Uzbekistan | Samarkand | Sarai Mulk’s Mausoleum

Although concerned mostly with the remnants of the city which survived the sack of Samarkand by Chingis Khan in 1220 I would be remiss if I did not wander by other Mongol-related sites in the city. Perhaps the most famous of these is the mausoleum and tomb of Sarai Mulk, also known by the title Bibi Khanum, the Mongolian wife of Amir Timur (Tamurlane). Whether Amir Timur (1336–1405), was related to the Chingisids by blood is a matter of some dispute. He was a member of the Turco-Mongol Barlas tribe and thus may have been part Mongolian, but it seems unlikely that he was actually a member of the royal line of Chingis. In any case he never dared to take the title of Great Khan, which according to the unwritten laws of the steppe could only be held by a Chingisid, a lineal descendant of Chingis Khan, but instead took the title of “Amir”—military commander. In order to further legitimize his rule he married the Mongolian princess Sarai Mulk, the daughter of Khazan, the last ruler of the Chagatai Khanate founded by Chagatai, Chingis’s second son, and thus a legitimate Chingisid. Sarai Mulk was a legendary beauty, to say nothing of willful and domineering, and she eventually became the favorite wife of Amir Timur. 

At some point she ordered the construction of a madrassa, an Islamic school, and a mausoleum for herself and immediate family. Little else is known about her life. There is a legend that the architect who was building what became known as the Bibi Khanum Mosque, near her Mausoleum, fell madly in love with her and was constantly seeking her favors. Trying to dissuade him, she pointed out forty dried gourds used as water containers which were lined up against a wall. “See those gourds?” she said, “they are all filled with water and are all the same. Women are like the gourds. They are all the same. It matters not which one you use to slake your desires. Choose any of my servant girls you want and spent the night with her. That should be enough to satisfy your needs.” The architect replied, “Thirty-nine of the gourds are filled with water and one is filled with wine. You are the one filled with wine and I must drink from your gourd.” She still refused him entry to her Jade Gate, but finally she did let allow him to kiss her on the cheek. Amir Timur was in India at the time leading a military campaign. When he returned to Samarkand he somehow found out about this kiss (the legend states the kiss was so passionate that it left a mark on her cheek) and in a fit of jealousy he threw Sarai Mulk off the top of a minaret. She was then buried in her Mausoleum. This is the legend anyhow. As far as I know, history does not record any other version of Sarai Mulk’s death. 

Sarai Mulk’s Mausoleum. Her Madrassa, which was directly in front of the Mausoleum, no longer exists. 

Inside the Mausoleum. Sarai Mulk and her relatives are entombed in the basement crypt.

The Caskets of Sarai Mulk (left), and her Mother and Sister

The Casket of Sarai Mulk

Caskets of two of Sarai Mulk’s servants, perhaps the very ones which the architect unwisely spurned.

Another view of Sarai Mulk’s Mausoleum

Uzbekistan | Tashkent | Zengi Ata Complex

I alway pay close attention to the first thought that springs into my mind when I return from the kingdom of Morpheus each morning. Recently the very first conscious thought I had was about Ala ad-Din Muhammad II (علاءالدين محمد), the Khwarezm Shah, the ruler of the Khwarezm Empire from 1200 to 1220. You will recall that the Khwarezm Shah was the titular head of Khwarezm, the empire centered on the lower Amu Darya River in what is now Uzbekistan, when Chingis Khan invaded the area in 1219. His empire, which included the famous Silk Road cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Otrār, and Tashkent, was devastated by the Mongols and the Shah himself died an ignominious death. Having been alerted by my subconscious to the importance of these events I decided I should see for myself where they took place.

Thus I decided to interrupt my trip in Istanbul and make a sojourn to Uzbekistan. After the usual rigamarole and the expenditure of considerable coin of the realm I was able to get a much coveted Uzbekistan visa at the Uzbek Consulate in Istanbul and soon found myself winging eastward on a four and a half hour Turkish Airline flight from Istanbul to Tashkent. We landed at 1:30 in the morning and I checked into the Grand Wazoo Hotel, located about a ten minute drive from the airport.

While primarily interested in whatever traces I could find of the Mongol invasion in 1219–20, I thought that while I was in the neighborhood I better wander by a few of the other well known sights in the area. Thus after a few cups of instant coffee in the hotel dining room—the tea wasn’t fit to slop down hogs—I headed for the Zengi Ata Mosque and Mausoleum on the outskirts of town. This complex of buildings and park land is dedicated to sheik Aj-Hodzha, nicknamed Zengi-Ata, (zengi means “black”), who lived from the end of 12th to the mid-13th century. He was the fifth student of Sufi Hodzha Ahmad Jassavi, the spiritual head of the Turkic tribes of Inner Asia at the end of the 12th century.  According to legend, Amir Temur, aka Tamurlane, initiated the construction of the complex, including the tomb of Zengi-Ata’s wife, Ambar-Bibi. 

Entrance to the complex

Detail of entrance to the comples

Entrance to the Inner Courtyard

Minaret and Mosque in the Inner Courtyard

Entrance to the Mosque

Detail of entrance to the Mosque

Rooms for students at the Madressa (school) on the inner side of the courtyard

Entrance to a student’s room

When I visited this tomb I thought it was the burial site of Zengi Ata, although I did no see any signs actually indicating this. Later I read a guidebook which seems to indicate that this is in fact the mausoleum of Ambar-bibi, the wife of the Zengi Ata. If this is the case then it is unclear where Zengi Ata’s tomb is. Next time you are in Tashkent swing by the complex and see if you can clear up this matter, then leave a comment here. Whoever is buried in the tomb shown here it is today a popular pilgrimage site.

 Tombs behind the Mosque

 The Garden between the inner and outer walls

Turkey | Istanbul | Vezir Han #2

After wandering through the centuries in the Courtyard of the Vezir Han I mosied down the street to the light shop of Erol, a guy I met during my last trip to Istanbul. While inspecting his fabulous section of chandeliers I mentioned that I had just been visited the Vezir Han.

Chandeliers in Erol’s light shop

He asked if I had visited the carpet shop in the Vezir Han. I said I had not seen any carpet shop. It turns out it is around the back side of Vezir Han, on a alley leading off Divan Yolu. 

The back side of the Vezir Han

Entrance to the Carpet Emporium

The name of the place is the Antique Carpet and Kilim Store. It now turns out the the Vezir Han has two underground floors in addition to the two above ground floors. The carpet store occupies a corner of the first aboveground floor and the first underground floor. We descend to the underground floor. In previous centuries these underground rooms were storage vaults. Now they have been upgraded into very comfortable carpet viewing salons. 

Old underground storage room in the Vezir Han. The stone pillar in the middle dates from the 1630s.

Another underground cavern in the Vezir Han

Erol lounging by some carpets

Although I was not really in the market for anything I spend an enjoyable hour looking at some nice 4x6 foot silk carpets in the $15,000 to $20,000 range. They would certainly upgrade my humble hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi, but admittedly they were a bit out of my price range. I can see $2000 for a kilo of Puerh Tea, but $20,000 for a small carpet seems a bit pricey. Anyhow, I did see a heart-stoppingly gorgeous 4x6 foot silk rug from Qum in Iran. I would have sold my first-born for this one, but unfortunately I do not have a first born so I will have to do without the carpet. The dealer would not allow me to take a photo of it, probably out of fear I would show it to other dealers and try to get a similar one for a better price. 

Turkey | Istanbul | Vezir Han

During my last sojourn in Istanbul I wandered through numerous Caravanserias in The Neighborhood of the Grand Bazaar. The door to the Vezir Han, one of Istanbul’s biggest hans, or caravanserais, at the corner of Vezirhan Street and Divan Yolu, was closed that day, however, and I was not able to peek inside. My first free day back in the Red Apple I ventured up Divan Yolu for another look. This time the door was open.

Three story exterior of the Vezir Kan

A long gallery leads through the outer facade of the caravanserai to the inner courtyard, surrounded by a two-story gallery. 

Galley leading through outer and inner walls to the courtyard

Two-story Inner Arcade

This caravanserai dates to the 1630s and thus may have caught the very tail end of the Pax Mongolica which had once again opened the Silk Road from Xian in China to Istanbul. These caravanserais served both as hotels were merchants could stay and warehouses and storerooms for the goods they had brought with them to sell. Many of the goods they had were probably sold to wholesalers right on the premises. In the big open courtyard, here at the Vezir Han over 200 feet square, camels and horses were uploaded of their goods and tied. In the middle of the courtyard there was often a small mosque, absent here, unless it was once in the little building which now houses a cafe for local tradesmen and workers. The first floor of the surrounding building had windowless rooms used as storage rooms and stables.  Staircases led to the second floor where merchants stayed in rented rooms.

Staircase leading to rooms on the second floor

A corner of the courtyard

It was early in the morning on a weekday and there was not a single person in the courtyard. Despite all the traffic outside on busy Divan Yolu it was uncannily quiet here within the enclosed precincts of the caravanserai. I sat down on the stone steps at the inner of the entranceway and soon fell into a revelry. In my mind’s eye it was night and a balsamic moon hung in the sky over one of the corners of the caravanserai. In the courtyard were twenty camels still tied in a string. They brayed and snorted at the camel men shouted at them, making then kneel down, first on their front knees, and then slowing bending their back legs into a full siting position. The camel men quickly unlashed their loads, huge wooden boxes and leather packs, and other men carted the baggage into the storage rooms. Under one of the arched openings in the second floor facade stood the merchant who had organized the caravan, which came from the old city of Xacitarxan, near current day Astrakhan, on the Volga River north of the Caspian Sea, in the kingdom of Khazaria. Beside him stood the caravan boss, shouting orders at the baggage handlers down below. Most of the goods had come from farther east, however, and had only be trans-shipped from Xacitarxan. There were bundles of  incredibly fine wool known as targhu, made from the wool of white camels, each length worth fifty or more dinars, which had originated from the desert steppes north of the Gobi-Altai Mountains in Mongolia and had traveled south, passing by Amarbuyant Monastery and Shar Khuls Oasis before crossing the Black Gobi and linking up with the main trunk of the Silk Road at Anxi. Other big boxes were stuffed with bundles of tightly rolled Atlas Silk from Khotan on the southern edge of the the Tarim Depression in East Turkestan. Huge tightly stitched leather bags held bags of the legendarily sweet and flavorful honey from the lush Ili Valley, north of the Tian Shan. There was much else and it would take all night to sort and store the goods.

Meanwhile the tantalizing aroma of cumin-seasoned mutton grilled over hot coals drifted through the courtyard, managing even to overpower the smell of camel dung. The merchant and caravan man retired to one of the small dining rooms and drank green tea and ate the mutton along with rice seasoned with Iranian saffron. News of their arrival had reached the merchants of the nearby Grand Bazaar, one of the largest trade emporiums in the world, and a few men had already slipped into the dining room and were inquiring about their goods, hoping to beat out their competitors who were already fast asleep. It was going to be a long night. 

A motorcyle with a big bundle of carpets draped on the bumper behind the driver roared into the courtyard, interrupting this nostalgic vision. The scene I had conjured up had been so real that I could almost believe that I had been here long before and witnessed it myself. Shaking off this fantasy I went outside and treated myself to a Turkish coffee with sugar. It was only seven in the morning and I had a long day ahead of me.

Vezir Khan 

Turkey | Istanbul | Mehmed II and Hagia Sofia

I suppose everyone has had the experience of waking up in a place other than one’s usual abode and experiencing momentary befuddlement as to where one actually was. Such a feeling often happens while traveling. The period of mental discombobulation lasts five or at most ten seconds and then it suddenly dawns on one that of course you are in this or that place. But this experience was lasting longer. I awoke in a small room, laying full clothed in narrow single bed on top of a red bedspread. The windows were covered by white curtains and there was a tall dresser of blonde wood along one of the walls. On a floor was a large suitcase with the top flung open. Obviously this was not my sleeping den in my beloved hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi. But where was I? My mind drew an absolute and complete blank. I tried to concentrate my thoughts. When I had last been in Zaisan Tolgoi? Why was I no longer there? My immediate past seemed to have disappeared completely. A disconcerting panic began to well up in my mind. I threw back the curtains at one of the windows and beheld a courtyard surrounded by large trees bedecked with fully grown leaves. Obviously this was not Mongolia where I imagined that I should be. Again I tried to focus. Why was I not in Mongolia? How had I left Mongolia and where could I possibly be? The thought suddenly arose that perhaps I had died. Was I in Heaven? Or perhaps, Heaven forbid, Hell? My panic crescendoed as this state of utter mental confusion went on for at least forty-five seconds, possibly even a minute.

Then it dawned on me very suddenly. I was in Istanbul, Turkey, in a room at the Kervan Guesthouse, next to the entrance to the Basilica Cistern, directly across the street from Hagia Sofia, for over thousand or so years the largest church in the world, and now the axis mundi of the tourism in the city.  I had flown here from Ulaan Baatar via Beijing. The plane from Ulaan Baatar to Beijing was three hours late and I had caught the Beijing to Istanbul flight when it was already boarding. For ten hours we had flown westward following very roughly the course of the main trunk of the old Silk Road: from Beijing westward over the Gansu Corridor, then over Xinjiang and southern Kazakstan, passing right over the Aral Sea and the northern part of the Caspian Sea, then Georgia and the Caucasus to the northern shore of the Black Sea, which we then followed the whole way into Istanbul. 

I soon discovered that my luggage had not made the transfer to the final leg of my flight, which was not surprising, since I myself had barely made it. It was still in Beijing. As I was sitting in Turkish Airlines office filling out a lost luggage report a public service announcement came on: “Don Croner please report to the Information Desk. Don Croner please report to the information desk . . .”  I got the forms filled out as quickly as possible and hurried to the Information Desk. The owner of the Kervan Guesthouse, the esteemed Mr. Turgut Bataray, had sent someone to pick me up but having waiting almost an hour for me this person concluded that I was not coming and had already left. I took a cab to  the Sultanahmed district of Istanbul where the questhouse is located and checked in. It was still very early in the morning so I thought I would just lay down and rest for a bit before going out to look for breakfast. Not surprisingly, since I had taken only a brief catnap on the all night flight, I immediately fell asleep, later waking in my befuddled state. 

It was May 29th, the day Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. I had flown to Istanbul to commemorate this day with a visit to Hagia Sofia, which played a special role on that fateful day. As you know, Hagia Sofia was dedicated on December 26, 537, by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. For 916 years it served as an Orthodox cathedral and had acquired a reputation as one of the great architectural monuments in the world. On the late afternoon of May 29th, 1453,  the twenty-one year-old Sultan Mehmed II at the head of the Ottoman armies which had just conquered Constantinople after a prolonged siege rode through the street of the defeated city to the doors of the Hagia Sofia. Here he dismounted and gathering a handful of dust sprinkled it on his head as an act of humility before the Face of God. That very day he converted Haghia Sofia into a mosque, and Constantinople, the city  named after the Byzantine emperor Constantine, became Istanbul. 

The guesthouse is full and all the nearby cafes are packed with people. I asked the waiter if many of these people had come to Istanbul to commemorate the fall the old city in 1453. He seemed a bit surprised that I would ask about this. Almost everyone—here he indicated the patrons of his restaurant with a sweep of his arm—are with tour groups who are attending the Formula I motor car races being held this weekend on the Asian side of the Bosporus Strait. They take ferries over in the morning, spend the day watching the races, then return to the European side in the evenings. Was I here for the Formula I races, the waiter asked me? No, I said, I did not know about the Formula I races. I had flown from Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia the night before to commemorate the day Constantinople had fallen to Sultan Mehmud  and the Ottomans. The waiter just shrugged and walked away. He no doubt meets a lot of strange people working in a place like this. 

Hagia Sofia

Interior of Hagia Sofia

Pulpit installed in Hagia Sofia after it became a mosque

The Blue Mosque, across the square from Hagia Sofia

AppleWorld | Shambhala | George Gurdjieff

Who Will Replace Steve Jobs as Gestalt Fuehrer When He Dies? manages to mention Steve Jobs, George Gurdjieff, and Shambhala in the same breath. Interestingly, speculation on Stephen Jobs re-incarnation has already began, even though he has not transmigrated yet (assuming his last appearance at the iPad Wingding was not a hologram):

Jobs may have subscribed to the Buddhist school of egotism, exemplified in George Gurdjieff's book Life is Real, Only When I Am. According to that school, a place called Shambhala, in Tibet, is where the Masters (Fuehrers) of the marketing universe held sway . . . Is he like the Dalai Lama, and someone will find a creature somewhere in the world who shows all the characteristics of a Steve Jobs by seeing whether his fingers do the walking past the Beatles' albums and Xerox Palo Alto ideas? 

World | Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On | Update

Update: Never let it be said I was not on top of this story!  See How I Started a Boobquake and Earth-Shaking Cleavage. And now Boobquake Aftershock: Iran Cracks Down On Suntanned Women.

Here’s my original post of April 20:

As I have mentioned, there was an Earthquake in Ulaan Baatar on January 9, 2010, and since there was been a spat of earthquakes elsewhere, the Latest One in the Tibet-China borderlands (see Tibet Earthquake Emergency and Updates). Clerics in Iran have now come up with an explanation for these earthquakes: Promiscuous Women:

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.  

"Many women who do not dress modestly . . . lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.  

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."

 Wearing veils will hopefully cut down on Earthquakes

Different Approach: Let’em Shake! 

Lady Gaga: Don’t let her near the San Andreas Fault! She is also probably to blame for the Iceland Volcano, to say nothing of the Johnstown Flood.