Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Ismail Samani Mausoleum

• Bukhara, Uzbekistan

• Sights › Dark

This mausoleum in Samani Park, completed in 905, is the town's oldest Muslim monument and probably its sturdiest architecturally. Built for Ismail Samani (the Samanid dynasty's founder), his father and grandson, its intricate baked terracotta brickwork - which gradually changes 'personality' through the day as the shadows shift - disguises walls almost 2m thick, helping it survive without restoration (except of the spiked dome) for 11 centuries.
Behind the park is one of the few remaining, eroded sections (a total of 2km out of an original 12km) of the Shaybanid town walls; another big section is about 500m west of the Namozgokh Mosque.
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#6 of 24 sights in Bukhara
#2596 of 21636 things to do in Asia

8. Saifuddin Bukharzi Mausoleum

   • Bukhara, Uzbekistan

   • Sights › Dark

Two kilometres east of the centre on Bakhautdin Naqshband, the mammary-like twin domes of the Saifuddin Bukharzi Mausoleum tower over the delicate little Buyan Khuli Khan Mausoleum. With sheep grazing in the foreground and a massive cooking-oil factory looming in the background, this spot might as well be a metaphor for Central Asia. Taxi drivers know this place as 'Rayon Fatobod Bogi'.
The architectural highlight here is the 14th-century majolica on the smaller mausoleum, resting place of a Mongol khan. The larger mausoleum was built over the grave of Saifuddin Bukharzi (1190-1261), poet founder of an influential Sufi order.

Museum of Wood Carvings

• Bukhara, Uzbekistan

• Sights › Museum

The highlight of the Abdul Aziz Khan Medressa (Taqi-Zargaron Area) is the prayer room, now a museum of wood carvings, with spectacular original ghanch work. It is said that Abdul Aziz had the image of his face covertly embedded in the prayer room's mihrab (Mecca-facing niche) to get around the Sunni Muslim prohibition against depicting living beings (Adul Aziz Khan was a Shiite).
Also flouting that prohibition was the stork who used to live in the nest on the tower to the left of the medressa's pishtak. The only other medressa in town that depicts living beings is the Nadir Divanbegi Medressa.