Author & Photos by: Andrey Kudryashov

Four ayats, verses from the holy Koran, amended the biblical story of the patriarchy Job. This underlay origin of the peculiar cult simultaneously existed with the coming and spreading of Islam in the ancient lands of Khorezm and Sogdiana, where it vanquished the Middle Ages religion with monotheism whimsically combined with millennial traditions of myths and folk legends. In many corners of Central Asia till now, some places have been preserved and deemed to be the place of the Saint Ayub's (Job) life and acts, being the patron of the sweet wells and springs of healing water. Pilgrims of three religions: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity  visit mazar of Ayub in Kunya-Urgench, ancient capital of Khorezm, identifying these places with the legendary  "Uts country", where according to the biblical Book of Job, the Most High had put the beliefs and patience of the great man on trial. There are three more unique monuments of culture connected with the name of Job-Ayub in the well-known territory of Uzbekistan: in Karshi, near Vabkent in Bukhara region, and the most famous Chashma Ayub Mausoleum in Bukhara.
            According to the Bible, Job was a good and fair man, diligently offering up prayers to God not only for himself but also his family members. For his god-fearing and righteous life, God granted him fat herds, honour and peace in his family - consisted of seven sons and three daughters. But when Satan appeared and tempted men against God, God wanted to know whether this man (Job) would still be zealous in his beliefs if He bereaved him of his possessions. To disgrace the tempter, God put the man on many arduous trials: Job suffered the robbers' raid, thunderbolt and hurricane until lost all of his properties and children. However, having torn his clothes and prostrated himself he said, "Naked I came out from my mother's womb, naked I would come back. The God gave and the God took away; let the name of God be blessing!" (Job.1.21). Then the Satan had affected him by leprosy, Job's body was covered by purulent ulcers, and he sat among the ruins, sprinkled his head with ashes, and damned his birth day. But even in this case, he didn't fall for temptation to damn God and die according to persuasions of his wife and three friends coming to mourn for his fate while reproaching him, that he had convinced them before to glorify the God. At the most distressing moment when the man just gave himself up to despair and was already going to grumble at God, the Almighty appeared to him with admonition and having accepted his repentance, God asked Job tell to his unfaithful friends to request them to pray to God.  And after that Almighty returned to him, his health, wealth, and children.   Job lived happily a hundred and forty years more, and died in his old age "saturated by days".  
            According to the Christian tradition the Uts country where these events occurred is considered to be the lands at the borders of Palestine, Arabia, and Babylonian interfluves.   Secular researchers of the Bible noted that the author of the Job's Book was familiar with such phenomenon as snowfall and ice. At the same time mountains and seas; and the animals such as ostriches and peacocks, jackals, lions, hyenas, onagers, unicorn (rhinoceros), and hippopotamus have been mentioned in this Book. However, from the above-mentioned it is impossible to make a conclusion that the Uts country located in Africa or India, but it is possible to say that quite spacious world was known to him. Verses of Koran, obviously applied to people who have already heard of the Biblical Job story, in sura 30 "The Garden" repeat its happy end with such details: "Recall Muhammad, Our slave Ayub, when he called to his God,  "Shaitan struck me with sufferings and torments!" (41). He was ordered, "Stamp with your foot on the land, and cold water for ablution and drinking will strike (42)". We revived his children, redoubling their number, as a mercy from us and as edification of the wise (43). The fourth verse describes how the Almighty advised Ayub to act mercifully. Ayub, swearing to punish his wife with a hundred stick strikes because in the time of misfortune she had instigated him to abuse the God: "Allah said, "Take with your hand a bundle of rods and strike with it, and don't break your oath". Indeed, We have found him to be patient. A wonderful slave! He really applies to Allah in everything" (44).         
            In Sogdiana, where Islam and Koran came considerably later than biblical stories that were spread by a few communities of Israelites and Christians, a folk legend caught a detail story regarding the source of healing water. Civilization of the Bukhara oasis, originated as far back as in the III millennium B.C., has been developing in the specific conditions. The river Zaravshan, in former times were more full-flowing, than nowadays, running from the Pamirs heights, to the end of its stream ran  through whole Sogdiana's arid plain, filling it up with a fertile silt, and because of it sandy soils the first greatly waterlogged land became suitable for farming. However, the water itself, in this dead end of irrigation, was saturated with salt, bitter to taste and not always good for drinking because the area is surrounded from all sides by the sands of Kizilkum deserts. That is the reason why since olden days sweet wells and pure springs, each of which possessing its own patron from zoroastrizm pantheon of the sacred elements or preceded it to nature divinities, have been honoured here. With Arabs coming in the VIII-th century, under the sword and sermon strengthening strict monotheism, ancient cults had to be adapted to the new conditions, and for this purpose, the myths inside Islam itself were used.     According to the hypothesis of the researches from the Institute for Oriental Studies at the Uzbek Academy of Science, Ayub cult originating in the Bukhara oasis maybe promoted by the Arab conquerors themselves, more precisely by the South-Arabian tribal chieftains taking an active part in the Maverannahr conquest. In recent times Yemen nobility had to adapt pre-Islamic traditions of its country to the requirements of Muslim monotheism. Being in the internal opposition to caliphs from Omeyad clan and Kureisheets, descendants of the Khimiaritsk kingdom adopted Islam and tried to connect culture of the conquered lands with the existed in their Motherland legends about feats of the biblical prophets-canifs (monotheists): Noah (Nuh), Abraham (Ibraghim), Moses (Musa), Job (Ayub), David (Daud), queen of Sabbath and Solomon (Suleyman), prophet Daniel (Daniyar), Iskander Zul-Karnay, King of Tube, as well as Moslem Saints of the South-Arabian origin.  For example, in Khorezm cult of Yemen ascetic of Islam Uvais Karani is widely spread, in the honour of which mountain range is called as Sultan Uvais. Later on, when Turk conquerors Karahanids adopted Islam at the end of the X-th century to replace Arab governors from the Samanids' house, on the eve of their campaign commencement from Kashgar and Semirechye to Maverannahr local legends that were encountered were not yet obsolete from the Central Asian nomads.  According to the legend mausoleum Chashma Ayub in the historical centre of Bukhara was built under Karakhanid ruler Mansur Arslan-Khan in the early XII century simultaneously with erection of the colossal Kalyan minaret in Registan square. The other data referred completion of its building to the time after Mongolian invasion: epoch of Amir Temur and Temurids.       The building mausoleum many times rebuilt and restored with atypical style to the architectural monuments of Uzbekistan- conical dome that until now has been preserving unique appearance and remaining as one of the honoured cult places of the region although now, it was turned into museum by the actual authorities. With deep trepidation, pilgrims walk around the probable grave of the righteous Ayub, leaving on it handfuls of rice or wheat and twigs of the fragrant grass 'rayhon'. They inevitably take water from the well, which deemed to be healing water for internal disorders and skin diseases.
            At the entrance to the mausoleum over the doorway restorers left bas-relief from ceramic tiles with plant ornament on a turquoise background and relief inscription with white letters. In translation it says, "This building was erected in the times of ruling of Sultan of Maverannahr and Khorasan Amir Temur Guragan, - let his mercy to all Muslims enhanced - by the efforts of Amir Khadjjadj in the year of 785 (hidjra)/1383 A.D." this means that the mausoleum was built thirteen years later after Bukhara became a part of the Temur's Empire. But as for the builder personality the scientists are at a loss. Probably, although it is difficult to assume the inscription made, the latest rebuilding and restorations has confused it with Timurids' time and the epoch of Omeyads when Khadjjadj ibn Yusuf was the governor of the oriental provinces of caliphate and headed campaigns of the emir Kuteib to Maverannahr. Above the inscription in the wall of the mausoleum a wooden plate was built to telling the story of this holy place, "In the name of Allah Gracious and Merciful. Khodja Imam Khafis Gungjari in his book "Tarikh Bukhara" (History of Bukhara) told on behalf of Vakhb ibn Munnabikh that in one of the ancient book it was written that one of the prophets having swum across Djeyhon arrived in the place called Bukhara where people extended a good welcome to him. In response to this, he said in their honour three favourable prayers, which the Almighty accepted. This prophet said, "O, Lord, bless their offspring, inflict a defeat on their enemies, turn distemper away from them. This prophet was Ayub the Patient - let Allah bless him! And his death occurred in Bukhara in that very place, which had been preserved till now. Under it, there was a source which is deemed to be one of the sources of Paradise. On the bank of the spring a tree was growing, the leaves of which similar to the leaves of Sandjid, were green even in winter. And if you tore a leave red water would flow from it…" According to the scientists, in the mausoleum the tomb rests the remains of Khafiz Gundjari, famous theologian and interpreter of khadis died in 1022 in Bukhara. Actual burial place of Job/Ayub in the Muslim world is pretended to be two settlements: Nava and Khauran near Damask in Syria. But pilgrims in Bukhara worship Chashma Ayub to remember the memory of the legendary man. Perhaps relying on their familiarity with details of the biblical patriarch sufferings on the patch between mausoleum and market at the ancient gates of Talipach, until today invalids and the sickly aged people have been begging.  The other scared places under the name of Chashma Ayub, which is honoured as  "Kadan gokh", a place of visit, is situated thirty five kilometers away to the North from Bukhara in the small village of Khayriabad near Vabkent.  A local mausoleum lost among the cotton field, insight of an ancient barrow only a portal has been spared, which is considered by experts to be one of the unique architectural monuments of the XII-th or XIII-th century.
            Behind the portal an ancient well has been preserved, presumably hidden under the wooden sarcophagus already existed in the XVIII-XIX-th or even in the early XX-th century.  But nowadays healing water from the Job source is being sourced through a new 'mouth' made three steps away from the holy well.  Scientists think that in the mausoleum of Chashma Ayub in Khayriabad belongs to a famous theologian Abu Sad Khadjushi, born and lived in the neighbouring village Khargush, was buried in year 1017. Thus khadis interpreters connected the text of Koran with the local legends after their life sanctified themselves the places devoted to the patriarch Job with their help.

  Minaret in the ancient Vabkent.

            On the upper portico of mausoleum one can see extraordinary bright geometrical pattern from the coloured ceramics with the image of fylfots: solar signs remained in the architecture of the Islam Maverannahr as a heritage of zoroastrizm or, probably, Buddha impact of Bactria and Kushan Empire. Solar signs in these places that interlaced with geometrical or plant ornament is not a rarity in the Middle Aged architecture of the Central Asia, however, besides Chashma Ayub near Vabkent, they possess such expressiveness only in facing of some mausoleums of Shah-and-Zinda complex in Samarkand, on the slopes of the ancient settlement Afrosiab. The sanctuary Shah-and-Zinda, connected with the legend of a Muslim saint "alive king" Kussam ibn Abbas, topographically also attached to the underground sources. But in Samarkand the other legendary personages act as their patrons: Kussam ibn Abbas himself, biblical prophet Daniel (Daniyar) and eternal wanderer Khazrat Khizr drinking water from the holy lake giving immortality. In the ancient Vabkent, today's regional centre of Bukhara region, a remarkable monument of the Middle Ages built in the last decades of Karakhanids' ruling: an elegant minaret, the height of which is almost the same as minaret Kalyan's one in Bukhara has remained. Cult centres created in the epoch of the coming distemper survived the Mongolian hordes invasion in the XIII-th century, and after that served as the support points, around which rulers of Timurid dynasty.