Two young figures can be seen in the courtyard of the Kalon Mosque in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. This mosque, with its striking blue dome, was built in the early 16th century on the site of the old mosque destroyed by the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993, this place of worship was decommissioned and converted into a warehouse during the Soviet era.

Credits :  Daria Novikova (Uzbekistan, @dasha.novasha)

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Despite being only a few dozen meters away from Bukhara‘s historic core, the quiet, narrow alleys surrounding it feel far away from the bustle of the vibrant city center listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site. Only the outlines of the madrasas and the Kalyan Minaret rising above the rooftops function as a quiet reminder of one’s location.

So far, these backstreets have remained largely untouched by Uzbekistan’s tourism boom. Yet as space becomes scarcer and prices rise, it is uncertain how long this seemingly unbothered atmosphere of local resident life can endure.

Credit: Niels Hildebrandt (Germany, @nl_hldbr_photobox)

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Four women from the ‘Muras’ craft association in Kyzyl Suu, Jeti Oguz district, Kyrgyzstan: the photograph captures the meticulousness and feminine crafts(wo)manship of shyrdak, a Kyrgyz textile craft. Shyrdak refers to fabrics with patterns created by cutting and sewing felted wool sheets. After felting the wool, the craftswoman must cut out the patterns and then sew them together with great detail. Highly insulating, shyrdak was originally used to insulate yurts from the harsh winters. Today, it remains a colourful cultural heritage, inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2012.

Credits : Pierre-Armand Dussex (Switzerland)

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View of the mahallah, or neighbourhood, north of Osh from Sulaiman-Too, the city’s sacred mountain, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Credits: Simone Bergonzi (Italy, @simobergz)

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Play of light and shadow under the arcades of the Kok Gumbaz Mosque in Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan. The construction of this large Friday mosque was ordered by Ulugh Beg in honour of his father Shah Rukh, one of Timur‘s sons, and completed around 1437. Inside, the palm trees painted on the walls recall the Indian and Iranian origins of the first architects. The historic centre of Shahrisabz was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000, but has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 2016, mainly due to extensive demolition in the historic centre and the deteriorating condition of monuments, including the Kok Gumbaz Mosque.

Credits : E.S.

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While the magic of the site continues to work in the eyes of novices, the many restorations imposed on the necropolis of Shah-i-Zinda in recent years (visible in this photo) are a cause for concern for many connoisseurs.

Credits : Jan Ritter (@janritter10, Austria)

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In 2021, all the houses that lined the wall of the old city of Khiva, Itchan Kala, are razed. When contacted, an architect present on site cited the presence of termites as a pretext.

Despite criticism, the Uzbek government continues to remodel tourist sites, as currently in Bukhara or Tashkent.

Credit: Isabelle Vincent (France)

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In Samarkand, a wall separates the Gur-e-Amir, from the popular district of Iskanderov in which it was located until 2009. This house narrowly escaped demolition. Despite criticism, the Uzbek government continues to remodel tourist sites, as currently in Bukhara or Tashkent.

Credits : Isabelle Vincent (France)

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A dancing mountain goat, a flowering garden of embroidery, a trickster’s tales, a silken thread spun from a worm’s cocoon – these are the diverse array of Central Asian cultural practices recently recognised by UNESCO as part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage. Novastan takes a look at these four vibrant traditions, as well as considering where the List has its limits in truly celebrating the cultural diversity of Central Asia. Every year, a UNESCO committee inscribes cultural practices from around the globe into a List designed to showcase and safeguard traditions seen as universally significant. Intangible cultural heritage, according to UNESCO’s 2003 Convention, encompasses the practices, expressions, knowledge, and spaces which play an important part in a community’s cultural identity.

UNESCO’s List has long featured a rich variety of cultural practices from across the Central Asian countries, including Nowruz (New Year) celebrations, Tajik Chakan embroidery, and Turkmen carpet making. Among the eclectic group of traditions newly featured on the List this year – from Cuban rum mastery to the French baguette – are four cultural practices from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Orteke

A new entry on the list for Kazakhstan, Orteke is an indigenous performing art which brings a wooden puppet of a tauteke, or mountain goat, to life as it dances along to music. The tauteke puppet is attached to the surface of a drum by a metal rod, extending to a cord connected to the fingers of a musician playing a traditional two-stringed instrument, the dombyra.

As the player strums the strings, the tauteke puppet becomes animated, appearing to gallop along to the lively rhythms of the dombyra. However, true mastery of Orteke involves not only dictating the energetic pace of the tauteke’s dance, but also making the puppet move with grace – a feat some experts can achieve with as many as four puppets at a time. As playful as it is fascinating, Orteke appeals to adults and children alike and remains a core element of Kazakh folk heritage and intergenerational communication, maintained by the traditional Ustaz-Shakird (master-apprentice) teaching system and supported by educational institutions and competitions.

Turkmen-style needlework art

Described in Turkmen state news as capable of transforming anything into “flowering gardens and meadows” with merely a needle and thread, Turkmen-style needlework art is an elaborate type of embroidery popular across Turkmenistan and some regions of Iran. It is a defining feature of national dress for people of all genders and ages, used for occasions including weddings and Nowruz celebrations, as well as everyday items.

To begin the needlework, three thin silk threads are twisted together to form one shinier, sturdier thread. The needleworker then pierces the fabric with a thin needle and creates a series of loops with the silk, forming a distinctive pattern by holding the last loop with the thumb of the other hand before sewing the next. With colourful designs often showcasing needleworkers’ regional identities, the art form continues to be passed down within families and communities through generations of women needleworkers, while also remaining important in cultural and educational institutions.

Telling Tradition of Nasreddin Hodja/Molla Nesreddin/Molla Ependi/Apendi/Afendi Kozhanasyr

Centred around the telling of witty anecdotes associated with the wiseman and trickster Nasreddin, this variously named oral folklore tradition spans a vast region encompassing all Central Asian countries, as well as Turkey and Azerbaijan. The anecdotes are known for their shrewd commentaries on social norms and daily life, characterised by their punchy combination of wisdom, witticism, and surprise. In one anecdote, a shopkeeper angrily confronts Nasreddin for failing to pay his debt of 75 piastres. Nasreddin incredulously replies: “Now, now, you must know that I intend to pay you 35 piastres tomorrow, and next month another 35. That means I owe you only five piastres. Are you not ashamed of yourself for accosting me so loudly in public for a debt of only five piastres?” Read more on Novastan: “I want our theatre to be the new face of Tajik theatre”: Khurshed Mustafoev on the future of Dushanbe’s Russian theatre The anecdotes are drawn upon in daily conversation in communities across Central Asia, used for their instructive and entertaining qualities to strengthen arguments or enliven explanations.

Sericulture and traditional production of silk for weaving

Silk culture – encompassing an entire process from sericulture to the end silk products – is a major tradition of Central Asia, spanning centuries and giving the Silk Road its name. Inscribed in the UNESCO List as a practice of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (alongside Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey), sericulture and traditional production of silk for weaving comprises multiple stages of the process for creating colourful fabrics and carpets. Farmers grow mulberry trees and feed the leaves to silkworms, from which the worms form cocoons of silken fibres. The fibres are reeled from the cocoons and spun into silk thread, before being cleaned, dyed, and woven into bright fabrics commonly seen at weddings and family occasions. Read more on Novastan: Tajikistan: Nine new sites on tentative World Heritage list Sericulture and silk production is still largely carried out by villagers and small private farms, also benefitting from government support in Turkmenistan and specialist teaching and research at higher education institutions in Uzbekistan.

Where UNESCO falls short: Uyghur culture

As is clear from this diverse group of Central Asian traditions, the UNESCO List raises awareness and mobilises much-needed support for diverse, often endangered, cultural practices. However, the List has faced criticism as a tool for obscuring the very cultural diversity that UNESCO purportedly seeks to celebrate. The inscription of Uyghur traditions in the List as practises of China is a case in point. Among the repressive actions by the Chinese government against Uyghurs is the destruction of the community’s culture – from banning the Uyghur language in schools to destroying religious sites. Attempts to erase Uyghur heritage have been reinforced by the UNESCO List’s inclusion of two Uyghur traditions – Meshrep, a rich event combining song, dance, and entertainment, and the Muqam song and dance tradition – via nominations by China. What has followed is the co-opting of the traditions by the Chinese government. As ethnomusicologist Rachel Harris explains, grassroots gatherings are banned in favour of “sanitised, commodified and secularised” renditions of the practises devoid of key religious and community aspects.

The UNESCO List showcases many Central Asian traditions in all their splendour. However, the manner of involvement allowed from China currently means that support for Uyghur cultural heritage is overshadowed by silence on its erasure.

Written by Emma Bain

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Tajikistan has submitted nine historical and cultural sites in the Zarafshan-Karakum corridor for inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Currently, two places in Tajikistan have received the full status.

This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 19 April 2021.

It’s another step towards international recognition of Tajikistan’s culture and history. On 13 April 2021, the Tajik ministry of culture published a list of sites newly included on a UNESCO tentative list, a first step towards inscription on the World Heritage List. The cultural and historical monuments were nominated by a committee of specialists from the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Commission for UNESCO in Tajikistan. They are all located in the Zarafshan – Karakum corridor, as UNESCO describes, dating the submission to 21 January.  

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The sites are located in the Sughd province, in the north of the country. They are the Khisorak settlement, the castle on Mount Mugh, the Kum settlement, the Gardani Khisor settlement, the Tali Khamtuda fortress, the mausoleum of Khoja Mukhammad Bashoro, the Toksankoriz irrigation system, the Sanjarshakh settlement and the town of the Ancient Penjikent. All of these are described in detail in the Tajik submission.

The inscription on this tentative list is the first step for these sites to become World Heritage sites if they meet one of the ten selection criteria. World Heritage status gives a landmark legal protection and international recognition. It enables a country to receive financial and material support for international bodies, but also helps advertise sites to tourists. So far, two places have been recognised in Tajikistan: the site of the pre-historic city of Sarazm,which celebrated its 5,500th anniversary in September 2020, was included in 2010 and the Tajik National Park in the Pamir Mountains in 2015.

Ambitions shared by Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan

The nomination is a recognition of Central Asia’s heritage. Indeed, the Zarafshan-Karakum corridor, bordered by the Zarafshan River and the Karakum Desert, encompasses three Central Asian states. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan respectively have 15 and seven other sites in the area on the Tentative List.

In addition, the corridor is home to important excavation sites for archeologists. Their historical and cultural interest lies in the fact that the corridor was an integral part of the Silk Road, a historical network of trade routes spanning 6,500 kilometres between Europe and Asia.

For Mirzosharif Abdusalomov, national coordinator of material culture at UNESCO in Tajikistan, this potential recognition of the historical and cultural heritage of the Tajik people is far from insignificant. It could be a sign of “recognition by the international community of the Republic of Tajikistan as a country with its own culture and civilisation”, he said, as quoted by the Tajik media Asia-Plus.

Corentin Goupil
Novastan.org

Translated from French by Valentine Baldassari

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