The Samanid Mausoleum and Bolo-Hauz: Bukhara beyond the old centre

The Samanids ruled from Bukhara in the 9th and 10th centuries, and their tomb dates from the turn of those two centuries, the time of Ismail Samani, who reigned from 892 to 907. A 16th-century copy of a deed of endowment says that Ismail gave land in the cemetery for a tomb for his father, Ahmad. Ismail himself was later buried here too.

The building became the family vault of the dynasty. During restoration in the 1930s a wooden lintel was found carved in Kufic script with the name of Nasr, Ismail’s grandson, who ruled until 943. That is why you will see two sets of dates on signs and in books: the age of Ismail, and the last ruler laid to rest here.

The mausoleum is small: about ten metres a side, with walls 1.8 metres thick. A broad dome sits in the middle and four small domes on the corners. All four sides are alike, each with an arched entrance, so there is no main facade; you can walk round it and see the same building from every side.

Everything is baked brick. Large bricks carry the weight, and small ones, set in groups of two to five, make the ornament: basketweave, chequerboard, rosettes and rows of brick “pearls”. Under the dome runs a gallery of small arched openings that lightens the walls and lets daylight in. Because the bricks stand at different depths, the pattern shifts as the sun moves: flat at noon, deep and textured in the low light of morning and late afternoon.

Before Genghis Khan’s army took Bukhara in 1220, floods had already covered the mausoleum with mud and sand, and the cemetery around it kept growing in layers until it hid almost a third of its height. That is how a brick building of the 10th century came through the centuries in such good shape.

Archaeologist Vasily Vyatkin dug it out in 1926–1928, and the major restoration came in 1937–1939. In the same years the old cemetery was cleared and the ground became the city’s central park. Today the mausoleum stands at the end of an avenue of flowerbeds, with a restored pond to the south-east, where the walls show in the water on a still morning. The park also has rides and a big wheel, so families with children find it an easy place to rest between museums.

Legend says that Ismail Samani, remembered in Bukhara as Hazrat Sultan, went on ruling after his death. People slipped written requests into an opening on the south side of the tomb and waited for an answer to appear on the north side. It is a story, of course; what is true is that people came to this tomb for centuries, and it was a living place, not a ruin.

Guides also tell you that Genghis Khan’s men passed it by because it was lost among the graves, and that the builders mixed camel’s milk and egg yolk into the mortar to make it last. The first is a legend that rests on a real fact, the silt and the cemetery. The second is pure folklore. For the forty brick beads and the story of the forty spirits, see our legends of Bukhara.

A few minutes’ walk from the mausoleum, at the edge of the park, stands a long brick building with a pointed dome. By legend, the prophet Job, Ayub, struck the ground here with his staff and a spring came up; the name means “Job’s spring”.

The oldest room goes back to the 12th century. An inscription of 1379–1380 credits Timur with the grand domed chamber, and the conical dome, common in Khorezm and rare in Bukhara, is put down to Khorezmian masters. The building measures about 19 by 26 metres, with four rooms in a row from west to east, each under its own dome. Inside is a museum of Bukhara’s water supply: canals, ponds and how a city in the desert kept itself in water.

Walk back east towards the Ark, and on the edge of the Registan square you reach Bolo-Hauz. The mosque and the octagonal pond in front of it date from 1712. It was the emirs’ Friday mosque: on feast days carpets were laid across the square from the gate of the Ark to its door. The pond held water for ablutions and for the people of the quarter.

Bolo-Hauz is still a working mosque, and on Friday at midday it is busy with prayers. On other days and at other hours you can stand in the iwan and look across the water.

The iwan everyone photographs is two centuries younger than the mosque. In 1917 master Shirin Muradov added it on three sides, together with the small minaret. Its roof rests on twenty slender wooden columns, 12 metres tall, with carved and painted stalactite capitals, and the porch measures 42 by 10 metres. Look up: the ceiling between the beams is carved and painted too.

People in Bukhara like to call Bolo-Hauz the mosque of forty columns. Count them and you will find twenty; the saying goes that the other twenty stand upside down in the pond. The minaret beside the pond, also of 1917, is banded with brick and blue glazed tiles.

Opposite Bolo-Hauz rise the sloping walls of the Ark, the fortress of Bukhara’s rulers for more than a thousand years, with the throne court where emirs were crowned. We tell its story, legends included, in our guide to the Ark of Bukhara.

On the square between them stands a steel lattice water tower designed by engineer Vladimir Shukhov and built in 1929. It no longer holds water; it has been restored, with cafes on the lower floors and a viewing floor at the top. From there you see Bolo-Hauz and its pond from above, the Ark beside you and the domes of the old centre beyond.