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The corner take-out that I frequented  in Thessaloniki  raised the price of chicken souvlaki from 2.50 to 2.75 euros. That signaled the end of my love affair with Thessaloniki. The heart is so fickle! The next morning I walked a mile through a persistent drizzle to the train station and caught the train south to Kalambaka, home of the Meteora monastery complex. I have Been Here Before , but was eager to return in autumn when it was cooler and the environs less crowded. It is the shoulder of the tourist season, and prices of hotels and meals have started to drop. It is certainly cheaper than Thessaloniki. And the weather is fantastic! Hard frosts at night but warming into the 50s F. in the afternoons. Great for hiking. Gorgeous autumn foliage. St. Nicholas Monastery, one of six monasteries in the area now open to the public (click on photos for enlargements).  Monastery of St Barbara Great Meteora Monastery Monastery of Barlaam From the road a trail climbs up 715 vertical feet through t

After my pilgrimage to the  Tomb of Khazret Khizr , the Patron Saint of W anderers  and Marijuana , I wandered by the Shah-i-Zinda Necropolis. Although most of tombs here date to the Timurid Era in the 14th and 15th centuries, the complex was founded in the eleventh century, before the invasion of Chingis Khan in 1220, and I was curious to see what if anything had survived the Mongol onslaught. Since the complex is quite large and I doubted if anything which survived Chingis’s assault on the city would be marked I decided I better hire a professional guide. I was extremely lucky in acquiring the services of  Denis Vikulov , who has worked as a guide for numerous professional photographers, reporters, and writers as well as run-of-the-mine tourists like myself. Not only was he already aware of some parts of the complex said to date to before Chingis’s invasion, he also called one of his old college professors who gave him some additional hints as to what to look for. The entrance to the

From Komil’s Guesthouse I wandered over to Ismael Samani’s Mausoleum on the western edge of town ( N39°46'37.10' / E64°24'2.59', three quarters of a mile from the center of town, the center being for our purposes the square between the Kalon Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab Madrassa ). The mausoleum is the oldest building in Bukhara and one of the oldest buildings in Inner Asia. The foundations of the Magok-i-Attari Mosque in Bukhara, originally part of a pre-Islamic Zoroastrian or perhaps even Buddhist temple, may be older, but the original building was destroyed by fire in 937. It was rebuilt in the 12th century, only to be heavily damaged during on the Mongol Assault On The City in the spring of 1220. Apparently only the eleventh-century southern-facing facade has survived intact down to the present day. The Ismael Samani Mausoleum dates from probably the first decade of the the tenth century—it was already completed when Ismael, who consolidated the power of the  Samani

See Chapters 1 – 2 of Life of Zanabazar

Wandered out to Konye Urgench in northern Turkmenistan . In the thirteenth century the city was known as Gurganj. Then located on the lower Amu Darya (the river has since changed course), Gurganj was the original capital of the Khwarezm Empire and one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Inner Asia. It  may have reached the height of its florescence during the first two decades of the thirteenth century. The well-travelled Syrian geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229), who visited the city in 1219, deemed it perhaps the richest and most highly developed city he had ever seen. Thus it was only natural that it had attracted the attention of Chingis Khan. In the summer of 1220 he dispatched his two sons  Ögedei and Chagaadai to the lower Amu Darya with orders to seize Gurganj and other cities in the area, including Khiva and  Gyaur Qala .   His oldest son, Jochi, who was then leading his own campaign on the lower Syr Darya River, was to rendezvous with his brothers on the lowe

At ten I met Hamid and Masud in the lobby for our trip to the Church St. Stephanos. Although of course mainly concerned with the history of the Ilkhanate in Iran, I am also interested in monuments which pre-date the Mongol occupation and have managed to survive down to the present day. There are wildly differing opinions about how old St. Stephanos Church is, but it is possible that at least some parts of it were built before the Ilkhanate period.  An inch of fresh snow has fallen overnight, but the roads are bare by the time we start out. Just beyond our hotel we pass by a large parking lot where an Ashura ceremony is taking place. In front of a flat-bed truck with loudspeakers a group of actors in notionally seventh century costumes play out the deaths of Muhammad’s grandson Husain and his family and supporters at the hands of the Umayyad s. The Umayyad villains are dressed in red. In a ring around the actors are several hundred spectators, almost all the women dressed in black chado