Two historic centres: Taraz and Turkistan
Train #17, Distance travelled from Shanghai 14,260 km
My last post was about the modern centre of Taraz. It also has a historic centre, called Ancient Taraz, some 20 minutes walk to the east. I had hoped to visit the museum which is part of the complex, so that I could learn more about it, but it was closed - they are doing some sort of restoration work on the area - strange, because it’s not that long ago that they had a big celebration to recognise Taraz’s 2000 years of history. Google maps doesn’t identify the buildings so I haven’t been able to find anything out about them. It is possible one was a hotel, but it certainly isn’t now - it would be cool to stay in a former madrassah.
Beside this complex, there’s a neat park - not as well tended as it could be, but I like it, with an unusual building - all that Google can tell me is that it’s a Government office, although peering through the window, I can see what look like covered display cases. The tower beside it is open to the public to climb up, but there doesn’t seem to be all that much of an advantage, and I end up being higher in the nearby shopping mall anyway.
The Bazaar had been nearby, but it was discovered to be on the site of the original settlement, so they moved it and have spent a decade discovering thousands of treasures from the past. Walkways have been built so people can actually walk around the site - I didn’t see any signs, so wouldn’t have had any way of understanding what I was looking at.
There is a new Grand Bazaar at the end of this park - I do go in, but unless I’ve missed something, it is about 95% clothes. On the way back, I see a beautiful building which turns out to be a Chaikhana (teashop) - after all my walking, I feel a pot of tea in a nice place is well deserved. My brain is so addled I forget to get a picture!
I have a fairly relaxed start on my last morning in Taraz as my train is not until 11. My compartment is again empty, although someone does join me at an intermediate stop. There is no café car, so I drag out the remnants of the coffee I brought from home and relax, reading the first Corinna Chapman book by Kerry Greenwood, Earthly Delights. They do actually bring a cup and teabag later on, along with an interesting amenities bag - it has a tiny shoe horn, which I’ll find very useful.
My destination is Turkistan - a relatively small city of around 150,000 people, but it has been declared to be the spiritual home of the Turkic world, I think because it’s where Sufi mystic and poet Ahmad Yasawi, who did a lot to bring Islam to central Asia in the 12th century, lived and then died. Timur had a massive mausoleum built for him in the 1390s.
I catch the first bus I see out of the railway station - thankfully it goes the way I want it to. All the walking I have been doing - several kilometres every day for the past three months - seems to all hit me at once in the morning: I don’t feel like moving, one heel and one knee are staging a protest. But I talk them down and slowly make my way to the historic area of Turkistan.
The Ahmad Yasawi mausoleum is REALLY big, although the main central area is closed for renovation, so I feel I have wasted money paying for admission - I would have been just as happy walking around the outside.
There’s a much smaller one behind it - for Rabiya Sultan Begim. It was actually demolished in the 1890’s, then they discovered her crypt was under it in the 1950’s, so rebuilt it in 1980. That makes it possibly the youngest mausoleum I have seen. Rabiya was the great-granddaughter of Timur, and married to the local khan.
Further down the park, there’s a musuem, a handcrafts centre (it has echoes of the Sydney Opera House) and a tourist centre. Beside the park is a big area which may or may not be an archeological dig - the reason I don’t know is that they were digging with some pretty heavy machinery, rather than spades and trowels.
Off to the side is the Khoja Ahmad Yassavi Mosque. Reviews on Google maps say it is modern, and it certainly looks that way, but searching only brings up results for the mausoleum - I guess that ensuring search results are unreliable is the contribution AI is making to search results.
It’s all very nice, but there really are not many people about. Turkistan wants to make itself more attractive to tourists. It did do something to that end - I’ll say more about what they did in the next post: I don’t think it will make a scrap of difference.
Cheers!
Great photos.