By Andrey Kudryashov
Photo Aleksandra Vlasova
For the 2000 years of its existence Tashkent has been subjected to conquerors' assaults thirteen times, razed to the ground four times, and survived seven terrible earthquakes. Various dramatic events and natural cataclysms changed the appearance and topography of this ancient city, but couldn't force people to leave this city for good, a city which apparently, was not notable for the especially advantageous geographical location or terrifically favorable climate.
The past can cite many examples when entire nations disappeared from the face of the earth or migrated to new homelands, leaving in their wake ruins of magnificent castles and inaccessible fortresses surrounded by the formerly blossoming valleys. But indented by the ravines and clay hills of Tashkent, over the centuries settlements of merchants and craftsmen have been stubbornly built, surrounded by gardens, ploughed fields and irrigation canals.
Moreover, the city, only at the end of the last century, became the capital of an independent state. Until then it remained a modest province, superseded by other empires and realms, unable to deliver world renowned names of great commanders and legendary rulers. It was mostly patronized by saints and mystics, guiding spiritual aspirations of their contemporaries especially during the years of arduous trials.
Seven holy places are connected with the names and lives of these saints, and are, even today, honored all over Central Asia. Some of these ascetics are quite real while other mysterious figures are veiled in legends, real facts interlaced with myths and folk legends.
PASTORAL ZEAL
The mausoleum of the most famous saint, Sheikh Ai Khodja ibn Tadj Khodja ibn Mansur, nicknamed Zangi-ota, is located in the Zangi-ota settlement fifteen kilometers southwest of modern Tashkent, on the old road to Samarkand. Not far from it, on the banks of the Salar River, archeologists found the site of the ancient settlement of the 2nd century B.C., possibly the most ancient fortified settlement in the area, considered an ancestor of Tashkent. But in the time of Zangi-ota, the city would have been located far from these places. After the armies of the Arab commander Kuteib ibn Muslim in 715 had wiped the pagan Shash off the face of the earth, a new metropolitan centre known as Binkent was relocated from the Salar Valley to the flat hill near the present Chorsu Market. Within five centuries, in 1211 to be precise, Binkent was burnt and ransacked by Khorezm shakh Muhammad and the Turk rulers of the Karakhanid dynasty were banished from the region. In the next eight years, Genghis khan and his hordes came across the steppes and destroyed the inhabitants of the ancient cities Otrar and Signak on the banks of the Syr-daria River. It was nothing to be destroyed by them in the Binkent region since the city had not been built yet.
The cult of Zangi-ota appeared in this time of troubles, following the Mongolian invasion. Bloody wars were all over the place, rulers conquered each other like seasons, city ruins burned, feeding stray dogs and packs of wolves, along the deserted caravan routes gangs of robbers of different languages and tribes committed outrageous crimes. For merchants and city craftsmen they were hard, merciless years, unceasing requisitions, and bitter ravages. However, on the outskirts of the burnt cities, peasants continued to cultivate land and tend cattle.
According to legend, Saint Zangi-ota had been a shepherd his whole life, tending public herds, driving them in the summer to the rich meadows of the Western Tien Shan mountains, and closer to winter - to the cane bushes along the banks of the Sirdarya, Chirchik and Salar rivers. It should be noted that the service of shepherds was deemed an honorary profession. Moreover, Ay Khodja boosted his authority with endless worldly wisdom, charity and good deeds. He not only increased the property of his fellow tribesmen in the form of herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but he was also the spiritual pastor of the community: he settled disputes, consoled hearts, taught faith, healed the sick, and even performed miracles. As a result, he was declared a saint, patronizing cattle-breeding and personifying human life in general.
Ethnographers have often noted that the Zangi-ota cult, patron of herders and herds is being spread throughout many regions in Central Asia, for example, Khorezm. His close analogies in the form of Sange worship, the spirit-patron of cows are found among the Turk people of Western Siberia. Legend explains that Zangi-ota, at a mature age, lived the life of a dervish, wandered a lot, and casually converted thousands people from the Volga region to Altai to Islam.
More realistically, from a scientific point of view, is an assumption that the Saint Ay Khodji cult appearance near Tashkent in the 13th-15th centuries, combining the folk mind with remnants of the ancient Gods who patronize cattle-breeding. For example, in Zoroastizm, the pantheon was widespread in the territory of Chacha before the Arab invasion where the special goddess, Geusht-Urvan or the Soul of a Bull, existed. She had to give permission for the domestic slaughter of animals.
Turk people also had their cattle-breeding cults. When Turks' Karachanid in the late 10th century, coming from Semirechiye and the valley of the Talas River, had spread their power over Binkent, Abu Bakr Kaffal Shashi converted many of them to Islam beginning with all princes, tribal leaders, and aristocratic nobles. However, there were also ordinary men from the Karluk, Chigil, and Yagma tribes who, for a long time, had adhered to Shamanizm and worshiped their Gods. It can be assumed that the Zangi-ota cult somehow has a heritage of aboriginal faiths brought from Altai to the Tashkent walls, not vice-versa.
Nevertheless, Zangi-ota himself is considered to be quite an historic person with a down-to-earth biography, at least, within the frame of Sufi traditions, in which he was established as the fifth sheikh of the Yassaviya Order, followers of the great mystic and Saint Akhmad Yassavi. Tradition traced his generation to Arslan-Bab, mentor and instructor of Yassaviy and the legendary long-liver who once appeared before the face of the Prophet Mohammad.
Legend says that when Ai Khodja came into the world, his parents immediately took him to the city of Yassi (now the city of Turkestan in Southern Kazakhstan) to get a blessing from the great teacher. Apparently this wonderful infant offered a prayer at Saint Akhmad's feet, and he, being touched by it, foretold that his tomb would be built by the descendants before paying honor to Yassavi himself. This episode, even though some of its details are not necessarily factual, could be based on real events of the years of Ai Khodja's infancy whose date of birth is not exact, but could concur with the last years of Akhmad Yassavi's life. Although Ai Khodja got his first instructions in Sufi mysteries, in contrast to baraka (blessing), it was most probably not from Saint Akhmad, but from his father Tadj Khodja, also a sheikh of the Yassaviya Order.
Later on, according to legend, Ai Khodja had several teachers, but Saint Zangi-ota had a great multitude of disciples. Sufi tradition ascribes him to the creation of the Zangi zikr or the pastoral zikr (inspiration from on High) and his own practice of spiritual zeal.
The peculiar ways of the Most High names' commemoration; Zikr are the innermost mystery of the Muslim mystics. However, it was in the Middle Ages, when among the followers of different schools of Sufism “ideological” delimitation occurred on the issue of what zeal should be and, therefore, the whole lifestyle of the truth finders.
For example, two centuries after Zangi-ota, the most authoritative shekh of Sufism, Ubaidulla Khodja Akhror, strengthened concepts existing in the Nakshbandiya Order such as commemoration of the Most High names should be voiceless and performed in seclusion. According to this, the life of Sufi followers should not be a demonstration of godliness through asceticism, seclusion, and wandering dervishes, instead it is required to look for God in worldly actions such as handicrafts and housekeeping, performance of public works, charity, and enlightenment. Such views partly reflected the common sentiments of the era in which Khodja Akhror lived, when the Temur Empire revived the ideas of statehood.
But in time of Akhmad Yassavi, preaching Sufi mysteries to the free nomads created a somewhat different atmosphere. Saint Akhmad Yassavi himself spent many years in seclusion in an underground cell, heralding from there his prophetic verses. His followers, including Zangi-ota, although an instructor of people, led the secluded life of a dervish and yurodivy, practicing in a loud voice the zikr from his heart; individual or joint singing of the God's names. Often such a zirk was accompanied by raks a inspired dance with rhythmic movements. According to legend, the pastoral zikr was heaven-sent to Zangi-ota when he returned with a herd from a mountain pasture. He was singing a song while skipping down the hillside with a stick resting on his shoulders. The Zangi zikr is also practiced in this form in some places even today.
The name Zangi-ota itself means “black-skinned” evidence of how generously the sun burned the face and body of the saint shepherd throughout his days of being under the open sky. In the local dialect, another translation of the word “zangi” is “ladder”.
According to legend Zangi-ota reached a great old age and died in 1258. A century later, after his death, a prophecy made by him during his birth began to come about.
THE MERCY OF TAMERLANE AND THE LEGEND ABOUT A BULL
Everybody who knows the amazing monuments of Middle Age architecture surviving in Samarkand, Shakhrisabz and Turkestan, will immediately recognize the style of the Zangi-ota mausoleum as part of the style of the monuments of the Amir Temur and Temurids era. The high portal, decorated with bright ornaments of the large glazed mosaic cupolas, arouse familiar associations of famous world tourist sites with modern Uzbekistan. The Zangi-ota memorial complex began its existence during the life of the terrible emperor of Maverannakhr at the personal order of Timur although some circumstances accompanying its construction, until today, have been shrouded in myths.
In 1397 Temur, after a number of victories over the Chagataysk rulers of Mogolistan, his main competitors in the struggle for power in Maverannakhr, made a solemn pilgrimage to the city of Yassi to the grave of Akhmad Yassavi. By that time he had already been deemed as the patron saint of all Tyurk nations. To add to the glory of the saint's authority of his Empire, Temur ordered the construction of the Yassi mausoleum of Akhmad and the gigantic khanaka: gate house for dervishes and devout pilgrims. In the same year construction of the Zangi-ota mausoleum near Tashkent also started. Whether it was a prophecy coming true or a simple coincidence in the interests of state ideology remains a question.
In the village of Zangi-ota, correspondents of IA Fergana.Ru managed to unearth a wonderful legend. Supposedly, when the foundation and walls of the mausoleum in Yassi were being built, each night a huge fierce bull came running no-one knew where from. It stamped on the builders and smashed everything that they had built for that day. This misfortune had been reported to Temur and he, asking advice from the sages, found out about the words of Saint Akhmad which were said in his time to the parents of the boy, Ay Khodja. Then the Emperor agreed to implement the prophet's will, and both mausoleums were built simultaneously, although the lesser of them near Tashkent and of course, completed much earlier.
In reality the legend about the bull once again confirms the significance of the Zangi-ota cult as a cattle-breeding patron. As for Amir Temur's decision, it must have been among many of his far-sighted deeds, making this terrible and ruthless conqueror a great public statesman, a patron of his subject nations, taking care of sciences, handicrafts, enlightenment and spiritual development.
Amir Temur visited Tashkent several times, and in 1365 at its walls, in the valley was very well aware of the traditions and beliefs of the local inhabitants. Before his pilgrimage to Yassi, Temur decided to enter into a royal marriage with the daughter of one of the Mogolistan rulers to attract to himself the sympathy of the people in the remote North-eastern areas of his empire. It seems that the erection of mausoleums of the most respected local saints served the same political purpose; to gain the love and respect of the population of the area which he was going to make a reliable base for his future campaign to China.
The last plan, dreams which Temur had been hatching out for his entire life, was not fated to come true. In the late autumn of 1405 he finally put end to all rebellions in the East of the state, reaching right up to the Caucuses, Turkey and the Persian Gulf. The Emperor of Samarkand moved his mighty army of Maverannakhr to the Northern steppes. By the beginning of winter he forced a crossing over the Syrdarya River at the Otrar, where, because of the hard frosts, he had to stop his campaign and send the greater part of his troops to the Tashkent region, to the warm and nourishing winter camps to prepare them for spring and for his China conquest, the Motherland of his legendary ancestor Genghis khan: Mongolia. The commander himself decided to winter in the steppe, but suddenly he fell seriously ill and died. By that time the Akhmad Yassavi mausoleum was almost complete and construction of Zangi-ota mausoleum's portal was coming to an end. It was decorated under the guidance of Temur's grandson, the Samarkand ruler, Mirzo Ulugbek. The last construction of the memorial complex in the Zangi-ota village, the minaret, was built in the 20th century, and in our time all its buildings have undergone soft restoration.
ANBAR-BIBI AND ULUG PODSHO
Not far from the mausoleum in the middle of the, now active, Muslim cemetery, there is one more popular pilgrimage place: the burial-vault of the Zangi-ota sheikh's wife, the Saint Anbar-bibi to which many women come to request patronage and intercession.
According to legend, which in this case is difficult to separate from real history because it has been entrenched by sufism tradition and the Ai-Khodji teachers, it was the sheikh and poet from Khorezm, Suleiman Bakirgani known also under the name Khakim-ota. He was also a follower of Akhmad Yassavi, and for Zangi-ota he became, not only an instructor, but also a good friend. After Bakirgani's death, Zangi-ota married his widow Anbar-bibi, becoming his faithful companion in every secular and sacred affair. In the burial-vault of Anbar-bibi, her mother-in-law Bakirgani and mother, Saint Ulug Podsho were also buried.
According to legend, Anbar-bibi and Ulug Podsho helped their female contemporaries settle matters, for which Zangi-ota had no time because of his work pressure or favour towards men. However, it is said that before his death the Saint requested all pilgrims, irrespective of their sex, to visit the graves of his wife and her mother-in-law without fail. Today that can be observed on Fridays and holidays, when for zierat, pilgrimage to the Zangi-ota village attracts hundreds of people from Tashkent and the Tashkent region as well as pilgrims coming from the remotest corners of Central Asia, where Ai-Khodji and his saint family's cult, bearing a strong resemblance to the ancient cults of Turk nations, until today, has been enjoying well-deserved recognition.
Generally, the memorial complex in the village of Zangi-ota looks even more exotic than the burial-vaults and madrassahs of Samarkand, Khiva or Shakhrisabz. Although located near a modern metropolis, in remains a rural, out-of-the-way place, protected from the tinsel splendor so characteristic of any popular tourism centres. Here temples and cemeteries side closely with ordinary residential constructions and ploughed fields and not fashionable hotels and busy streets. It takes us back to the time peasants tilled the land and tended their herds. In the non-parade atmosphere of pastoral weekdays, the most ancient cult retains live roots in the daily life of the village folk.
