After grandiose episodes from the history of the great Parthian Empire with its splendid capital Nisa, architectural extravaganza of mediaeval Dehistan, famous with its masters and scientists Kunyaurgench staged in magnificent composition at the Olympic Stadium during opening ceremony of V Asian Games, we have been watching the past of the eastern region of our country.
Long time ago, rich trade city of Amul was thriving on the east of Turkmenistan.
Ancient caravansary Dayahatyn appeared as a miracle on the field of the stadium from the darkness.The scenes of oriental market appearing in variety of colours were brought to life.
There are carriages fully loaded with the gifts of generous Turkmen land everywhere.Bazar actors, histrionics, jugglers, acrobats and puppeteers make simple performances among the crowd.Noble men surrounded by numerous servants as well as foreign merchants come into the view among common people.
Loud touts and traders attract the customers literally forcing them to have a look at their goods. Girls with jugs and trays offer to drink pure spring water in hot middle of the day and taste some fresh juicy fruits and famous Turkmen grapes.
The gawkers are watching with surprise another caravan setting off to far and mysterious lands along the Great Silk Road…
4. At the banks of Jeyhun
Mediaeval manuscripts say that one of the line directions of the Great Silk Road used to run through large Turkmen cities where Amul (Turkmenabat) occupied special place.Diplomatic relations were carried out via this route between the East and West countries.
In the first centuries of the Great Silk Road, there was a violent struggle for control of the important parts of this route that connected the Europe and the Celestial Empire…
After VII century with the growth of Islamic civilization, all trade on this road was under control of Arabic merchants.All this times, the caravans of camels loaded with different goods were the main means of international cooperation and were under protection of the rulers as by saturating the markets of foreign countries with various goods they supported the development of the economy.
It is impossible to count how many cities and settlements have sprung owing to the Great Silk Road and how many of existing one got the impulse for the growth!
Shop shelves were overladen with goods variety at their noisy bazar squares.Numerous languages were spoken on the markets of Turkmenistan!If someone look at the territory of our motherland from the west to the east, form Hazar (Caspian Sea) to Jeyhun (Amydarya), he will see number of monuments of different ages indicating that.
Urban construction with mixed population in Amudarya zone was represented by the massifs of narrow blocks with ramified street network, different houses that always had unique planning composition. The city of Amul has been keeping the nature of such construction until the end of XIX century. The fortress of local nobility used to be the centre of the city.
Amul has sprung in the flood plain of the great river in I IV centuries as one of strategic and important strongholds of Kushan Empire.Even today, slipped down walls of its shahristan and citadel, which were used just hundred years ago, are still rising to the sky.
The development of the city falls on IX XII centuries when its rabad (trade and industrial suberb) reached 175 hectares.At those times, Amul was an important point of the Great Silk Road and caravan routes from Khoresm to Maveranahr (the interfluve of Amudary and Syrdarya Rivers) and t Tohristan (historical province between Guissar ridge and Hindu Kush) run via the city.
Dozens of similar settlements were discovered in the middle stream of Amudarya River together with Amul.They were finally established in III IV centuries but were completely destroyed after Mongolian invasion.
So called Kyoshk Zuk hra Takhir (also referred as Kyoshk Kala) is one of them.Half of the settlement including considerable part of the citadel was washed off and destroyed by Amudarya stream.
The traces of large trade and craft suburb were found to the north of the settlement.
The archaeologists identify the settlement with Navidakh, which was several times mentioned in the ancient sources.Almost all of them among five important cities of the Amudarya’s midde stream and their establishment and existence were defined by the comfortable river crossing (Termez, Kelif, Zemm, Amul), are called Navidakh.
The presence of the river crossing at Navidakh that played an important role in the past I indicated by the fact that there are ruins of another ancient settlement Hoja-Ilat Kala across the river on the left bank.
Nevertheless, this is not the type of the cities that later became the main type of the settlements in Lebap.The specifics of activity of Turkmens and features of the life style stipulated the development of large settlements having such city features as arc, bazar, coaching inn, crafts workshops and religious ensemble.
However, agriculture remained as the main profile and hence, the character of architecture is according to that fact.Many of the buildings of such type can be met now and they are carefully preserved and restored and keep the charm of the shapes of adobe domes and clay walls, adobe plaster and sun-bleached wood.
Finally, Dayahatyn Caravansary, which image was embodied at the Olympic village, stands alone in Amudarya middle stream. Its architecture by construction and style features is a wonderful example of the builders’ skills of Seljuk Age.
Twelve centuries ago, when the great Central Asian river of Amudarya (called Jeyhun in those times) had much more water, monumental building, which can be seen even today if to cover 170 km from modern Turkmenabat following left bank of the river to the north, appeared on one of its high banks.
Standing alone on the edge of the desert where the sands of Karakums almost touch the river just separated from water by narrow band of tamarisk, this construction was built in the centre of square fortress in 821 - 822 when Takhir Ibn Hussein, a prominent figure of the Islamic history, used to be the Governor of Khorasan of Arabic Caliphate.
He is thought to build that fortress that was called Takhiriya.
In those times, Muslim power entrusted the protection of its borders, especially in remote regions of the Central Asia, to brave warriors who desperately wished to be distinguished in the battle for the belief and used to be called gazi.
Combat spirit of these people was forged inside such fortresses, which were called rabat.They used to live inside these fortresses spending their time in preying and combat training.
The rabat that was built on Amudarya River by one-eyed Takhir Ibn Hussein, who was an ancestor of Takhirids Dynasty with their capital in Merv, has remained its main features until our days.
Though during the Seljuks it has changed its function and was turned into caravansary Daya-Hatyn.As if it would be called now, a modernization of the central building of former rabat was made for this in XI-XII century.
It was covered with new tiling meeting the style of that time.
It does not have analogues by its artistic perfectness among remained coaching inns on the territory of Turkmenistan.Even in the neighbour states, there are only two similar monuments of that time that can be put in the same line with Days-Hatyn: these are Rabat-I Malik desert residence of Karakhanids on the main road between Samarkand and Bukhara and Rabat-I Sharaf in the mountains between Serakhs and Nishapur built by the order of Merv’s Governor.
All three buildings could be called as elite fashionable hotels of the Mediaeval. They were very different from large number of various caravansaries that were placed in the cities and across the desert on numerous routes of the Great Silk Road for rest and defence of the caravans at every 25 35 kilometres (the distance of day pass).
Many of them have been gone long time ago or turned into ruins, covered with sand or sliding of their wall and only the most monumental ones, which condition is in such shape that allows imaging its full appearance and gives an opportunity to modern restorers to rehabilitate almost all lost parts of the buildings and elements of décor without any guessing on scientific base relying on existing original, are still rising above the horizon.
By the end of Xi century, the most typical type of coaching inn of Khorasan was formed.Planning scheme of these rectangular or square but always symmetric constructions includes internal yard surrounded by the perimeter by the premises for guests, storage, sheds for animals and forage.
While caravansaries in the cities did not require any protection and were located next to bazars in the main trading points of the cities, those that were built deep in the desert were protected by blind walls with strong gate towers.
Sometimes, old and abandonment rabats were used for these purposes like in Takhiriya case.
Both sides of the entrance of Dayahatyn bear brick inlay of four pious caliphs or charyars as Turkmens call them.It indicates that this facility was not ordinary merchant hotel but the government caravansary designated for the rest of royal family members and their court during long trips around their state.
The premises that served as rooms were distinguished from other premises by unusual planning and fancy design.
Daya-Hatyn had its own mosque. This was an oblong room to the right from the entrance hall divided into three parts by two arches. Each of them had a niche overlooking the Kaaba.
The main façade of the caravansary had another panels between the inlays with the names of charyars on the left and the right from the entrance with the text that probably could be able to shed some light on the history of this outstanding monument.
Unfortunately, the signs were completely destroyed and only the frames with some of the finishing have remained.The old name has vanished together with the memory of those who decorated this facility during the Seljuks.
The name of Daya-Hatyn is met in the chronicles of the beginning of XIX century describing these places.Local population changed this name by the consonance to their manner and ever since called it Bayhatyn, having related the monument with some virtuous woman, the wife of rich man.
There was another reconstruction in the history of Daya-Hatyn in XV or XVI centuries when the main entrance got its current look.However, when the caravans have stopped going along the Great Silk Road, the caravansary lost its purpose.
Ever since the building remained abandoned and started to decay slowly.It is just military companies that sometimes stopped there for a night and occasional wanderers hid from the sun.
Officer of the East Indian Company Richmond Shakespeare wat he first European who saw Daya-Hatyn back in 1840 during his trip from Herat to Hiva and left some notes in his diary about it.
After few decades, when this region was attached to the Russian Empire, some Russians have visited this place.Famous painter Lev Evgrafovich Dmitriyev-Kavkazsky made a picture of the caravansary from the river view and the first photo graph was made ater 12 years by the member of the expedition for railroad studies Mikhail Nikolayevich Chernyshevsky, the son of the famous Russian author, the writer of political essays.
In the 20s of the XX century, Daya-Hatyn was checked for the first time by archaeologist.It was Alexander Marschenko, who founded the archaeology of Turkmenistan.Back in 1950, architectural historian Anna Pribytkova from Moscow made first detailed study of the caravansary.
Numerous methods of lying of domes, vaults, top constructions, arches, light holes in partitions, optimum openings of these of those construction and other can be traced in this building, she wrote.
Her colleague, future Academic Galina Anatolyevna Pugachenkova came there with detachment of the South Turkmenistan Archaeological Complex Expedition (STACE).She wrote fundamental work on the history of Turkmensitan architecture where number of pages was dedicated to the fort on Amudarya River as well as precise and capacious explanation of exclusive value of this facility was formulated.
The architecture of Daya-Hatyn caravansary is an example of mature style where the requirements of functional validity, constructive appropriateness and art perfectness appear in close unity.
This monument is was recommended to be included to the UNESCO World heritage List among the most important subjects of the Great Silk Road.It will not take long time and Daya-Hatyn again will speak of itself and his status will be changed; streams of those who wish not only to touch the living history but also to reveal one of its mysteries, which key is probably buried somewhere here, will be flowing here.
It was not only the goods but also the information about different nations, sometimes obscure and vague but still rising mutual interest of people living in different parts of the world. this communication was passing through the Central Asian particularly via Turkmenistan as it was impossible to overpass that region due to geographic location.
This contacts could not help effecting the cultures of the nations through which territories they used to be carried out.That is why the Great Silk Road is one of the most remarkable achievements of the ancient civilizations, which was the first in the history that allowed connecting different people on huge spaces form Europe to China.
It is quite obvious that it is not separate city or monument but the entire Silk Road as historical and cultural phenomenon and serial object is nominated to the World Heritage List by the proposal of the UNESCO Committee.
Each country of this nomination including Turkmenistan defined several dozens of caravansaries, ancient strongholds, sanctuaries and other facilities related with the main routes of the Road.There is Amul among them, which sceneries were presented during opening ceremony of Ashgabat 2017 Games.
The caravan set off farther from there, through the space and time to ancient country of Margush, which we would speak about in the next publication.