10/15 & 16: Turkistan, Kazakhstan: Sauran Ruins & Ethnographic Museum

We had the first rainy day all trip so stayed in the hotel as long as we could to stay warm before finally deciding to hire a taxi to take us to Sauran, described as the best preserved and most atmospheric ruins of all the many ruined Silk Road cities in the region. From the 13th until the 16th century, Sauran was the biggest city in Kazakhstan, and a major stopover in the Silk Road caravan routes that connected the East and West. 

We figured the 7,000 tengue cost, i.e. under $18, was well worth having the driver take us there and back and wait with no limit as to how long we could visit the ruins. After close to an hour's drive northwest of Turkistan, we were rewarded with the sight of camels! It was the first time I can remember our seeing camels 'in the wild' even though we've spent quite a bit of time traveling in the Middle East.

The rain accounted for the blurry spots on my camera lens. 

Not long after, we spotted some of the ancient walls of Sauran, rising out of the desert floor. 

I read that what remained at Sauran were the archaeological town, the restored entrance structure and the fortress. This was clearly the entrance structure.

A sign indicated the first written mention of Sauran was in the first half of the 14th century. Archaeological expeditions first took place in Sauran in 1867, followed by others in 1948, 1967, 1986 and most recently from 2005-2009.

The winds were very fierce but the weather gods must have been on our side as at least it stopped raining for a while so we were very thankful.

Sauran has been mentioned in writing since the 10th century, but this location seems to have been inhabited from the 13th century until the 18th century. It was one of only a few cities that survived the Mongol onslaught. As empires waxed and waned, Sauran adapted, becoming the capital of the the western part of the Mongol empire.  

Later it became a military fortress under Timur, the warlord who conquered much of Central Asia and other lands in the 13th and 14th centuries. Sauran city administrators must have learned their lesson from nearby Otrar, which taunted the Mongols and was razed to the ground, with all inhabitants killed.

In an ideal world, it would have been wonderful to have had a knowledgeable guide to show us exactly what we were seeing. But we were the only ones wandering around the massive sight!

It was fascinating to see how much had been reconstructed of the former city.

These looked like new pottery shards, not any archaeological finds!

The walls itself were still many feet high in places yet crumbling elsewhere. 

The length of the fortress walls was almost 1.5 miles long and the walls were erected on a 9 foot high clay foundation, constructed of adobe brick. Inside the fortifications were 2 gates and 7 defensive towers. Around the outside wall was a moat that was about 15 feet deep and 45 feet wide. 

Even if we didn't know what we were seeing, it was still fascinating to walk among the ruins of what had been a thriving metropolis and let our imaginations wander as to what had once been there.

 As others noted, the ruins loomed like something out of The Lord of the Rings and people have wondered whether J.R.R. Tolkien got the name of the evil Lord Sauron from the tribe of Ainur, a local Kazakh tribe. But we had to remember this was Sauran, not Sauron!

We didn't see any more camels on our way back to Turkistan, just a lot more rain! Oh well, it was enjoyable seeing the banners strung across several major intersections. 

The next morning, October 16th, we returned to the Turkistan Ethnology Museum as it had been closed a couple of days ago. The doors were open this time but we were told it was again closed to visitors but no explanations were given. When we mentioned that to our hotel next door, they called over to the museum and made arrangements for us to enter. The third time was a charm!

The museum was large but, as you might imagine based on how we initially greeted, there were no other tourists there! It was all quite, quite strange.

According to the display, during the first millennium BC, the Saks people came to occupy new land and eventually became permanent inhabitants, engaging in horse and cattle breeding. Also known as Scythians, they began to cooperate with neighboring tribes.

The gold necklace and the lead cauldron were dated from the 4th to the 6th centuries.

The stone had Old Turkic writing from the 6th to the 8th centuries on it.

In the first millennium, parts of western Kazakhstan were under the political and cultural influence of Kimeks. The Kipchak were a nomadic people who operated in the Kimek khanate and conquered large parts of the Eurasian steppe during the Turkic expansion in the 11th and 12th centuries. 

Together with the Cumans, the Kipchak were in turn conquered by the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan in the early 13th century. The Cuman-Kipchak confederation was a predecessor of the Kazakh khanate and later modern-day Kazakhstan.

The vessel was dated from the 9th to the 10th century.

From the 10th to the 12th centuries, the Sufi religion, a branch of Islam, became popular in what is now Kazakhstan. The word 'Sufi' means 'pure man.' In 673, the first Sufis of the Prophet Muhammad began spreading their form of Islam to Central Asia and elsewhere.

These poems were written by Hoja Ahmed Yasui, the Sufi holy man whose mausoleum we'd visited a couple of days ago here in Turkistan. Born circa 1040, his father was the first to bring the Islam religion to Turkistan and he was a disciple of Arystan Baba. Sufis rose to power and settled the area.

When people fought over which religion should be the state religion eons ago, a man named Uzbek Khan said, "If someone passes through the fire safely, I will accept his religion." Only one man, Sadr Ata Tuklas, could. As a result, Islam became the state religion of Kazakhstan, according to the museum!

I have written so much in previous posts of Timur, the warlord who conquered much of Central Asia and other lands in the 13th and 14th centuries. Born in 1336 in an oasis south of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Timur which meant 'iron,' was the son of the chief of the Barlas tribe who were mixed Mongolian and Turkic ancestry and descended from the hordes of Genghis Khan. 

However, unlike their nomadic ancestors, the Barlas were settled agriculturalists and traders. By also practicing Islam, they adopted Persian literary and high culture which had dominated Central Asia since the early days of Islamic influence. Persian literature was instrumental in the assimilation of the Timurid elite into the Persian-Islamic courtly culture. A representation of Timur:

Election of khans in Kazakhstan continued until the 19th century and took place with participation from representatives of different clans and tribes. After determining the heir to the throne, people raised him up on a white rug, shouting "Khan, khan, khan."

When we were shown the upstairs gallery, the guard indicated the lights didn't work so it was difficult to see the displays. I had to use my flash to take these photos as a result. Almost none of the items had English translations either.

The king's throne:

The most important industry hundreds of years ago in Kazakhstan was cattle breeding as they were used to barter them for other products from other countries. 

The museum's homage to the Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev looked very familiar after seeing similar almost identical displays to the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan! Nazarbayev has served as President since the office was created in April of 1990 following its independence from the Soviet Union. Before that, he was named First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1989.

During the years of independence, I read that the political life of the country was important for the city of Turkistan. The museum stated that the city has become one of the centers of international high level meetings. The celebration of the 1500th anniversary of Turkistan, the 2nd international Congress of Kazakhs, a meeting of world and traditional religions were all held there recently.

Though called an Ethnology Museum, there were more displays on the country's history and its close links with its Islamic heritage than the country's cultural objects. The very poor English translations made it extremely difficult to get a grasp, unfortunately, of what happened when and by and to whom so I found my time at least at the museum to be a frustrating experience. Plus, I could have done without the rah, rah tribute to the country's president.

Shortly after that we got another marshrutka back to Shymkent where our spirits were lifted by a nice dinner for our last night in southern Kazakhstan!

Next post: Back to Almaty, Kazakhstan's former capital, and which we'd first visited for just a day about a month earlier. 

Posted on November 12th, 2018, from Madrid, Spain.