In the outgoing year, the Turkic world has a spiritual capital. The capital city of the November summit of the Organization of Turkic States was the city of Turkestan, the center of the Turkestan region of Kazakhstan, where Khoja Ahmed Yassavi rests, the author of the philosophical and religious verses “Divani Hikmat”, the founder of the Turkic branch of Sufism “sar-i-silsila-yi mashaikh-i- Turk ".
The first time I was in Turkestan in the summer of 1985, shortly after serving in the Soviet army. Then, a third of a century ago, no one could even dream in a nightmare that only six years would pass and the Soviet Union would cease to exist. Gorbachev's perestroika began with a struggle for sobriety. The fellow travelers in the train carriage, following along Turksib to the south, furtively pulled the drink, periodically looking into the aisle to see if the inspectors were coming. The endless steppe landscape stretched past the windows, in places diluted with hummocks.
In those years, a museum was located in the Yassavi mausoleum. The guide in two languages, Russian and Kazakh, told the tourists the history of the mausoleum, built at the behest of Tamerlane. Much has faded from my memory over the years, but I well remember my surprise when I learned that the khans were also buried here in the tomb. An inscription on one of the tombstones was dedicated to Abulkhair Khan Sheibanid, whose coronation took place in 1428 in Chimgi-Tura / Tyumen. Leaving the darug governors in the Siberian city, Abulkhair began a victorious march to the south. For 40 years he ruled a huge nomadic empire, which after his death was divided into three khanates - Siberian, Kazakh and Uzbek.
On my last trip, I didn't see that tombstone. Perhaps she simply did not catch my eye: there are more than 35 rooms in the two floors of the mausoleum around the central hall, a day is not enough to go around them with attention. But not a single tourist and pilgrim will miss the tomb of the youngest wife of Abulkhair Khan - Rabigi Sultan Begim, daughter of Ulugbek and great-granddaughter of Tamerlane. Rabiga Sultan rests in a separate mazar under a blue dome 60 meters from the Yassavi mausoleum.
A third of a century ago, there was no one of the main relics in the central hall - a huge cauldron for 3000 liters. He was then in the Leningrad Hermitage. In the old days, as the guide Ismail said, they drank water from this cauldron, after collectively reading the verses of the Koran over it. This took place after the completion of the Juma Namaz.
In the mid-80s, there was no question of performing namaz in the premises of a mosque inside the museum. A small group of aksakals from Uzbekistan read prayers and dhikrs in the street. When they stood up for namaz, I joined from behind and repeated the movements. Today in the building of the mausoleum there is a separate room of the mosque.
The massive walls of the Yassavi mausoleum, whose height together with the dome is 44 meters, is breathtaking. This is where you can really feel the power of Tamerlane's power! Hundreds of mausoleums are scattered throughout Kazakhstan, but none of them can compare in power with the Yassavi complex.
Khazreti Turkestani Khoja Ahmed Yassavi passed away in 1166. That was the period of the decline of the Karakhanid khanate, which was soon absorbed by the empire of Khorezmshah. The first small mazar of Yassavi was built under the Karakhanids. Over time, it fell into disrepair. According to legend, the Sufi advisers from among the followers of Yassavi advised to build a mausoleum for Tamerlane after Amir Timur inflicted a final defeat on the Khan of the Golden Horde Tokhtamysh in 1395. In the Book of Victories (Zafar-name) of the court chronicler Sharaf ad-Din Iazdi, it is reported: diameter of almost 641 gyaz and the height of which in the final form corresponded to these data. "
With the death of Iron Lame in 1405, the builders were transferred to other objects, to the capital of the state, the city of Samarkand, and for more than 600 years, scaffolding has been hanging over the unfinished entrance portal. What would be the entrance can only be imagined by the facing of the complexes of Samarkand, Shiraz and Isfahan.
Subsequently, with the emergence of the Kazakh Khanate, the Yassavi complex became the residence of the khans, and Turkestan became the capital of the khanate. Here, in the large palace hall of the mausoleum, important state ceremonies were held. From here, from the height of the balcony of the entrance portal, the khan and his retinue looked around the troops and the militia before the defeat of the Dzungars. From here, from the crenellated towers of the minarets, cannons were fired at the enemy who was besieging the city. These cannons have survived and today are presented in the museum of the Yassavi complex.
Three times the walls of the mausoleum withstood the blows of cannon shells - in 1723, during the storming of the fortress by the Dzungars, in 1846 - during the siege of Turkestan by the Kokand people, and ten years later, in 1856, when the city was attacked by the tsarist army ...I read the verses of the Koran and dua at the head of Yassavi, and then one of the visitors gave me 1,000 tenge, mistaking it for a temple worker. I quickly dropped the money into the soda box. All sacred places of Turkestan have their own readers. No matter how they see me as a competitor, I thought, and quickly moved to other premises, went to inspect the museum, library.
The Yassavi complex also includes a separately located underground mosque, where the famous Sufi spent his last days, having gone underground at 63 as a sign of mourning for the Prophet, peace be upon him, who passed away at that age. In the coolness of the dungeon, a man in a skullcap was telling something to a group of listeners, among whom women predominated. Seeing the camera lens aimed at the group, he covered his face with the words: “Why do you advertise, in the hadiths it says something about advertising!”.
“In the dungeon, I experienced a lot of grief, making a bed of stone, laying pillows,” says one of the Yassavi hikmets.
The rest of his life the Sufi teacher spent in a cell-hilveta underground, leaving for the edification of "Hikmet", where he explains the reason for his action: "On the Day of Judgment, in order to be closer to the Almighty, I fled from the arrogant, self-confident proud."
In and around the mausoleum, 25 khans and sultans, dozens of batyrs and biys are buried, so the inhabitants of Kazakhstan visit Turkestan not only for a spiritual purpose, but also as a resting place for the country's great personalities. They come from Central Asia, the cities of Siberia and the Urals (more precisely, they came before the borders were closed due to the pandemic) in the hope of the miraculous power of sacred places, of which there are many within the Turkestan oasis. Hearing incredible stories, people, without much advertising, self-organize, and most often find those who have paved the way to Yassavi long ago, and hit the road in search of spiritual peace. The soul of a person, mired in the bustle of dunya, is drawn to the pure and beautiful. The Sufis compared this state to a moth striving for the light. It is surprising that in the composition of the groups, in which, as a rule, 80-90 percent are women, not only Muslims, but also Christians.
People come from Turkey as if they were the homeland of their ancestors. Turks are today the third largest population of Turkestan after the Kazakhs and Uzbeks. Russians are in fourth place, Tatars are in fifth.
The ancient city today is rapidly transforming, throwing off Soviet low-rise architecture, clearing private sectors for large-scale projects, and donning the robes of a Muslim eastern city with minarets and domes to match the title of the spiritual capital of the Turkic world.
bbabo.Net