visit two synagogues, one at the far end of town. A 90-year old toothless rabbi appears from nowhere with his young granddaughter and is very happy to show us the holy site under his responsibility. On the walls at the entrance to the small synagogue there are some interesting posters with photos of meetings of the New York and Canada Bukhara Jewish Community. Strange to think that they once all lived in the warren of lanes of Bukhara’s old city.

Zinnat takes us to the small, decaying Turki Jandi Mausoleum. We push the unhinged door open to take a peek at the tombs in the mausoleum. In the courtyard we find a pole topped by a tuft of horsehair (a symbol of ‘sufism’) and the hand of Fatima (representing the 5 pillars of Islam) at the tip of the pole. Zinnat runs in after us, stating that now we have entered, we will have to say a prayer with her. For five minutes we sit in silence and enjoy the beauty of the little mausoleum as Zinnat recites verses from the Quran. We end this special day at the Faysulla Khojaev House museum, a beautiful villa not dissimilar in layout and decorations to the Jewish merchant home we had visited earlier, but on a far larger scale. Faysulla betrayed the local emir to the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s, to become a leading figure in Soviet Bukhara until Stalin decided he didn’t like him and had him ‘eliminated’.

On the way back to the hotel we stop to talk to a group of 8 to 10-year old children enthusiastic about the chance to practice their English. One little boy belts off to get his English textbook from home and starts firing questions off at us on his return. We all have a good laugh.