A Beautiful Necropolis

A Beautiful NecropolisSunday October 18, 2009 After our yurt camping and cotton picking, we pulled into Samarkand for the next three nights. We have a lovely hotel here that is actually very close to the center of action. But we still pile onto the bus to go to the Ulug Bek observatory this morning. Ulug (also seen spelled as Ulog, Ulon and Beg) Bek was ruler over Samarkand in the 15th century. A very secular ruler he was much more interested in science than in being a ruler or conqueror. As such, he gathered wise men and clever students about him and one of his accomplishments was to build an observatory on a hill top here. There are only the ruins left of this huge instrument which might have been a sextant or a quadrant but his notes indicated that they mapped the stars then, knew we revolved around the sun, and was off in his calculations for timing of a year to less than a minute from what is considered good mathematics of a year today. Quite impressive for a man of those times. But he lived in troubled times and got himself into hot water with the religious leaders of those days as he believed such scandalous things as girls had a right to be educated as well. This and other beliefs eventually got him killed but not before he made Samarkand into a beautiful city continuing on with Tamerlane's work there. Next we went to a most beautiful set of buildings set on a hillside leading into town. It was the necropolis Shahizinda. There are quite a few mausoleums there as well as a couple of mosques and most of them are exquisitely decorated. Marat, our guide, explained that for many Uzbeks who are not in a position at this time to visit Mecca, come to Shahizinda as a second choice. Indeed, it was quite crowded with Uzbeks when we where there, more than the tourists even. As we are walking into the complex, a man hurries by with a ram. Pretty sure he was going to be a sacrifice. And as we are standing inside the entrance, an imam is busy praying for a family. Uzbek mosques and Madrassahs are not state supported. Marat says that many people are not terribly religious so they have forgotten what prayers are supposed to be used for what occasion so they will come to a mosque and ask the imam to do the proper prayer for them and then give a donation. Seems to work well. There are some wide steps up to the first mausoleums. Supposedly you count the steps as you climb and then you count them when you come down and if the number of steps is the same, then your sins are absolved. Wow, sure wish it were that easy because mine were the same. There are mausoleums on each side of the avenue that runs from the top of the stairs to the back mosque. Each mausoleum is labeled with who is interred in the mausoleum and what the age is and in some cases they don’t know for sure who is there so they say that it is unknown but believed to be from a certain age. Each mausoleum except for a couple is totally decorated on the front with magnificent tiles and mosaics in some cases, mostly majolica tiles which were fired at a very high temperature so they got brilliant colors. Mostly they are blue but some yellows some greens and some blacks and an occasional red pops in here and there. They are all beautiful. He had showed us on a mosque earlier how to read Allah in the Arabian script. It looks kind of like "all" but the a has a hook over the top and the l’s are not quite l’s. I had trouble seeing it the first time but once you have found it in one place, it pops out at you in all the places. It’s usually set at an angle too. There is one octagonal mausoleum in there that was built by Turkmens I think he said which is why it is different than the other mausoleums. There are no doors in this mausoleum but instead there are 8 windows under the dome. At the foundation is a bricked up crawl space where the bodies would have been put into the mausoleum to be buried. The whole complex is beautiful and incredible. It climbs up the hill to the very last mosque which is nestled between parts of the soviet-Muslim cemetery and you can walk into the cemetery from there. One part has a small courtyard where there are graves there as well. There is a wall separating the courtyard then from the outer cemetery and this wall had been moved back so that people could stand further away from the two mausoleums along this part of the complex and then they found these additional gravesites. Most of the graves have a series of rectangular “steps” on top of them. The grave in the main mosque at the back of the complex has 5 steps for the pillars of Islam but most of the ones that we saw only had 2 or 3 steps. We continued to the back of the complex and the last mosque. It is still a working mosque sort of. People were in there and filing in all the time to pray and an imam was in there to do the prayers for them. Maret says that coming to this necropolis is like going to Mecca for many of the people in Uzbekistan. There were certainly many local people there today but it is Sunday and they have the day off and can do this. The last mosque was not being used itself and you can tell it is a working mosque because it had the green carpet on the floor. Apparently here all working mosques will have a green carpet for the men to pray and it is usually rolled up when it is not a time to pray. Green is the color of paradise. Also to get into this part, we had walked through some doors that said in Arabic, something like all believers are welcome in paradise. Nice thought. The door was made of carved wood and had also had ivory on it at one point but now the ivory was gone. That thief will not be getting into paradise. There is a small back room behind the mosque in this building and there are tiles around the ceiling but painted walls which have mainly been restored. When we walked in, an imam was praying and the people all had their hands cupped in front of them like we have seen before. He finished his prayers and they all filed out and we quickly tried to take photos but it was hard before the next group of faithful had started filing into the room so I didn’t get a lot of good photos of this room. Our last stop of the day is to go to the Mosque Bibi Khanum. I tell you the buildings and mosques and Madrassahs just keep getting better and better. I would have been quite disappointed to do this trip in reverse because Samarkand is a delight of wonders and glorious buildings. The mosque Bibi Khanum is huge but much smaller than it used to be. The construction of it was not very good and it started raining bricks off the ceiling of the mosque once it was done. And during an earthquake, the minarets had fallen because the base and foundation wasn’t very good. He told us a fine tale on how the mosque was constructed. Timor was gone and his favorite wife decided to build a mosque for him. The engineer hired to do the construction fell in love with Timor’s wife. He kept working very slowly and coming every day so that he could look at her and talk to her. Finally she heard that Timor would be coming home so she ordered him to finish building the mosque and he refused. He said he would only complete it with a kiss from her. She refused and was very angry. She said he could choose any of her ladies and have a kiss from them but he said no, he had to have a kiss from her. She got together 40 eggs and decorated them many different colors and showed them to her and said they look different on the outside but on the inside they are all the same. He got two glasses and put water in one and wine in the other and said if you drink the water you will not be thirsty but that’s all. If you drink the wine you will not be thirsty but you will also have pleasure. So she finally said she would let him kiss her. She put her hand against her face and his kiss was so strong that it left a red mark on her face. The mosque was finished and when Timor came home, he was pleased but when he saw his wife’s face, he wanted to know how she got the red mark so she told him about the engineer. He was angry and wanted to punish the engineer but the engineer was clever and flew away somehow. So Timor felt he had to punish someone so he told his wife that she must go to the top of the minaret and jump off. She also was clever so she put on all of her dresses and climbed to the top of the minaret and jumped off and floated down thus a parachute was invented. Afterwards, Timor made all the women wear veils. Finally we went to the market which was bustling and lively and busy and wonderful with smells and sounds and sights. We all spent a lot of time there, not necessarily buying anything but just wandering the aisles and watching people. What a wonderful day