Khiva is a 45 minute flight from Tashkent – or alternatively a 22 day journey by camel. I’m glad we are going by air! Khiva doesn’t have its own airport because of its desert isolation, so we are flying to Urgench which is the nearest city with an airport.
Khiva was once an oasis caravan town and the most remote of the main Khanates and its history can be traced back as far as the 10th century as a major trading centre on the Great Silk Road. In fact, legend has it that the well upon which the city was built, was dug on the orders of Shem, son of Noah.
The Khanate of Khiva was part of the Chagatai Khanate. Chagatai was one of Genghis Khan’s sons who inherited the region on his father’s death. During this time, Khiva became a powerful trading centre although it was Urgench that remained the capital. It was Temur, who was all powerful in Samarkand, that regarded the state as a rival and over the course of 5 campaigns he destroyed the old capital of Urgench, but it wasn’t until the end of the 16th century that Khiva became the capital of the Khorezm state.
Khiva played an important part in the rivalry between Russia and Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was Peter the Great who was the first of the great tsars to turn his attentions towards India. He had learned that on the banks of the River Oxus, rich deposits of gold and other minerals were to be found and beyond the mountains and deserts of Central Asia lay the riches of India.
Peter, therefore set about conceiving a plan to get his hands on both the gold of Central Asia and the treasures of India. He recalled that he had once been approached by the Khan of Khiva, a Muslim potentate that lay next to the River Oxus, seeking his assistance to quell unruly tribes in his region and in return, the Khan offered to become his vassal.
In 1717, Peter sent a heavily armed expedition under the leadership of Prince Alexander Bekovich to take up the Khan’s offer. After an arduous journey across the Caspian Sea by boat and then a trek across a sun baked desert, where many men died from heat-stroke, a depleted force arrived at Khiva. The Khan personally greeted Bekovich and explained that Khiva would not be able to accommodate his army which would have to be split into parties that would be quartered in surrounding villages. Bekovich agreed to this so as not to offend the Khan. That night, the entire Russian army, including Bekovich, was set upon and slaughtered. Forty or so Russians managed to escape and following consultation with Khiva’s spiritual leader, they were spared and sold into slavery.
Over the years that followed, many more Russians, men, women and children, had been sold into lifelong bondage in the flourishing slave markets of Khiva and Bukhara. It was this slave trade that gave the Russians the excuse to attack once again and thus initiate a series of escapades in the 19th century on behalf of both the Russians and the British under the umbrella of “the Great Game.”
In late 1839, the British garrison in Kabul, Afghanistan, learned that the Russians had started to venture southwards again with the intention of seizing Khiva. From the Russian point of view, they had heard, incorrectly as it turned out, that a small British mission had already arrived in Khiva with offers of military assistance.
In order to waylay the Russians, the British sent Captain James Abbott to Khiva to offer to negotiate with the advancing Russians on the Khan’s behalf. If the Khan could be persuaded to release all the Russian slaves, then the Russians would no longer have any reason to continue their advance into Khivan territory.
Abbott was very conscious of what had happened to the previous British envoy, Colonel Charles Stoddart, who had been incarcerated in a vermin-infested pit in Bukhara, as he himself set off towards Khiva. The Russians could not have picked a worse time for their southward trek across the desert. One of the coldest Central Asian winters set in with the Russians caught in the middle of it, losing most of their men and camels in the process.
With the Russian invasion force halted by the terrible weather, it meant that Captain Abbott arrived in Khiva unaware of their plight. His arrival and reception, however, was far from rapturous and indeed deeply suspicious.
No Englishman had ever visited Khiva before and many believed the English to be a vassal-state of the Russians. The Khan subjected Abbott to an inquisition to gather more knowledge about Britain, its military strengths and the power of the young Queen. He was quite surprised that a little island nation was purportedly so influential.
The Khan remained suspicious of Abbott’s motives to take the released slaves and negotiate with the Russians to cease their advance. The Khan thought that Abbott could easily be colluding with the Russians, and therefore, reversed his original decision to release the slaves.
In the meantime, the British garrison in Kabul was concerned that they had had no news on the whereabouts of Captain Abbott. A second officer, Lieutenant Richmond Shakespear was sent to Khiva to find out what was happening. By the time that Shakespear arrived in Khiva, Abbott had set out north – without the Russian slaves – but with a small Khivan escort to intercept the Russian advance.
The Khivan escort remained deeply suspicious of Abbott’s motives and suddenly arrested him and kept him in captivity until they learned that he was carrying a personal letter from the Khan of Khiva to the Tsar of Russia. They hurriedly released him and restored all his provisions to enable him to continue his journey towards Russia and St Petersburg.
Unaware of Abbott’s plight, but certainly aware that the Khan had not released the Russian slaves, Shakespear saw his opportunity to intercede. He was greeted much more graciously than Abbott. Greatly exceeding his authority by holding out the bait of a treaty between Britain and Khiva, Shakespear was eventually able to get the Khan to accede and he released the slaves into his care. Ultimately, he and 416 freed slaves left Khiva for a 500-mile march across the desert to Fort Alexandrovsk on the shores of the Caspian Sea, where they would be repatriated and continue their journey on to St Petersburg.
For the time being, the Russian threat to the region and ultimately to India had receded, however, the British had their own backyard problem to address in 1857, the Indian Mutiny. The repercussions of this episode were to lead to the next major Russian incursion towards Khiva in the guise of Count Nikolai Ignatiev, who was to prove himself a consummate player in the Great Game.
Ignatiev reached Khiva in 1858 with the aim of discovering just how far the British had penetrated the region and then to undermine any influence that they had acquired with the Khan of Khiva and the Emir of Bukhara.
The Khan received him, accepted his gifts but refused to allow his vessels to proceed any further along the River Oxus towards Bukhara. With intelligence gathered and flimsy agreements obtained that the Khan and the Emir would not receive any emissaries from the British, Ignatiev returned to St Petersburg as a celebrity and more highly regarded than ever by his superiors.
By the 1870s, Khiva had fallen again and despite a number of ‘eccentric’ foreigners, notably Frederick Burnaby in 1875 who managed to shake off his minders to reach Khiva, the Khanate finally succumbed to Russian control, which would continue through to 1991.
I’m hopeless with alarm calls. Laura had arranged one for everyone at 4.30am. I must have a built-in alarm system because I am always awake before the alarm goes off or the call comes through from reception. Bang on the dot of 4.30 the phone rings and a very fresh-sounding caller announces that it is time to get up.
Some very bleary-eyed fellow travellers trudge into the dining room for breakfast. There is not a lot of lively conversation apart from comments like, “What sort of time is this?” I take it all in my stride; it’s all part of the holiday. It’s no use moaning about it. We can catch up on the sleep we have missed on the plane.
The domestic airport in Tashkent consists of a single terminal building. Bags go through a security scanner and are diverted away through a hole in the wall, hopefully to re-appear at Urgench, which is our flight destination. Tracey from Leicester has no need to worry about her bag today. She has been told that her bag has been found at Heathrow and that it will probably catch up with her in Bukhara in a couple of days. In the meantime, her friends have rallied round and lent her some clothes.
I go off in search of a cup of coffee. It’s not a huge terminal and the only coffee outlet turns out to be a machine in the corner. T’other Peter has beaten me to it and reports that the contents of his cup are piping hot and very strong. There’s no milk so I have to have it black. Still, it tastes of coffee which is the main thing.
The flight is significantly more comfortable with a more than adequate amount of legroom. I even manage to get some sleep!
We all congregate around the baggage carousel which is moving round at a painfully slow speed. It’s as if the little man on the other side of the wall isn’t pedalling fast enough. It’s that slow!
The short drive to Khiva takes us through some very arid countryside dominated by a crop that I just hadn’t expected to see but turns out to be one of the country’s biggest exports – cotton.
I have never seen a cotton bush before. I have read a lot about its cultivation in the States and the problems it wrought in England at the time of the American Civil War but haven’t even considered it being grown anywhere else.
Cotton Bush
We see acre upon acre of small bushes with little white fluffy tufts. It’s hard to believe that so many things that we take for granted from our clothes to other household items originate from a tiny little bush which grows in such inhospitable conditions. Then it all has to be picked. In the United States the process is mechanised, but here it is all picked by hand. Tatiana tells us that university students are drafted in for the peak picking season to help farmers and their families. If mechanisation were to be introduced here, there would be an outcry and so many people would be out of work.
The other significant crop we encounter is the mulberry tree, the leaves from which are the staple diet of the silk worm. Sericulture is the process of rearing silkworms for the production of raw silk and is still a very secretive process, but silk has been traded throughout this region for centuries.
A silk worm will lay its eggs and the hatching larvae will feed on the mulberry leaves. When the larvae are around 10,000 times larger than when they hatched, they are ready to start spinning a cocoon. When the liquid is secreted from the glands it solidifies upon contact with air. Each worm will spin about 1 mile of filament and will completely enclose itself in a cocoon in about 2 or 3 days. The amount of useable silk in each cocoon is small and therefore around 5,500 worms are required to produce 1kg of silk. The silk filaments will then be wound onto a reel. One cocoon contains around 1,000 yards of silk filament. This is the raw silk and will need to be spun with another 40 or so filaments to make one thread. It’s no wonder that these precious little creatures are so closely protected!
After about an hour of bumping along the road out into the desert, Khiva emerges in the distance. The surrounding area is very flat and the ancient city walls appear to be enormous even from this distance. Up close, they are even more formidable and I can picture the scenes of the likes of Prince Alexander Bekovich and Captain Abbott, Lieutenant Shakespear and Frederick Burnaby attempting to gain entry to this fortress back in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Ichan Kala City Walls, Khiva
These walls have been destroyed and rebuilt on many occasions over the centuries but today they look magnificent in the bright and scorching sunshine. It is already well over 30°C and my hat is performing its duties admirably.
Two of the retired teachers, Mary and Janice, have already asked if they could borrow it, a request that, unfortunately, I have had to decline!
The bus drops us at the back door of the hotel in order to offload our bags and for the hotel porters to sort them out. We emerge into a sun-bathed quadrangle and learn that the building used to be a madrassah that has since been converted into a hotel.
Formerly known as the Muhammed Amin Khan Madrassah, it was originally built in 1851. The two storey building accommodated 260 students in the 125 ‘khudjra’ (cells). These ‘cells’ are now our accommodation and we can have a first-hand insight into what life would have been like for the students.
I think it’s fair to say that the rooms are ‘snug’ but very comfortable. The thick walls make the room nice and cool, a welcome relief from the heat outside.
Outside the main entrance to the madrassah / hotel, we are introduced to two of the principal features in Khiva. The unfinished minaret called Kalta Minor and the Kuhna Ark Citadel.
Kalta Minor was commissioned by Amin Khan to be the tallest minaret in the world. It was never completed because the Khan was murdered three years later and his successors abandoned the project citing that it was too expensive. It is 14 meters in diameter at its base and is only one third complete so one can imagine the intended size had it been completed. Covered in glazed tiles and majolica it is as bright and vivid today as it would have been in 1855.
Kalta Minor, Khiva
The Kuhna Ark Citadel, Tatiana tells us, is where the ruling Khan and his family would have lived. Many of the original buildings within the Ark have been destroyed over the years but the most recently reconstructed official reception hall and a mosque remain. Today, the Ark Citadel houses the City Museum
We are also shown where the Khan would have put a felt ‘yurta’ (nomad tent) to conduct his private business. It is great to be able to picture the meetings between the Khan and the likes of Bekovich, Abbott and Shakespear, as this is where they would have been received.
Behind this circular floor is a narrow corridor leading to the harem quarters and a staircase which accesses an observation platform from where the guards could see a panoramic view of the whole city and the surrounding areas. For 300 sum we can go up there and see for ourselves. The view is magnificent. Looking out over the rooftops, there are more impressive madrassah facades, the finished (and unfinished) minarets and domes, not forgetting the imposing city walls that surround the Ichan Kala – the main part of the Inner City.
Ichan Kala City Walls, Khiva
I take a walk along the parapet of the ramparts and see for myself just how imposing the walls are. Looking out through the turrets the ground below is a long way down and if the walls are constructed now as they were originally, it must have been nigh on impossible for any marauders to have had any impact.
I take time to think back and reflect on the time when the Russians and the British were both attempting to take control of this fortress city. I can picture their respective forces encamped out in the desert. The conditions must have been extremely difficult. Today, the temperature is now well above 35°C but in winter, the temperatures can be at the opposite extremes, as suffered by the Russians back in 1839.
On my way back down from this amazing vantage point, I walk through the backstreets of the Ichan Kala, where today ordinary Khivans live. I hear a cow lowing but I can’t see where the noise is coming from. There are no houses with courtyards in which a cow could be kept. All the houses have two or three stories and few windows but I follow the smell and come across a small wooden latticed door and I find the source of the lowing. Behind the door and on the ground floor of this little house is a brown cow feeding on hay. This must also be the householder’s source of fresh milk.
I bump into a couple from our group whom I haven’t spoken to before, Andrew and Diane. Andrew asks me whether I had managed to take any good photos, so I show him some of the images on my camera’s viewing screen. He asks me whether I would look at his camera as it doesn’t seem to be working. I fiddle around with it but can’t seem to get it to work either. Diane is devastated because they won’t now be able to take any photos home to show their family and friends. As it happens, I always carry a spare compact camera in my bag just in case I have a problem with my camera equipment. Touch wood, it hasn’t happened to me yet. I ask if he would like to borrow it for the remainder of the holiday. Of course, he jumped at the opportunity. There was an empty memory card inside so he had scope to take well over 300 pictures.
This is the wonder of digital photography because I say that at the end of the trip I will transfer all his snaps onto a CD and send them to him and he would then have a record of his trip. It makes sense to use the equipment. It would only have sat at the bottom of my bag otherwise.
I had clearly made their day as they are gushing with gratitude and scamper away back to places that they haven’t been able to capture on camera.
I consider that to be a deed well done as I catch up with the rest of the group who are with Tatiana.
She is keen to show us the Djuma Mosque – the Friday Mosque. It’s Thursday today so it is open to visitors. When inside we can understand why she has chosen this place. For starters it is dark and cool, a welcome relief to the burning heat outside. The interior space is a single hall with a flat roof supported by 215 carved wooden pillars. The focus of the mosque, the ‘mihrab’ – a door that points towards Mecca – is apparent but is overwhelmed by the fine carved pillars, many of which are from the original building completed in 1789.
As I emerge back into the cauldron, I spot something that brings me straight back into the real world of the 21st century. Across the road is a tiny café with 4 wooden chairs placed around a table under a 4 poster wooden gazebo. On the wall next to the table and chairs is a wooden plaque advertising a WIFI Zone. It just goes to show that even out here in the middle of the desert local traders are keen to attract the passing trade of the visitors.
WIFI Zone, Khiva
As I stroll down the street I see another sign offering WIFI outside another café. Neither emporium seems to be attracting much business so I pass on by too as there is so much to see and our time here in Khiva is limited, but all power to their elbows for showing some imagination.
I stick to my trusty bottle of water and head off in the direction of the Tash-Khovli Palace.
This stunningly decorated Palace was the summer residence of the Khivan Khans and their families. The complex consists of 3 yards each used for a different purpose – one for receiving visitors including merchants and traders who would have come in from the caravanserai that was built nearby, one for entertaining and an area occupied by the harem. Built with two storeys the chambers are linked by a labyrinth of narrow corridors and the inner walls are decorated with predominantly blue majolica tiles.
Tash-Khovli Palace, Khiva
The caravanserai next to the palace was the place where slaves were once bought and sold and I think back to the time when Captain Abbott and Lieutenant Shakespear were here in Khiva asking the Khan to release all the Russian slaves. Seeing this place enables me to picture the scene from 175 years ago and what it must have been like for all those people who did not know what their future held.
As we make our way through the narrow streets, I notice that one of the WIFI cafés has succeeded in attracting some French visitors. One of the group is tapping away on his laptop, so the WIFI connection must be working.
Outside our madrassah-cum-hotel is a statue commemorating Al-Khorezmi who died in the year 840. He was a famous mathematician of his time after whom the word “algorithm” is named. He is also considered the founder of algebra. He was born in Khiva in the year 783 but spent most of his working life in Baghdad.
I am transported back 40 years to relive my school maths lessons during which I remember poring over pages and pages of algebraic equations. I now realise that I have this gentleman to thank for those valuable lessons – not that algebra has contributed much to my life so far!
We reconvene as a group from our rabbit warren-like hotel for dinner in a local restaurant and are told about the journey that we would be embarking upon the next day. It will be a 10 hour road trip across the Kyzyl-Kum Desert to Bukhara.