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Monuments of Central Asia : a guide to the archaeology, art and architecture of Turkestan PDF

337 Pages·2001·56.6 MB·English
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By the same author The Heart ofAsia (travel),i n Czech, Prague, Bratislava, 1962 Journtys to the Mongoh - Carpini, Rubruck, Chvijo, translations into Czech, Prague, 1964 The Death of Emerhne (a novel), in Czech, Prague, 1965 The Art of Central Asia, Prague, London, 1965 Beyond the Oxus, London, 1972, Munich, 1973, 1999 M O N U M E N T S OF CENTRAL ASIA A Guide to the Archaeology, Art and Architecture of lurkestan Edgar Knobloch 1.B.Tauris Publishers LONDON NEW YORK Published in 2001 by 1.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifih Avenue, New York NY 100 10 In the United States and Canada distributed by St. Martin's Press 175 Fifth Avenue. New York NY 100 10 Copyright O Edgar Knobloch, 2001 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 1 86064 590 9 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Co~igressc atalog card: available Typeset in Garamond by Dexter Haven, London Printed and bound in Great Britain CONTENTS List of Maps and Plans Preface vii Acknowledgements Introduction PART I THE COUNTRIES I Land and People 11 Outline of History 111 Civilisation IV Architecture and Architectural Decoration v The Sources PART I1 CENTRAL ASIA w Khorezm WI The Zarafshan Valley VIII Turkmenistan The Arnu Darya Valley and Southern Tajikistan D( x The Syr Darya and Ferghana Valleys XI Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan PARTIII XINJIANGOREASTERNNRKESTAN XJI History MII Urumchi, Turfan and Kucha XIV Tun-huang to Kashgar PART IV AFGHANISTAN w History WI The Centre and the East MI The West XWII The North The South Appendix: Aftermath of Destruction Bibliography Index LIST OF MAPS A N D PLANS MAPS 1 General map 2 The empire of Chingiz-Khan 3 The empire of Timur (Tamerlane) 4 Khorezm 5 Turkmenistan 6 Arnu Darya and Zarafshan 7 Syr Darya and Zarafshan 8 Xinjiang 9 Afghanistan 10 Archaeological sites in Afghanistan PLANS 1 Koy-Krylgan- Kala 2 Samarkand 3 Shah-i Zinda 4 Mosque Bibi Khanum 5 Mausoleum Gur Emir 6 Registan, Samarkand 7 Bukhara 8 Poy-Kalan complex 9 Labi-hauz complex 10 The site of Merv 11 Kashgar 12 Kabul 13 Herat 14 Gazurgah PREFACE When I first travelled in Central Asia, in 1959, the Soviet Union was a super- power, Khrushchev's 'virgin lands' campaign was in full swing and Central Asia was a closed country. In most places my friend and I were probably the only foreigners the locals had ever seen. There was no tourism. The local Party organisation had the magic wand. It could find a room in an overcrowded hotel, get a light plane to drop us at a site in the desert, even send a parcel from the local post office. We travelled by public transport, trains and buses, and some- times even by car, courtesy of the almighty Party. The roads were thronged with donkey-carts, horse-wagons, camels and lorries and an occasional bus. Cars were almost non-existent. We slept in local inns, the mehman-khanas, in ancient hotels dating from tsarist times or in various establishments destined for the apparatchiks travelling on a komandirovka (assignment). The only hotel worth its name was in Tashkent, where we started and finished our journey. We were, of course, closely surveyed. We had to argue constantly about our programme, which was repeatedly altered, scrapped, then allowed to go ahead again. We had to see things we did not want to see and were not allowed to go where we wanted to. But people, although they were sometimes reticent and cagey, were kind and helpful. In museums, we could take artefacts out into the courtyard to photo- graph them. On the other hand, the country police were wary of our cameras, and more than once wanted to confiscate them. There were no markets. Meat was sold in tiny scraps from fly-ridden stalls, but the plov (pilaf) and kebab sold in the streets tasted delicious. How things change. In 1997, on my second visit, the Soviet Union was no more, Khrushchev was as good as forgotten, and the Central Asian republics, now independent, were called Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kirghivtan and Turkmenistan. Frunze was again Bishkek, Stalinabad had metamorphosed into Dushanbe, Leninabad into Khodzhend. Istanbul had replaced Moscow as the main port of entry. Camels had disappeared from the streets, horse-wagons had been converted into cars, and mobile phones were more frequent than donkeys. In offices and banks abacuses sat next to computers. Every village had a lively market, butchers' stalls had refrigerators and meat was sold in decent- sized cuts. In the main cities, Indian companies had built luxury hotels which the local staff still had some difficulties running. Tourists were everywhere. Foreign pilgrims flocked to the holy places and prayed in local mosques. On the ... Vlll MONUMENTS OF CENTRAL ASIA other hand, frontiers had sprung up where none had been before, and visas were required at every crossing. Forms, in Cyrillic only, had to be meticulously filled in and checked, only to be stacked away and never looked at again. But in the streets, Cyrillic was in retreat, making way for a Latin alphabet modelled on Turkish. And the women - tall, leggy girls in fashionable dresses replaced the shapeless things in their hideous parandzhas, looking like cloth sacks. The progress of urbanisation was in evidence everywhere. The famous monuments had been restored and rebuilt, some more skillfully than others. Tilla Kari had acquired a bulbous dome which it never had, the Gur Emir had got back its gleaming interior of shining gold which, perhaps, it had when it was new. Only Khiva was a disaster. Some clever head had had the idea to make it into a museum city. So people had been resettled, rubble removed, crumbling walls restored, peeling tilework replaced. Gone were the camels loaded with brushwood, donkeys, stray cats and mangy dogs. There were work- men in overalls instead of playing children. The bearded old men in their leather boots and quilted khalats were gone. On the Chinese side, Xinjiang is gadually opening up but still suffers much of the 'Soviet disease'. Tourist facilities are few and inefficient, although accom- modation is, by and large, acceptable. Movement is, like in the USSR, tightly controlled, but the bland Russian 'nyet' comes here as a polite Chinese promise which never materialises. The Silk Route is fast becoming a popular tourist des- tination, but its southern branch is still quite difficult to get to. And the crossing of the Karakorum Range into Pakistan is one of the great experiences of our time. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is an unmitigated tragedy. Since I was there, in 1978, there have been, firstly, three bloody coups d'etat followed by the Russian invasion in 1979, and ten years of guerilla warfare of unsurpassed cruelty. The Russian retreat in 1989 opened the gates to a civil war which is still raging. I can only assume that no archaeological work has been done during that time and hope that the sites and monuments somehow survived the fighting. Tourism was, and is, of course, non-existent and the only foreigners occasionally allowed into the country were a few journalists and aid workers. So, perhaps, the pictures which I took 20 years ago may, in some cases, be the last to show what splendours the country's cultural heritage had to offer. This book could not have been written without the help of my wife, who was my travelling companion, record-keeper, researcher and, above all, my most persistent and merciless critic. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author and publishers wish to express their grateful thanks to copyright owners for the use for the illustrations listed below: GrCgoire Frumkin, 'Archaeology in Soviet Central Asia', MI, Turkmenistan, Central Asian Review XIV, no 1, 1966 (for Fig. 10); L.I. Rempel, Arkhitektumyi ornament Uzbekistana, Tashkent 1961 (Figs 4-9); Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Museum fiir Indische Kunst, Berlin (Plate 62); S. Flury, 'Le dCcor kpigraphique des monuments de Ghazna', Syria, VI, 1925 (Figs 1-3); L. DuprCe, Afghanistan (Map 10); The International Merv Project, University of London (Plan 10); L. Golombek, The Timurid Shrine at Gazur Gab (Plan 14); State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (Plate 97). And for Quotations: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd (for extracts from Tarnburhint the Conqueror by Hilda Hookham); George Luzac Ltd and the Gibb Memorial Trust (for extracts from Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion by VV Barthold); Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd (for extracts from CLzvijo, Embassy to Tarncrhne, translated by G. Le Strange).

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