Travel to Uzbekistan: Samarkand: Lesser Monuments
This chapter contains pictures of four less well-known monuments in varying stages of disintegration and renewal.
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About a mile to the southeast of the Registan is the Ishrat-khana, or House of Joy, built in 1464 as her daughter's tomb by Habib-Sultan Begum. The dome collapsed in earthquakes in 1897 and 1903, but historic photographs show it rising on a cylinder approximately in line with the larger tree to the right of the portal.
The building also housed other women's tombs.
Base of the now-vanished cylinder.
Surviving wall with banai patterning.
Across the road is the shrine of Khodja Abdi Darun, commemorating Abd al-Mazeddin Khodja.
A pool (hauz) before the mosque.
Surrounding colonnade.
Two miles south of the Registan is the madrasa of Khoja Akrar, a landlord and political leader following Ulug Beg's death. It was built between 1630 and 1635 in Khoja Akrar's honor by the Bukharan vizier Nadir Divanbegi.
Heavily restored, its tigers echo the lions on the Registan's Shir Dor madrasa.
The madrasa is in the background; here, in the foreground, is a summer mosque, built between 1909 and 1921 by Abdel-Hafiz Jalilov. It's being repainted here.
The column, in a style that will appear frequently in the chapters on Bukhara and Khiva, is another earthquake adaptation. Columns like these move atop their stone pedestals like a bone in a socket joint.
Column capitals with muqarnas.
An elderly man is in no hurry.
Nearby: the tombstone of Khodja Akrar.
Close to the Gur Emir but surrounded by private houses, this is the Ak Serai, or White Palace. It's lost its exterior ornament, and the doors are locked, but we can look inside from the iwan on the left.
Trash.
Up above, hints of the once elaborate decoration.