Download PDF | (Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art) Richard Piran McClary - Medieval Monuments of Central Asia_ Qarakhanid Architecture of the 11th and 12th Centuries-Edinburgh University Press (2020).
341 Pages
Introduction
It was during the final stages of my doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh, examining the development of Rum Seljuq architecture,1 that I came across an image of the original section of brick strapwork decoration on the façade of the tomb of Nasr ibn ‘Ali in Uzgend. I subsequently received funding from the university to travel to Kyrgyzstan in order to study the surviving Qarakhanid monuments in Uzgend, Safid Buland and Balasaghun. From this trip grew a project to reassess the surviving corpus of buildings and examine the increasing volume of archaeological material from the region. The award of a three-year post-doctoral research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust allowed me to conduct this project in full. The aims of this book are to present the individual monuments in close detail, and to integrate the study of Qarakhanid architecture into the architectural and cultural context of the wider region of Central Asia and eastern Iran in the period from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries.
This interdisciplinary volume uses a range of methodologies, but in essence the overall approach taken is to return to first principles, and the primary aim is to provide as detailed a study as possible of all of the surviving monuments in the corpus. Whilst all the buildings covered have been published somewhere over the last century and a half, for the most part they are quite poorly documented and the material is widely dispersed throughout the huge body of scholarship produced during the Soviet period. Much of the work is admirable, if hard to find, but in many cases it is hidebound by the nationalist methodologies enforced by the authorities from the 1920s onwards. This nationalist paradigm has only intensified since the establishment of the post-Soviet republics in the region. One aspect of this study is to move away from the anachronistic nationalist approach to monuments that were built under the aegis of a decentralised dynasty whose territory now falls within the boundaries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China.2 While the term Qarakhanid is far from perfect in the context of the study of architecture, referring as it does to a disparate and still relatively poorly understood dynasty whose members were often vassals of other regional powers, it encompasses a broadly definable region within which there is a distinctive corpus of monuments.3
This diverse group of buildings share a number of decorative motifs which were not generally used, especially together, on other regional or dynastic categories of buildings. While it is clearly a dynastic term, in the context of architecture it can be employed to define the regional style which developed in the lands over which the various members of the family ruled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Naturally, the style did not end with the last Qarakhanid ruler in 1212, indeed, it can be seen to have had a major impact on the architectural style which emerged under the Timurids in the late fourteenth century. However, it clearly emerged as a result of Qarakhanid patronage, although almost certainly drawing, in part at least, on earlier Samanid practices. To show the imprecise nature of the term, one only need cite the example of the minaret in Vabkent which was erected at the behest of the Burhanid sadr between 1196/7 and 1197/8, who was at that time under nominal Qara Khitai rule,4 but is entirely Qarakhanid in style. I have aimed to combine a forensic examination of the details of the buildings with a broad regional overview of monumental architectural developments in the period of study in order to understand which elements are unique, and which form part of the wider eastern Islamic style of brick building. The success or otherwise of this use of micro analysis as evidence for macro observations remains for you the reader to judge.
This Introduction concludes with a brief historical overview of the Qarakhanid dynasty, and is followed by a summary of the little that is known about the preceding Samanid architecture in Chapter One. Chapter Two examines the earliest major dated surviving monument of the Qarakhanids, the tomb of Shah Fazl in Safid Buland, located at the far northeastern end of the Farghana valley. Chapter Three examines the development of the style over time through the study of three connected tombs in Uzgend, with dates of construction spanning from the early eleventh century to the late twelfth century. This is followed in Chapter Four by a detailed analysis of three of the main Qarakhanid-era structures in Bukhara and its immediate environs, while Chapter Five comprises a study of the surviving minarets in the region. Chapter Six is focused on establishing the distinctive characteristics of Qarakhanid architecture through a combination of specific case studies and more general observations of particular styles and motifs found across the corpus. The chapter also addresses the long-term contribution that the architectural developments which emerged during the period of study had on later building traditions in the region, especially that of the Timurids. Having examined most of the main monuments, Chapter Seven consists of a detailed study of the epigraphy found across the corpus, and how it relates to the styles employed on contemporary coinage of the Qarakhanids.
The final chapter examines the broader process of urban expansion which took place under Qarakhanid rule, including an overview of some of the increasingly large volume of archaeological evidence from across the region. Despite the very limited number of surviving monuments, the Qarakhanids were major patrons of architecture across a large portion of Central Asia over the course of two centuries, especially in the major cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. There is a multitude of reasons for the limited survival of monuments built under their patronage. Numerous large earthquakes over the course of the last millennium have taken their toll. The major building programme under the Timurids is known to have resulted in the loss of a Qarakhanid madrasa in Samarkand, but it can be assumed that many other unrecorded buildings were also destroyed during the same period. Palaces rarely outlasted their patron, but buildings such as mosques and tombs tend to survive as they remained in use over long periods of time. There was limited investment in the preservation of Islamic monuments during the period of imperial Russian rule of Turkistan from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and what little there was often involved a shift from religious to scientific significance.5
Many monuments survived into the early twentieth century, but the vast scale of the systematic destruction of Islamic monuments that took place in the first two decades of Soviet rule in the region has a large part to play in the limited size of the surviving corpus. In Bukhara alone, there were 360 mosques in 1917, but by 1940 just thirty-five buildings were deemed worthy of preservation, of which only four were mosques, along with two tombs.6 Alongside this process of destruction, the restoration and repair of a number of the monuments which were deemed to be of historical significance took place, at which point they were stripped of any religious context or use, due in part to the association between Islam and feudalism made by the Soviet state.7 Although there was an inherent paradox in the desire to preserve monuments which were associated with religion, the preservation of Islamic architecture was a stated goal of the government in the early years of Soviet rule in Central Asia, from 1917 to 1924. However, the rhetoric of preservation clashed with the reality of a shortage of personnel and a lack of funding.8 Later, under Stalin, involvement in the process of restoration could be fraught with danger, with accusations of being a reactionary made against individuals promoting the restoration of historic monuments. In 1930, the Uzcomstaris was created to protect, study and restore historic buildings in Uzbekistan, but by 1943 it had been dissolved and Umnikov, the former head of its predecessor Turkcomstaris,9 had been arrested and exiled.10 The national delimitation of the Central Asian republics began in 1924, and after 1932 separate republican preservation committees were set up. During this period there was a reduction in the levels of cooperation between the new republics, and a concomitant drive towards the creation of separate ethnocentric national histories.11
This nationalist approach continues in the post-Soviet period, and is part of the reason that until recently there has not been a major monograph on Qarakhanid architecture12 amidst the huge volume of scholarship on both the region in general and individual structures in particular. Such a book requires the integrated study of monuments across all the Central Asian republics, as well as making reference to related structures in Iran and Afghanistan. This approach undermines the desire for separate ethnic and nationalist identities which emerged under Stalin, and which led to the establishment of ahistorical and anachronistic paradigms for the study of the region. Apart from the Aulie Ata Tomb in the centre of Taraz, which was photographed in the late nineteenth century prior to its destruction in the twentieth century,13 there are no clear records of what was lost during the upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century. However, it seems safe to assume that numerous other structures from the period of Qarakhanid rule were demolished. The largest lacunae from the corpus are mosques, of which little survives in anything other than an archaeological context, with the exception of the Maghak-i ‘Attari mosque portal in Bukhara, and the less securely dated Diggaron mosque at Hazara, near Samarkand.14 The scale of the loss to the corpus is almost unimaginable, and certainly unknowable. A significant number of cities are known only from brief textual references or the mint names on coins, all of which would almost certainly have had a Friday mosque, as well as tombs, minarets, palaces, baths and neighbourhood mosques, in addition to extensive residential areas. As one of the least known, yet largest and most important dynasties in medieval Central Asia during the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the Qarakhanids are worthy of far more recognition and understanding than they have received. The aim here is to use the remaining structures, primarily funerary, alongside a number of minarets and other structures to attempt to better understand their scope, ambition and aesthetic.
The study of the Qarakhanids is an exercise in the uncovering of problems rather than solutions for the most part. In regard to the architecture of the period, the extremely limited survivals from the preceding period of Samanid rule makes assertions regarding Qarakhanid-period innovations problematic at best, but a number of hypotheses are laid out in the following chapters. A variety of methodological approaches are employed, combining geographical, typological and stylistic analysis of surviving structures which can be associated, either through their decoration or their inscriptions, with Qarakhanid patronage. In addition, archaeological evidence, and a few buildings know to have existed, and documented to a greater or lesser extent but now lost, will be brought into the debate to provide a somewhat broader corpus upon which to base the arguments and hypotheses proposed in the following chapters. The politico-historical context, while suggestive of flux and instability, does not preclude there having been a coherent body of skilled craftsmen working in a distinctive regional mode. Indeed, the seemingly dizzying array of rulers and titles,15 while taxonomically confusing, provided fertile ground for regular patronage of elite architecture within the Qarakhanid milieu. As new figures rose to prominence through the course of the twelfth century, regardless of their acceptance of Seljuq or Qara Khitai vassalage, they patronised numerous monumental structures, and the surviving examples show that a dynamic and innovative regional style emerged. From the nineteenth century onwards, several of the surviving Qarakhanid monuments began to be recorded, with the first survey of the Ribat-i Malik conducted by Butenev and Bogoslovskii in 1841 and 1842.16 Following the Bolshevik victory in Turkistan, and throughout the period between the two World Wars, increasing numbers of scholars began to pay attention to the monuments across the region, including addressing the restoration of buildings.17
Deniké’s landmark Arkhitekturnye Ornament Srednei Azii (Architectural Ornament of Central Asia) was published in 1939, and although it covers the broader corpus of Islamic monuments in the region, most of the major Qarakhanid monuments are addressed.18 There was an increased focus on inscriptions in the years following the Great Patriotic War (the Second World War), with Yakubovskiy publishing the inscriptions on the Jalal al-Din Husayn Tomb in Uzgend in 1947 in Epigrafika Vostoka (Eastern Epigraphy).19 Subsequent editions of the journal featured studies of other Qarakhanid inscriptions, including the work of Masson, as well as Nastich and Kochnev.20 Nil’sen’s 1956 volume describing the monuments of the Bukharan Oasis datable to the eleventh and twelfth centuries remains the most authoritative study, despite the passing of over half a century.21 More recent publications which build on Nil’sen’s work on the Bukharan monuments include the study of the Ribat-i Malik by Nemtseva,22 Nekrassova’s article on the Chashma-i Ayyub mazar portal in Khayrabatcha,23 and O’Kane’s work on the minaret in Vabkent.24 With regard to the wider corpus, Chmelnitzkii gives the best overview of the surviving monuments in the first volume of his 4-book series on the architecture of Central Asia from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, published in 1996.25 More recently, Imankulov has published one of the first books devoted solely to the monuments of the Qarakhanids, which is well illustrated but does not deal with the wider context or the corpus of inscriptions.26
Virtually every major figure in the pantheon of great Soviet archaeologists who worked in Central Asia published on elements of Qarakhanid architecture, although usually through a nationalist rather than a dynastic prism. Numerous important articles are referred to throughout this book, including the works of Yakubovskiy, Masson, Shishkin, Zasipkin, Deniké, Pugachenkova, Bulatov and Goryacheva, to name just a few.27 Outside the Soviet system, Ernst Cohn-Wiener is perhaps the most significant figure from the first half of the twentieth century. He took a large number of high-quality photographs which recorded elements of several monuments which are now lost, most significantly the interior decoration of the Shah Fazl Tomb in Safid Buland, some of which he published in an article in 1939.28 His monograph of 1930 remains an important, if hard to find, record of several of the surviving monuments of the wider region.29 Sheila Blair has drawn together a wide range of sources on the inscriptions across the corpus, which has resulted in both a clearer reading of much of the epigraphy, as well as a general awareness of some of the earlier monuments.30 More recently, Yury Karev has shed some light on Qarakhanid palatial wall paintings, citing evidence from the French excavations at Afrasiyab in Samarkand that took place between 2000 and 2003.31 However, little has been recorded regarding the signature motifs and the forms employed across the surviving corpus of monuments erected under the patronage of the multifarious Qarakhanid rulers across Central Asia.
Historical context Given the very limited evidence, it is important not to impose an artificial degree of order on the organisation and administration of the lands under Qarakhanid rule simply to satisfy a scholarly desire for such order, when the reality must have been more fluid and less ordered. The dynasty, for want of a better term, does not appear to have been centralised or marked by systematic or coherent planning, structure or organisation. However, what is clear is that the Qarakhanids inaugurated a period of Turkic domination of the Mashriq that was to last a thousand years.33
There are many problems with attempts to define the external ‘boundaries’ of an empire in the context of Islamic Central Asia in the medieval period. Instead, it may be better to approach the subject through the conceptual lens of a series of settled archipelagos within a fluctuating sea of nomadic peoples.34 The Russian scholar Barthold laid the foundations for the study of Qarakhanid history with his doctoral thesis, first published in Russian in 1900. There was an English translation in 1928, and subsequent additions and revisions in the third edition of 1968, titled Turkistan Down to the Mongol Invasion. 35 Due to the lack of surviving Qarakhanid sources, the work relies on external written sources and the numismatic evidence, and it was not until Pritsak published Die Karachaniden in 1953 that a clearer picture of the dynasty was to emerge.36
The complex picture of the various Qarakhanid rulers has most recently been elucidated by Bosworth in a supplement to his The New Islamic Dynasties. 37 It is thought that the Qarluq tribes which made up the Qarakhanid confederacy38 converted to Islam following the conversion of Satuq Bughra Khan in 960.39 Despite this, there were Christians within the lands under their rule, with evidence for Nestorian churches or populations in Samarkand, Khotan and Kashgar.40 Throughout the second half of the tenth century the Samanids and the Qarakhanids were attacking each other, and the Qarakhanids briefly captured Bukhara in 990. However, it was not until October 999 that Ilak Nasr occupied Bukhara and seized the Samanid treasury.41 The defeat of the Samanids led to the division of their territory between the Qarakhanids, who took the lands north of the Oxus, and the Ghaznavids, who took the lands to the south.42 The Qarakhanids were more of a loose confederation than any sort of monolithic, unitary state, and numerous internal quarrels led to the united kingdom of the Qarakhanids splitting into two main regions after 1040.
The western khanate was centred on Samarkand, and the eastern one had its capital at Balasaghun in Semirechye, now Burana in Kyrgyzstan.43 Prior to 1137, Uzgend was ruled by various Qarakhanids from either the western or eastern branches, but after that point, and until 1212, it was ruled by a series of independent Qarakhanids.44 The Qarakhanid khanate never really experienced full unity. However, the wide distribution of coins, minted by one ruler but found in hoards in distant areas ruled by another Qarakhanid, shows that despite the political fragmentation there was an extensive network of close economic relationships across the region that reached its apogee during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.45 The Qarakhanids were closely linked with the Great Seljuq sultans, and both Alp Arslan and Malikshah married Qarakhanid princesses.46 Malikshah’s successor was Berkyaruq, who had seized control by 1095, and confirmed the Qarakhanids Sulayman-tegin and Mahmud-tegin as rulers of Transoxiana as Seljuq vassals.47
The western Qarakhanids remained Seljuq vassals for about fifty years, and for a brief period, prior to the invasion of the Qara Khitai, the eastern branch were also Seljuq vassals.48 During this period of Seljuq vassalage there was a major expansion of urbanism, as well as the foundation of several new towns in the Qarakhanid lands in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.49 Although very little Qarakhanid literature survives, an important Turkish–Arabic dictionary, the Diwan Lughat al-Turk was written by the émigré Qarakhanid prince Mahmud al-Kashgari in Baghdad for Caliph al-Muqtadi.50 In the early 1130s, the Qarakhanid ruler of Balasaghun, harried by unruly Qarluq and Qangly nomads, called on the Qara Khitai for support. However, they first dethroned him before supressing the nomads.51
The Qara Khitay occupation of Balasaghun in 1137 led to the shift of the eastern Qarakhanid capital to Kashgar.52 With the declining power of the Seljuqs, the western Qarakhanids also soon found themselves increasingly under the sway of the Qara Khitai gürkhan. The battle of Qatwan, near Samarkand, in 1141 saw the defeat of the Seljuq Sultan Sanjar and his forces, which led to a switch for the local Qarakhanid rulers from being vassals of the Seljuqs to vassals of the Qara Khitai.53
There was a continuity of Muslim religious life during the period of Qara Khitai dominance,54 and a significant number of the extant monuments in the corpus were erected during this period. These include the minaret in Vabkent, the Chashma-i Ayyub mazar portal in Khayrabatcha, and the latter two tombs in Uzgend. Despite the Qara Khitai being overlords, there is no evidence in the inscriptions on buildings or on coins that the Qarakhanids were not independent during this time.55 During the final period of Qarakhanid rule of the region, the most powerful regional figure was the Khwarazmshah Muhammed. He oversaw a major famine, and the resulting depopulation of the region left little of value for the Mongols, whose arrival and conquest of Central Asia finally ended the period of Qarakhanid rule.
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