File:Russian Central Asia - including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva and Merv (1885) (14598249257).jpg

Identifier: russiancentralas02lans (find matches)
Title: Russian Central Asia : including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva and Merv
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Lansdell, Henry, 1841-1919 Lansdell, Henry, 1841-1919, inscriber. ins
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Publisher: London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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all, until we purchased some old coinsfound on the spot, when the similarity of the inscrip-tions was manifest. It is doubtful whether the in-scriptions can now be deciphered, because some of thebricks that form them are fallen out. Besides theinscriptions, the zones of coloured bricks are sometimesin mosaic in the form of a scroll, and at others in brokenX patterns. Howorth, quoting Glukhovsky, who visitedthe place in 1873, speaks of a stately tower or minaretin the shape of a truncated cone, and adds that insideis a winding staircase reaching to the roof, which isquite probable; but, so far as I remember, I couldfind no entrance, or I certainly should have been eager KUNIA URGENJ AND NORTHERN KHIVA. 343 to ascend. In my photograph of the eastern minaret,the summit of the western one only just rises abovethe horizon, though Kuhn gives their distance apartas only from 700 to 1,000 feet. What end these lofty towers served is not clear,unless to call the Muhammadans to prayer. It seems
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THE MINARETS OF KUNIA URGENJ. probable that the two belonged to different medresses,though no traces of the medresses remain. Besides these minarets there are still standing 5ruined buildings, once ornamented. Some distancewest of the first minaret we examined are some wallsand an arch, or pishtak, resembling that over thekibleh in a mosque ; and this may possibly be the ruinsof one of the old palaces of the Kharezmian Shahs. 344 RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA. They show signs of having been ornamented withcoloured tiles. A few minutes walk south-west of thewest minaret is the mausoleum of Sheikh Shurif. Ithas a conical roof of coloured tiles, supported, asAbbott says, upon a prism of 24 sides, not inelegantlymoulded into columns and recesses. The only mosaicornamentation left consists of pale-blue bricks, withraised letters round the cornice of the edifice outside.The door is a pointed arch, and inside I measured thearea as 37 feet square. The interior of the domewas so fashioned as to remind

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