August 8, 2011

  • The Silk Road (Sort Of) Overland
    Friday 5 August 2011

    Before leaving Samarkand this morning, I went to see the Tomb of the Old Testament Prophet Daniel and Ulegbek's Observatory.

    It is claimed that Timur brought the fifth century BC remains of Prophet Daniel from Susa, Iran, to Samarkand - though apparently there is a Tomb of Prophet Daniel in Susa as well. The sarcophagus is 18 metres long so it's quite an unusual sight to say the least. Some visitors/pilgrims were walking around the sarcophagus more than once after the chanting of some prayers by an imam, so this is clearly an important place of pilgrimage for Muslims. It did say on the sign outside that the Prophet Daniel is revered by Jews and Christians as well as Muslims. I wonder if there are prayers said by priests and rabbis here sometimes as well?

    The Lonely Planet says that the legend is that Prophet Daniel's body grows by half and inch every year and that is why the sarcophagus is so long. However, the girl the ticket office told me that the reason why the sarcophagus is so long is that Timur did not want anybody to know exactly where Daniel's bones were located inside the sarcophagus. A quick calculation shows that if a fifth century BC body grows half an inch per year, the length of the sarcophagus should be around 32 metres by now - unless the idea is that the body started to grow after Timur brought it to Samarkand.
    There's not much left to see at Ulegbek's Observatory, only the curved track from his 30 metre astrolab. However, the next-door museum contains a great deal of interesting information (also in English) and I had no idea what an important contribution to science Ulegbek made until visiting this museum. For example, the calculations of the exact length of a year made by this fifteenth century scientist are incredibly accurate.

    The three-hour train ride to Bukhara went without incident. Each passenger had a personal TV screen in second class (Russian movies only) and there was plenty of leg room. The A/C also worked (sort of). However, the most significant thing was that the toilet on the train was very clean and completely smell-free! That was in sharp contrast to the loos on the overnight trains I've been on in Uzbekistan so far.

    I think I got off on the wrong footing with the city of Bukhara when I first arrived this afternoon. The first sight I came across, just outside my hotel, was the Maghoki-Attar Mosque. The Lonely Planet guide says it is Central Asia's oldest surviving mosque (ninth century facade) and it also says it's "probably the town's holiest spot" since archaeologists have found bits of a fifth century Zoroastrian temple here as well as an earlier Buddhist temple. In addition, Bukhara's Jews used it as a synagogue in the evenings until the sixteenth century. With all this background, I wasn't really prepared when it turned out they have basically turned it into a museum/carpet/souvenir shop, with an emphasis on the latter. Also, one of the guys working there lit up a cigarette just after I arrived - inside the mosque. I'm not a Muslim, but I felt really offended when this guy just casually lit up a cigarette inside this ancient mosque long before sunset during Ramadan.

    However, as the afternoon turned into evening and I walked past several of the amazing historical buildings in the Old Town, I started feeling much more positive about Bukhara. The area around the Lyabi Hauz Plaza also has a great vibe about it, and I got some very good food a the Lyabi Hauz Restaurant.

    Bukhara has much more of a small-town feel about it than Samarkand, but the historical sites seem to be much more concentrated to one area.