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Before indulging in further Ambulations of Bukhara City itself I decided to wander north through the Bukhara conurbation and look for other monuments which pre-dated the Mongol invasion and managed to survive down to the present day. My first stop was Vabkent, seventeen miles north-northeast of Bukhara. When first Chingis Khan and his army approached the Bukhara Oasis they may well have  homed in on Vabkent’s minaret, which was v isible for miles around and served as a beacon for caravans and travelers approaching from the north . Commissioned by Abd al-Aziz II, a member of a powerful Bukhara family during the time of the Qara Khitai Khanate (c. 1125–1218), the 127-foot high minaret, completed in 1198–1199, was the second highest in Mawarannahr, after the Kalon Minaret in Bukhara itself. The Qara Khitai, as you probably know, were a remnant of the old Khitan Dynasty in China—they also Controlled Most of Mongolia At The Time )—who had migrated west and established an empire in In...

The first big mosque in Bukhara was constructed in 713 within the walls of the Citadel. In 770 a new congregational mosque with accompanying minaret was built outside the Citadel, apparently on the site of the current Kalon Mosque. From the eighth to the eleventh centuries the mosques on this site was repeatedly damaged or destroyed by earthquakes and fires and subsequently rebuilt and enlarged. In 1121-22, during the rule of the Qarakhanids, a still larger mosque and minaret was built on the same location using wood from the previous structure. The minaret soon collapsed, seriously damaged the mosque. In 1127 the mosque was rebuilt yet again, along with the accompanying 153-foot high Kalon Minaret. In the year 1220, on the 10th, or the 16th of  February, depending on whose account we believe,  the hitherto noble city of Bukhara Fell To Chingis Khan and his army. He and his son Tolui rode their horses into the big Friday Mosque on the site of the current Kalon Mosqu...

On the other side of the square from the Kalon Minaret and Mosque is the Mir-i-Arab Madrassa, built around 1535. The Shaybanid ruler Ubaydullah Khan reportedly used his share of the money from the sale of 3,000 Persian slaves to finance its construction. The project was carried out by Sayyed M ī r ʿ Abd-All ā h, a Sufi shaikh from the Yemen (some sources say from Sayram in what is now Kazakhstan—take your pick) who arrived to Bukhara around 1515 and became Ubaydullah Khan’s friend and spiritual advisor. The finished madrassa became known as M ī r-i-Arab, another version of Sayyed M ī r ʿ Abd-All ā h’ name.  The madrassa was active from its founding until the 1920s. Only Arabic language was used in the study of theological subjects. Mathematics and the sciences were not encouraged and anyone caught reading secular history, literature, or poetry was immediately shown the door. The madrassa was closed down in 1926 and not reopened until 1946, when Stalin decided to  placate the ...

I already mentioned that only two structures in Bukhara survived the invasion of the city by Chingis Khan in 1220: the Ismael Samani Mausoleum and the Kalon Minaret. The later is located right in the very heart of city, in a large plaza between the Kalon Mosque, the largest mosque in Bukhara, and the Mir-Arab-Madrassah. The current structure is 153 feet high, making it visible, some say, for as far as eight miles from the city. Chingis Khan, approaching from the north, no doubt had the Kalon Minaret  in sight as he zeroed in on the city.  A Friday Mosque has stood on the sight of the current Kalon Mosque since at least the tenth century. The first Kalon minaret was built to accompany this mosque in 919, during the time of the Samanids, but it was destroyed by “an act of God”, perhaps an earthquake, in 1068. A wooden minaret was built to replace it by the Arslan Khan of the Qarakhanids, who ruled Bukhara at the time, but this structure later collapsed, reportedly killing many...

The dating and location of the various city walls which have surrounded Bukhara for the last 1500 years or so is an extremely complicated subject which has flummoxed many a determined investigator. Original sources are scarce, contradictory, and confusing, but the ever-resolute W. Barthold has waded into the morass and emerged with a short synopsis, although even this hallowed Orientalist at times displays a lamentable lack of cogency. Other secondary sources, including guidebooks to the city right down to the present day, only succeed in piling on more layers of obstrufication.  We might assume that the city was protected by walls from the attacks of nomadic raiders and bandits as far back as the early Sogdian period, starting around the beginning of the Christian Era, and that the city was surrounded by walls by the time of the Arab invasions in the eighth century. We do known that the old pre-Samanid town, dating back as far as the time of Abu Muslim in the first half of the e...