Travel to ancient city🌅

- May 23, 2022

Our first trip

Lyabi-Hauz

Our first day was very 👍 I enjoyed it 😄 our friends Go'zal and Mexrangiz told us about history of this place.

They prepared very well 😀 👏 I learned a lot of things 😀 which I don't know about this place 😉 Now I want to share informations about Lyabi-Hauz 😀

The Lab-i Hauz survived because it is the centerpiece of a magnificent architectural ensemble, created during the 16th and 17th centuries, which has not been significantly changed since.

The Lab-i Hauz ensemble, surrounding the pool on three sides, consists of the Kukeldash Madrasah (1568–1569, the largest madrasa in the city), on the north side of the pool, and two religious edifices built by Nadir Divan-Beghi: a khanqah (1620; Uzbek: xonaqah, meaning a lodging house for itinerant Sufis) and a madrasa (1622), which stand on the west and east sides of the pool respectively.

The small Qāzī-e Kalān Nasreddīn madrasa (now demolished) was formerly located beside the Kukeldash madrasah

The Nadir Divanbegi Madrassah closes the eastern side of the ensemble and dates from the 1630s. When the Imam Kuli Khan passed the newly-built splendour of its facade, he commended the Divanbegi upon the madrassah and his religious propriety.

The minister bit his lip, for he had actually built it as a caravanserai and lucrative source of personal income, but the khan had spoken and no-one could recind the words of Allah's chosen deputy.

The portal was rebuilt and corner towers added, as befitted a religious seminary, but to this day the madrassah still lacks a traditional layout, equipped with neither mosque nor lecture hall. The famous tympanum mosaic depicts two fantastic but irreligious simurgh birds with two white deers clasped in their talons, flying up a Mongol-faced sun in a heretic frieze, perhaps commissioned in a fit of secularism by a bitter Divanbegi.

This is one of the finest examples of figurative tilework in Uzbekistan. It makes for a truly dramatic scene, especially when you consider that it flies in the face of the widely accepted Islamic prohibition on figurative art. The Mongol sun, replete with human face, must have horrified orthodox visitors.

Today the madrassah cells overflow with colourful handicrafts, while the courtyard hosts a nightly song and dance troupe. Between the madrassah and khanagha, a statue of Khodja Nasreddin, a semimythical 'wise fool' who appears in Sufi teaching-tales around the world, sits on his donkey.

The Kukeldash Madrassah, lying to the north of the hauz, pre-dates all three of Nadir Divan Beghi's constructions, having been built in the late 1560s by the Kulbaba Kulkedash (foster brother) of Abdulla Khan II.

This is the largest in Central Asia (60 by 80 metres) and the religious magnet that spurred the construction of the ensemble. Its construction is linked to the general and statesman Kulbaba Kukeldash who sponsored many civic projects during the rule of Abdullah Khan II.

Its heavy brick facade conceals some elegant interior tilework and complicated vaulting systems. The madrassa's most famous student was the 20th-century writer Sadiriddin Aini.