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Ura-Tube is the old name of the city of Istaravshan. Located in the foothills of the Turkestan Range. Climate: dry, temperate, sharply continental. The average temperature in summer is +26 degrees, in winter - –5 degrees.

Transport

The city's transport system is represented by buses, minibuses, and taxis.

Attractions

You can visit the ethnographic museum, where there are dozens of interesting exhibits. Excursions outside the city are also popular.

Entertainment

In addition to excursions, you can diversify your leisure time by visiting theaters, cinemas, art galleries, museums, clubs, and restaurants.

Hotels

Hotels in Istaravshan (Ura-Tube) are classified according to the standard “star” system. There are luxury and junior suite rooms, as well as inexpensive hostel-type hotel accommodation options.

Restaurants

In the city's restaurants you can order pilaf, cabbage rolls, puff pastries with fillings, horse meat soup, dumplings, manti, and oriental sweets. Popular drinks include fruit infusions, wines, black and green teas.

The shops

Local shops sell spices, tea, national-style clothing, dishes, souvenirs, jewelry and other goods. It is also worth looking for antiques and works of art (for example, paintings).

Istaravshan(Hurray-tube) - one of the most ancient city-states in Central Asia. Lies at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level, in the foothills of the Turkestan ridge, northern part Tajikistan a, which is 78 km from the regional center, city ​​of Khujand.

The modern city covers an area of ​​183,009 hectares and has a population of about 180 thousand people. However, just over 50 thousand live in the city, and the remaining 130 thousand are residents of surrounding villages and rural areas.

The climate of the region is quite mild - winters are not harsh, with a lot of snow, summers are hot without precipitation.

According to historical data ancient city was founded on this site in the 6th century BC. Kirom - Kurush from the dynasty Akhmenidov, and got the name Kiropol or Kurushkada.

By the time of the conquest Central Asia by Alexander the Great, Kurushkada was highly developed and well fortified, and its approaches were defended by 18 thousand people. The great commander had to resort to cunning in order to capture the impregnable fortress.

However, the conquered city did not want to come to terms, and was destroyed by Alexander for regular unrest and conspiracies against the emperor.

Later by the 2nd century BC. the city grew and turned into a fairly strong state - Ustrushana, which occupied an area corresponding to modern areas Istaravshana Nau, J. Rasulovsky, Aininsky, Ganchinsky And Mountain Match, Sughd region Tajikistan a. And Havastu, Zaminu, Jizakha, Farisha Samarkand region Uzbekistan And Lailak district, Osh region of Kyrgyzstan.

The capital of the state was determined Bunjikat town, which became the progenitor of the modern Istaravshana.

During times Arab Caliphate Istaravshan was one of the Arab provinces, then underwent rapid development during the reign of the dynasty Samanids- the founders of the Tajik nation, in the 13th century it was destroyed by the Mongols, and only in the 15th century, during the reign Timurids the city flourished again and received a new name Ura-Tube.

In the 18th century, an independent feudal estate was formed here, which by the 19th century was divided between Bukhara And Kokand khanates.

October 2, 1886, after an eight-day siege, the fortress Ura-Tube fell under the pressure of the Russian tsarist army.
In November 2000, the city was returned to its historical name - Istaravshan.

Today's Istaravshan economically developed, modern city. The main sources of financial investments here are the food and light industries. The fruit processing and wine industries are the most advanced in the country.

Residents of the city have been famous since ancient times as unsurpassed master craftsmen. Fabrics, shoes, dishes, knives decorated with carvings, as well as artistic embroidery - have always been highly valued among neighbors, and far beyond the borders of the region. So the modern city has long become a center of wholesale trade; it maintains close commercial ties not only with states Central Asia, but also Middle East.

To this day in Istaravshan A huge number of ancient monuments have been preserved as vivid evidence of the turbulent historical past of the beautiful city. I would especially like to note the authentic architectural and historical treasures, such as the ancient settlement Mugteppa, Kakh-Kakha fortress, Kok-Gumbaz madrasah, Mausoleum of Bobotago, Hazrati Shokh, Chorgumbaz, Ensemble Sari Maeor and etc.

Sights of Ura-Tube

Kok-Gumbaz Madrasah

Kok-Gumbaz (“Blue Dome”) is a madrasah of the 16th century built on the initiative of Sultan Abdulatif, the son of the famous scientist and philosopher Ulugbek (grandson of Amir Timur). According to one legend, Abdulatif, having quarreled with his father, left the palace and asked an old farmer to dig a ditch for 100 tenge. Having learned about this, Ulugbek demanded to give him the money he earned, but did not punish his son, but added...

Mausoleum of Khazrati Shokh

One of the three religious buildings that make up the architectural complex “Hazrati Shokh”, the other two are: the Khazrati Shokh mosque and the mausoleum of Khudoyor Va’lami. Today, all three buildings stand in a semicircle and form a beautiful square. However, few people know that each of them has its own history, its own time of construction and its own purpose. Previously, the complex also included a madrasah and a city cemetery. By …

It is generally accepted among tourists that one should go to Uzbekistan for the sake of ancient cities, and to Tajikistan - for the sake of mountains and mountain villages. But as often happens, we are talking here only about the “center of gravity”: Uzbekistan has the most textured inhabited mountains such as Lyangara or Baysun, and Tajikistan has many of its own antiquities. But they are mainly in villages, and there is actually only one full-fledged “ancient city” with kilometers of mahallas hiding ancient mosques and mausoleums in Tajikistan - this is Istaravshan, the former Ura-Tube, about the main street and the general atmosphere of which I spoke.

At the U-Tube bazaar, having just arrived in the city, apparently due to general fatigue, I had a fight with my partner because of some opportunities that were missed, as it seemed to me then, because she took too long to get ready. And seeing this scene and hearing Russian speech, from the opposite side of the street, from the blacksmith's row, an elderly and very friendly man in a skullcap approached us.
-Hello! How are you?
“Fine,” I answered through clenched teeth, because by the end of the second month of the trip I was pretty tired of people wanting to chat.
-Why are you swearing? Probably tired. Let's go to my house, eat pilaf and relax.
There was little time, out of habit I began to make excuses, saying that I needed to see the city and so on, and my uncle (his name was Jamal), after thinking about it, said that he would show us the city too. Olga also persuaded me not to refuse, and Jamal, as if from a skullcap, pulled out a car from somewhere with a familiar driver and took us to his native Zarnisor mahalla on the mountain that hangs over the old city.

In the last part, I wrote about how we visited the atypical, moderately globalized residents of patriarchal Istaravshan. Here the owners were the most typical, and in Jamal’s large house, a typical Central Asian square of residential buildings around a garden, a wedding was taking place, which had lasted for a week. Towards the end of the event, those who could not come in the first days gathered, mostly relatives from afar, and they usually brought the best gifts. But “walking like this” is typical for Central Asian people, who have been saving every penny for their wedding for years, perhaps even more than for Russians, and at the right wedding (and these happen rarely these days) any passerby can become a dear guest. They brought us pilaf and fruit, the guests (about a fifth of those gathered in the house in the photo) heartily took pictures with Olya, and Jamal and I and the taxi driver (I, alas, forgot his name) discussed the details of the upcoming excursion. As a result, we drove through a dozen points - almost everything that I had planned and some that I didn’t know about, and paid the driver about 1000 rubles for it. But otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to do it in one day - as my experience shows, it is extremely difficult to navigate the Central Asian mahallas.

First of all, Jamal took us to the top of the hill, to the slope of which his mahalla stuck:

We finished the last part on Mugtepe Hill, where the Ura-Tube citadel has long stood. But the hills above the city form a clearly visible “gate” separating Istaravshan from the valley, and this time we climbed to another “gate”. At the top of the hill there is an abandoned building, on the roof of which clay and weeds have managed to form, on top of which people have dragged a smoldering garbage dump - according to Jabar, it was his distant acquaintance who built a restaurant 15 years ago, but died, and there was no one to finish the job. But there is also a reliable staircase leading to the roof, and this roof serves as an excellent observation deck. View of Mugtepe with the surviving citadel tower:

Gate hills, a natural fortress, border Old Istaravshan from the north. Behind them, to the left of the frame above, there is also a mahalla and a whole microdistrict on a hill, quite picturesque from a distance:

But the Old City - on the other hand, against the backdrop of the distant mountains of the Turkestan Range, and looking at the expanse of flat roofs, I felt like the hero of “Snail on the Slope”, looking from the Hill at the Forest, living its own life, incomprehensible to us:

On the left you can see the main street and the Khazrati-Shoh complex, familiar to us from the previous part: the minaret of the 1890s, the gray dome of the mausoleum of the Ur-Tyubinsih beks (18th century, and inside the mausoleum of the 17th century), the green dome of the central mausoleum of an unknown Arab commander, rumors and poets turned into a missionary from the distant relatives of the Prophet, and the flat white roof of the Namazgokh mosque (also 1890s), whose field for open worship is occupied by a five-story building. The main street is essentially the border of the Old Town, which has become the center of the new town.

In the very center of the Old City is the huge Kok-Gumbaz mosque of the Timurid era, and a clearly visible row of Stalin buildings behind it marks the border of the historical center, and the pink building in the middle is the city Palace of Culture, which, according to Jamal, was built as “our answer.” Its similarity to a madrasah is clearly visible:

But in general, let's face it, the panorama of Ura-Tyube is rather dull - the fact is that Old Istaravshan is almost devoid of verticals - with the exception of Khazrati-Shokh and Kok-Gumbaz, its mosques are small and squat, completely dissolving among the roofs of houses, and the rare golden domes - a sure sign of remakes:

The Old Town looks much more spectacular from the inside, a labyrinth of endless streets:

About that, well, long-time readers probably already understand this word without explanation. The beauty of the ancient cities of Central Asia is primarily in the living urban tradition, absolutely different from the European one, with houses facing inwards, neighborhood mosques and teahouses, gardens and cemeteries in the middle of the buildings, and elders, meeting whom in a mahalla is like meeting the good Pan in the thicket .

This is not the first time I compare mahalla with a forest - because this is a living and breathing environment. And also - because it is very easy to get lost in them, and even if you know exactly what you are looking for, you may not find it simply because passers-by, who would be happy to show the way, call what you are looking for completely differently from what you read before the trip. For this reason, even in a taxi and with Jamal, who knows the city, I did not see the Jami and Charkhi mosques that appear in many guidebooks (the mausoleum of a noble woman, and the name “house of the genie” was invented to scare children who climbed onto the grave), but I saw for example, the Zargaron Mosque, previously unknown to me, which may well actually be one of the above.

And the architectural adobe fabric was best preserved; and the cities of the Fergana Valley have a particularly distinct coloring, which is all in plain sight, and the mahallas are fairly emasculated by the general civilization of the city. Istaravshan here is somewhere in the middle between the second and the first, and natural mansions made of adobe with windows in blank facades (because the real facade is in the courtyard), cut through under Russia, appear every now and then around the corners:

And I saw semi-wooden houses, like somewhere in Turkey and Bulgaria, in Central Asia only in Istaravshan:

But perhaps the main charm of mahallas is that you simply never know what awaits you around the next corner:

One of the purely Istaravshan features is the abundance of mosaics and majolicas in the most unexpected places. I didn’t ask who made them, but most likely there was one, or at most several, craftsmen for the whole city, and the demand for their work is a consequence of the small size of Istaravshan and the general poverty and patriarchy of Tajikistan:

An integral part of the mahalla landscape are tiny cemeteries the size of a block:

Or lonely mausoleums of locally revered saints on a block scale, as if continuing to be close to the living. For example, a certain Sheikh Khoja-Orifi Gori rests here:

But there are also several large ancient mosques in Ura-Tube. The main one is the already familiar Kok-Gumbaz, which means Blue Dome:

It is also a madrasah with a stern, gloomy appearance - most often these buildings of Muslim schools, the dormitories of which doubled as apartment buildings, look out into the outside world with tiers of arches and decorated facades, but here there are only blank walls:

Entrance through a carved door:

And the real facade is inside, in a courtyard with a garden and a well:

Judging by the inscriptions in Arabic and on the desks, the madrasah is operating or was operating quite recently, but in one of the cells a pile of collected cotton was discovered:

And the decor of the mosque, of course fairly updated and thought out in lost places by Soviet restorers, is strict and thoroughbred: Kok-Gumbaz, built in the mid-15th century, is perhaps the only building in Tajikistan of the Timurid Empire, the last heyday of Central Asia.

In some places they write that the founder of the mosque was Abd al-Latif, the son of Ulugbek, who ascended the Samarkand throne through the murder of his father. But he ruled for about a year, and it is unlikely that he cared about the founding of a mosque in a provincial town. In fact, this refers to the local ruler Abdulatif Sultan, who in 1530-31 added a madrasah to the mosque.

The mosque was seriously damaged by the Russian army during the assault on Ura-Tube and was restored 10 years later, in 1876. In 1897 and 1902, it was again destroyed - this time by earthquakes, rebuilt at the beginning of the twentieth century, and finally acquired its current appearance after restoration in the 1950s. Oddly enough, in religious Tajikistan, the mosque looks abandoned, both outside and inside:

I have never seen such a pattern anywhere else:

Powerful columns of the side halls and an ascent to the roof, the beginning of which can only be reached by a ladder, and it’s unlikely that I would have seen anything special from the roof.

I don’t remember the relative position of all these objects, and I can’t recall in my memory the route along winding alleys with sharp turns, so I’m telling the story in no clear order. But in addition to the Kok-Gumbaz mosque, there is also the Chor-Gumbaz mosque (1903), that is, Four domes:

Its gates were locked, but Jamal knocked on the nearest courtyard, through which, behind the old woman who gave us the key to the mosque, we entered from the side entrance. In the courtyard itself, where the mosque caretaker apparently lives, there is a dry house (swimming pool) and an old plane tree grown into the wall:

Raisins were drying in the aivan of the mosque:

The ivan has painted cornices:

But the most interesting thing is what the Four-Dome Mosque looks like from the inside - all its domes are completely different. In the upper left, pay attention - there are six-pointed stars, and although most likely their origin here is purely Muslim or simply folk, in Old Ura-Tube there could not but be a Jewish community, and Central Asian Jews often did not have synagogues and calmly prayed in mosques:

But most Ura-Tyube mosques do not have domes, such as the Zargaron mosque, which, judging by its name, was built by local jewelers. In general, the appearance of neighborhood mosques in each old city of Central Asia is different, and here they are usually like this - flat buildings spread out on the ground, completely featureless when viewed from a distance:

But you just need to look at them not from the outside, but from the inside. Apparently, in Ura-Tyube there were few good carvers, but many artists, which is why Istaravshan mosques have smooth varnished columns, but the ceilings are more beautiful than the other:

I have already written more than once that the age of most Central Asian buildings is completely unclear - it was the “end of history” for us, but here history moves on slowly, like a loaded donkey along a pass, and I have more than once mistaken the remodels for the originals, and even originals for remakes. Maybe the answer is in the Muslim calendar - this column can be dated without contradiction to both 1992 and 1413:

Another similar mosque is Havzi-Sangin (Stone Pond), built in 1904-10 near the small mausoleum of a certain Shah-Fazil ibn Abbas (1795):

Which, in turn, was built on the shore of an even older pond in a stone pool. According to legend, slaves and camels worked on the construction of the latter, and the Sultan who organized the construction was so pleased with the work that upon completion, he put the slaves on camels and sent them home.

The pond is now dry - most of the houses were drained in the 1920-30s, thereby destroying the populations of daphnia that had lived in them for centuries, and with them the rishta, a hypodermic worm, which for the same centuries was the scourge of Turkestan. In the hall of the mosque there is another painted ceiling. Note that almost everything shown here was built at the beginning of the twentieth century - as already mentioned, at the turn of the century, Ura-Tube was destroyed by two earthquakes.

In our mosque, people were gathering for a service, but the mullah did not mind me taking photographs, and finally he even brought me a colorful, but uninformative guidebook to the Sogd region, from which I re-photographed several pages. Skullcaps are stacked on the windowsill for those who come to prayer with their heads uncovered:

But in another block, behind a gate with an almost Chinese concave cornice, the Babotogai-Vali ensemble is hidden. I don’t know exactly its history, but as a rule, the graves of revered Sufis are overgrown with such complexes of a mausoleum, a mosque and a shelter for pilgrims in Central Asia:

Behind the gate is a garden, and in the depths of the garden is a mosque, consisting of several halls from different eras. The ivan at the entrance and the minaret, if I’m not mistaken, were built in 1899, that is, after the first of two earthquakes that hit the city - the second, therefore, they managed to survive:

The ceiling here is especially beautiful, and I would even say that there is something cosmic in its appearance:

Door to the mosque hall:

From which a narrow passage leads to the core of the complex - the gurkhan, that is, the tomb (1510-17), impressive from the inside with its perfect minimalism. Jamal said that once upon a time a golden lamp of the finest work hung under the ceiling, which was given to the mausoleum under construction by a certain rich man. But when the construction was coming to an end and the lamp took its place on the ceiling, the founder was suddenly eaten by a toad, and at night he secretly entered here to take his gift back. But as soon as he grabbed the lamp, his hand died and withered, so much so that no one could separate it from the lamp. Now, according to Jamal, the artifact is kept in the Hermitage - but this is what they say in Central Asia about many legendary things that old people learned about from other old people when they themselves were children. Needless to say, six months later I did not find such a thing in the Hermitage...

It’s outside, with carved tombstones stacked nearby, possibly from the graves of descendants - Sufis (if a Sufi really rests here) often formed centuries-old dynasties, the opinions of whose representatives were listened to by sultans and emirs:

Well, the most interesting monument of Istaravshan, alas, has not survived - this is the Rustam-bek madrasah, according to the information of the first local Russians, built 15 years before their arrival, when the impostor Rustam appeared in Ura-Tube, claiming the khan's throne of Kokand. However, perhaps he only restored this building from ruins, because all Central Asian buildings with such scenes date back to the 17th century: in Samarkand, the Sher-Dor madrasah with lions on the facade and its simplified copy on the outskirts; in Bukhara - the Nadir-Divanbegi madrasah with birds, and in Ura-Tyube there was a madrasah with horses. The historical mystery of such stories has still not been solved - after all, Islam prohibits images of animals, and not a single hypothesis, at least from those that I have heard, gives a comprehensive answer as to how and why this ban was circumvented here. In comments igor_alla provided a photograph of something destroyed by an earthquake near Ashgabat. I don’t know exactly when the Rustam-bek madrasah died - maybe in earthquakes at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, maybe during the civil war, but therefore, in addition to Samarkand lions, Bukhara birds, Turkmen dragons and U-Tube horses, there could have been other similar stories of some kind elephants, deer or camels on the facades of buildings that were lost before white people came here with their cameras and easels.

Along the edges of Old Ura-Tyube, several gates have been recreated, some of them, but hardly all, we drove with Jamal, circling along the alleys:

And some are quite modern in appearance:

But the story about Ura-Tube antiquities is not limited to the Old Town alone. In the next part - the outskirts, surroundings and crafts, which Istaravshan is rich in, like any ancient Central Asian city.

TAJIKISTAN-2016
And .
and obtaining registration.. From the bazaar to Mugtepe.
Istaravshan (Ura-Tube). Old city.
Istaravshan (Ura-Tube). Knives and sacred groves.
Shakhristan pass and Zerafshan valley.
Penjikent. Kainar.
Penjikent. City.
Neighborhoods of Penjikent. Panjrud and Sarazm.
Sogd region. August.
Anzob pass and Aini.
Lake Iskanderkul.
Yagnob Valley. Road.
Yagnob Valley. Lost Sogdiana.
Karategin and Pamir- there will be posts.
. Review and table of contents.

Istaravshan- one of the oldest cities in the Sughd region of Tajikistan, located in the northern part of the country, in the foothills of the Turkestan Range, 78 kilometers from the city of Khujand, at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level.

Until November 10, 2000, the city of Istaravshan was known with the name Ura-Tube (Ura-teppa) and its population was 80 thousand people.

Due to the geographical location of the city of Istaravshan, favorable mild climatic conditions always prevail here. Summer is hot and dry, and winter is snowy.

Ura-Tube is the most famous city, thanks to its centuries-old architectural and cultural historical monuments that have managed to survive to this day. Ura-Tube was also considered the center of trade and crafts in Central Asia. For a long time, the residents of Uratyubinsk have been famous for their high masterful arts of handicraft. They made knives decorated with carvings, and there were active workshops producing fabrics with artistic embroidery, pottery and national shoes. In 2002, the 2500th anniversary of the city was solemnly celebrated in Istaravshan.

The modern city of Istaravshan (formerly Ura-Tube) has today become an important center of wholesale trade throughout the Republic. The city has hotels, restaurants, health centers, madrassas and many other institutions.

The history of the city of Istaravshan touches on the distant past; it was founded in the 6th century BC by Cyrus, a Persian king from the Achaemenid dynasty. He ordered to build a settlement on the site of present-day Istaravshan, strengthen it with three rows of walls and a fortress. The king of kings Cyrus (529-559 BC), combining his name, named the new city Cyropol (Kurushkada). The city created conditions for the development of handicrafts and economic trade. But unfortunately, by the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered Central Asia and turned the city into ruins.

Sights of Istaravshan quite a lot, especially worth noting such sights as the Mugteppa fortress, the Kakh-kakha fortress, the Bunjikat settlements, the Chilkhujra fort, Childukhtaron, the Kok-Gumbaz madrasah, the Bobotago mausoleum, the mausoleum of Khudoyor Balami, the mausoleum and mosque of Hazrati Shokh, the Adzhinakhon mausoleum, the Sari Mazor Ensemble, Chor-Gumbaz Hawzi Sangin Mosque, Savriston Mosque, and others. Many of them are considered sacred places of pilgrimage, which are associated with the names of famous people.

Here is a map of Istaravshan with streets → Sughd region, Tajikistan. We study a detailed map of Istaravshan with house numbers and streets. Search in real time, weather today, coordinates

More details about the streets of Istaravshan on the map

A detailed map of the city of Istaravshan with street names can show all the routes and roads, where they are and how to get to Dusti Street. Located near.

To view the territory of the entire region in detail, it is enough to change the scale of the online diagram +/-. On the page there is an interactive diagram of the city of Istaravshan with addresses and routes of the microdistrict. Move its center to find the streets now.

The ability to plot a route across the country and calculate the distance using the “Ruler” tool, find out the length of the city and the path to its center, addresses of attractions, transport stops and hospitals (the “Hybrid” scheme type), look at train stations and borders.

You will find all the necessary detailed information about the location of the city infrastructure - stations and shops, squares and banks, highways and routes, how to get there.

An accurate satellite map of Istarawshan with Google search is in its own section. Use Google search to show house number on city map in Tajikistan/world, in real time.