Bukhara travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bukhara

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1. 

   1© Hylgeriak / Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Samanid Mausoleum

   A cube of patterned brick built for the Samanid rulers around the year 900, the oldest Islamic monument standing in Central Asia. Its brickwork changes pattern as the sun moves; it survived the Mongols because silt had buried it.

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2. 

   2© Petar Milošević · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Kalyan Minaret

   A minaret of forty-six metres finished in 1127, so admired that Genghis Khan is said to have spared it when he levelled the rest. It called prayer for eight centuries and, under the emirs, criminals were thrown from the top.

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3. 

   3© RK · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ark of Bukhara

   A fortress inhabited since about the fifth century and rebuilt many times, from which the emirs of Bukhara ruled until the Red Army shelled it in 1920. A fifth of it survives, holding the throne room, the mint and the mosque.

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4. 

   4© Официальный веб-сайт Агентства культурного наследия Республики Узбекистан · CC BY 4.0

   Po-i-Kalyan

   Complex in Bukhara around the Kalyan minaret of 1127, with a mosque of 1514 for twelve thousand worshippers and the Mir-i-Arab madrasa facing it across the square.

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5. 

   5© LBM1948 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Chor-Bakr

   A walled necropolis five kilometres west of Bukhara, built over the grave of a descendant of the Prophet who died about 970. Courtyards, a mosque and family tombs stand among old trees, and it is far quieter than anything in the city.

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6. 

   6© Nikolai Bulykin · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ulugh beg Madrassah

   A madrasa of 1417 built by Ulugh Beg, the astronomer prince, and the oldest to survive in Central Asia. The inscription over its door states that the pursuit of knowledge is the duty of every Muslim, man and woman.

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7. 

   7© Ymblanter · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Lab-i Hauz

   The square around one of the last surviving hauz, the stone-lined pools that supplied Bukhara with water and, with it, disease. Most were filled in during the 1920s; this one survived because sixteenth-century buildings frame it on three sides.

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8. 

   8© Faqscl · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Chashma-Ayub Mausoleum

   A mausoleum beside the Samanid tomb, named Job's spring for the legend that the prophet struck water from the ground here. Its conical dome is in the Khwarazm manner, and the spring inside still runs.

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9. 

   9© Petar Milošević · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Magok-i-Attari Mosque

   A mosque whose floor sits four or five metres below the street, because the city has risen around it since the twelfth century — hence the name, roughly the mosque in the pit. Excavation found a ninth-century mosque beneath it and, below that, a Zoroastrian temple.

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10. 

    10© ElenaLitera · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Chor Minor

    The gatehouse of a madrasa that no longer exists, built in 1807 by a Turkmen merchant and known as the four minarets. Each of its four small towers is decorated differently, and none is a working minaret.

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1. 

   1© Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0

   Bolo Haouz Mosque

   Mosque in Bukhara of 1712, built for the emir opposite the citadel. Its portico carries twenty painted wooden columns, each cut from a single elm.

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2. 

   2

   Sitori-i-Mokhi Khosa palace

   The country residence of the last emirs, built about 1900 by architects sent to St Petersburg to study, so that Russian rooms open off Bukharan courtyards. It is now a museum of decorative and applied art.

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3. 

   3© Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0

   Kalan Mosque

   The Friday mosque of Bukhara, rebuilt in 1514 on the site of the mosque Genghis Khan burned, with room for twelve thousand. Two hundred and eighty-eight domes carried on brick piers roof its galleries, and the courtyard is the size of a parade ground.

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4. 

   4© Ymblanter · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Divanbegi Madrasa

   A madrasa of 1622 on the Lyab-i Hauz pool, begun as a caravanserai and converted when the khan mistook it for a college and congratulated its builder, who could hardly correct him. Its tympanum shows two birds carrying deer, with a human face in the sun above.

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5. 

   5© Kagansky · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Madrasa of 'Abd al-'Aziz Khan

   A madrasa built between 1652 and 1654 and left unfinished, carrying the most extravagant tilework in Bukhara — Chinese-derived cloud and dragon motifs, gilt muqarnas, and a painted interior far beyond the sober Shaybanid norm.

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6. 

   6© Petar Milošević · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Khankah Nadir Divanbegi

   A Sufi lodge built in 1620 by the vizier Nadir Divan-Begi, on the north side of the pool complex he laid out. Travelling dervishes were housed in the cells around its domed hall.

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7. 

   7© Arina Pan · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Tok-i-Sarrafon

   One of the domed crossroads bazaars of Bukhara, built in 1534 for the money changers who worked under it. Two others survive nearby, each named for the trade it once held; all three are now full of carpet and craft sellers.

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8. 

   8© Ymblanter · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Namazgoh Mosque

   An eleventh-century Karakhanid mosque built outside the walls as a namazgoh, an open prayer ground for the two great feasts, when the city mosques could not hold the crowds. A brick mihrab wall and later arcade are what survive.

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9. 

   9© GMM · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Saif ed-Din Bokharzi & Bayan-Quli Khan Mausoleums

   Two mausolea east of medieval Bukhara at Fathabad, holding Sheikh Sayf ad-Din Bokharzi of Khorasan and the Chagatai ruler Bayan Quli Khan. Bokharzi died about 1261 and his tomb was the seed of the larger religious complex that grew around it.

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10. 

    10© Ymblanter · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Baland Mosque

    A small mosque in the south of Bukhara, built in the early sixteenth century and easy to walk past. The interior is the reason to find it — a wooden ceiling in painted and gilded coffers, over a mihrab of mosaic tile.

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