The ’Stans don’t rest on their laurels
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Justin Marozzi Times 20 March, 2004
Unless the man in front of me with sizzling eyes and a yellow face was a madman, he was probably going to kill
himself fairly shortly. On further reflection, whether he was insane or merely irrationally exuberant, he would almost certainly achieve the same result if what he was telling me was true.
It wasn’t the conversation I had expected in Khoja Abdi Darun mosque, one of Samarkand’s holiest places.
“I can drink more mercury than anyone in the world and I want The Book of Guinness to come to Uzbekistan so I can prove it,” he assured me, tugging my sleeve insistently. “I’ll go head-to-head with anyone they put up, one million dollars on the table, all money to the winner.”
Welcome to the bizarre world of Central Asia, a vast region of fiercely beautiful desert, steppe and mountain, ancient crossroads of the Silk Road from China to the West. Today, the former belly and cotton basket of the Soviet Union is made up of the five independent “stans”, an adventurer’s paradise far, far from the madding crowds: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and, one of the most rewarding for the offbeat traveller and admirer of historical monuments, Uzbekistan.
I had made the journey to Samarkand, “Pearl of the East” and heart of Tamerlane’s world-spanning 14th-century empire, to research a history of the great conqueror. Architectural splendour, however, is what draws most visitors to Samarkand.
In 1888, George Curzon, then a Tory MP on the make, judged the Registan the most noble public square in the world. “I know of nothing in the East approaching it in massive simplicity and grandeur; and nothing in Europe . . . which can even aspire to enter the competition,” he wrote.
Today, it remains the great set-piece of the city, a trio of madrassahs, or religious colleges, dating back to the 16th century. Its pleasing symmetry, the gorgeousness of the portals with their intricate floral motifs and epigraphic patterns, the elegance of the Kufic calligraphy, the rush of colour — azure, green, yellow and dark blue — against the desert beige, above all its sheer scale, are what grab the eye.
The very word “Samarkand” simmers in the imagination, conjuring up an exotic world of desert caravans bearing silks, spices and precious stones, of medieval minarets thrusting towards the heavens amid a glistening sea of azure blue domes. In his sensational play Tamburlaine the Great, Christopher Marlowe popularised this picture of oriental luxury, while James Elroy Flecker romanticised the “Golden Road to Samarkand ” in his rambling play Hassan.
We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
As fabulous as Samarkand is, as remarkable as its monuments unquestionably are, my own favourite in Uzbekistan is Bukhara, “Dome of Islam” and second city of Tamerlane’s empire. For where Samarkand is orderly, relatively compact and more or less efficiently restored, Bukhara is a sprawling ruin on a grand scale, a city of dark, winding alleys and magnificent, crumbling monuments — mosques, mausoleums and madrassahs — looming around every corner.
The most spectacular must be the Kalon Minaret, the only building to have escaped the razing wrath of Genghis Khan, who stormed into Bukhara in 1219 and was said to have been so overawed by this triumph of workmanship — it stands 47 metres high — that he ordered it spared. The Kalon Mosque was not so lucky. Rebuilt to accommodate 12,000 of the faithful in the early 16th century, it is the second biggest in Central Asia today.
There can be few more idyllic settings than Lyab-i-Hauz, soul and centre of Bukhara’s Old Town, a square pool of green water lined by gnarled, 500-year-old mulberry trees. One evening, I took my place in one of the chaikhanas (tea-houses) on the edge of the square and gazed lazily across the water at the august 17th-century Nadir Divanbegi Khanagha, a mosque and hostel which once provided lodging for travelling dervishes. A waiter brought over the staple fare, a plate of shashlik kebab, a steaming bowl of green tea and a cold beer. Next to me, old men in worn skullcaps slammed down dominoes with a ferocity which belied their years. Others gossiped over a game of backgammon.
On the other side of the square, boys swarmed noisily up the tallest mulberry tree to a derelict stork’s nest. The sky darkened and the fountains burst forth beneath the stars.
My peaceful reverie was interrupted by Bukhara’s answer to Mercury Man, a delusional fellow who assured me he had invented an engine which delivered perpetual motion without the need for fuel.
“I smashed it up because the government thought I was mad,” he told me with a familiar, far-off look. “Now I need some money to build it again to change the world and put Uzbekistan on the map.”
I looked at him dubiously.
“I’m not looking for any reward for myself,” he added modestly. “This will be for the glory of Uzbekistan. But I do need the money first.”
Such chance encounters are not typical in Uzbekistan. What travellers can expect, however, is the exceptional hospitality which makes any journey to this part of the world such a pleasure. Whether it is a shepherd on the hills above Shakhrisabz, birthplace of Tamerlane; a teacher in Samarkand or a taxi-driver in Tashkent, chances are you will be invited into the family home, at the very least for a glass or two of the wonderfully restorative kok chai (green tea), most likely for a plate of kebabs or a bowl of plov, a greasy rice dish with chunks of mutton, carrots and raisins.
For pudding, you will tuck into the most succulent melons you have ever tasted, so delicious they were remarked upon fondly by no less authorities than Tamerlane’s great-great-great grandson, Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty of India.
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