| |
Tashkent, Khiva, Bukhara,
''In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:''
Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1816.
Two thousand years ago the Silk Road trade routes crisscrossed Eurasia, from China to the ports of the Mediterranean, from the first millennium B.C. through the middle of the second millennium A.D. Silk was already being sold in Europe in the fourth century B.C, and many important scientific and technological innovations migrated along the Silk Road to the West: gunpowder, the magnetic compass, the printing press, mathematics, ceramic and lacquer crafts.
Our tour follows a section of the route in Central Asia safeguarded by the Mongols, who succeeded the Chinese as guardians of the Silk Road.
We start in Tashkent, a two-thousand-year-old city, once ruled by Genghis Khan and later a part of the Russian empire. You can see this dual heritage in the Bazaar, with its spices and carpets and in the Polovtsov Mansion, with its hand-pained ceilings and exquisite tiles.
In the Khorezm oasis of the Kara-Kum Desert is the ancient city of Khiva, the best preserved caravan stop of all. Khiva was once teeming with traders, resting in the caravanserai - the roadside inns. When we take you to see the Khan's Palace and the Friday Mosque, your imagination will perhaps people it as it was.
Nobody ever forgets their first sight of the soaring massive gates to the fortress that rise up out of the desert in Bukhara. Inside this city of desert-hues, the fortress and the emir's palace really do have to be seen, but the Kalyan Minaret (dating back to 1127), is the greatest remnant of old Bukhara; Genghis Khan destroyed most of the city, but left the minaret standing, because he was so struck by its beauty.
Ancient Arab manuscripts refer to Samarkand as the ''Gem of the East'', Europeans called it the ''The Land of Scientists''. Alexander the Great was dazzled by its mosaics, and visitors today are still being impressed by the Registan Square and the Jewish Quarter. |
|
