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From Janpiq Qala we proceeded forty-eight miles as the crow flies downstream to the no-account city of Nukus , which I had visited before and certainly did not want to visit again. Hurrying through Nukus we crossed the Amu Darya River and drove about twenty-five miles southwest to the immense burial grounds of Mizdakhan. Apparently there was a settlement on this site as far back as the fourth century b.c. when Khwarezm was freeing itself from the Persian Achaemenid Empire. This original settlement was destroyed by fire around the end of the second century b.c. Another settlement existed here between the first and fourth centuries a.d. but it too was eventually destroyed by agents unclear. Around the second century b.c. a cemetery was established here and after the settlements disappeared the area eventually became devoted to burials. Between the fifth and eight centuries it became an important Zoroastrian burial site with many ossuaries containing bones which had been had stripped of

From Gyaur Qala we drove southeastward 4.5 miles to Janpiq Qala. Built in the ninth or tenth century a.d. during an economic boom in Khwarezm, it was situated on the site of an older fortress dating back to the period between the fourth and first centuries b.c. The walled city, measuring 1500 feet long and up to a thousand feet wide, developed into a substantial craft center with quarters devoted to weaving, stone carving, blacksmithing, and the manufacture of glass and pottery. It was also an important trade entrepôt on the Amu Darya where goods from China, India, Egypt, and the Volga River and Black Sea regions all washed up. Russian researchers have suggested that a large breach in the southern wall was made by the besieging Mongols when they attacked Khwarezm in the winter of 1220-1221, perhaps with a huge battering ram. How much other damage the city suffered at the hands of the Mongols is unclear, but the city did recover and it eventually regained much of its former prominence