s begun in the 6th century A. D. in the lower reaches of the Zeravshan, where, having given much of its water to the fields and orchards ncar-by, the river vanished in the thicket of reeds. What tills pre-Muslim Bokhara looked like, was barely indicated in the History of Buhara by a 10th-century author, Narshahi, "who said that the town was encompassed by a wall and divided into quarters; that twice a year in the Mokh bazaar there was a fair and, since domestic idols were on sale there, it made for the construction of a sanctuary; that the ruler Bidun erected in the citadel a palace 'on seven pillars' in imitation of the seven stars of the Great Bear; that after the capture of Bokhara by Arabs the kashkashan-mctchant ', were ousted from the town and built, in a Bokhara suburb, '700 castles 'with reliefs on the gates.
Obviously, the discovery of Bokhara memorials of those days would never come about as, in contrast with many others, the city always stood in the same place and new structures were built on top of earlier ones. Abundant evidence about early-Bokhara architecture and arts flowed from excavations on the site of Varakhsha, 18 miles from Bokhara, a fortified town and the seat of the ruler, bitk.hafk.budat, who lived in the palace shielded by the high currogatcd walls of the citadel. Later the palace was gradually rebuilt: the palace walls, dating from the 7th century, had murals and, following the Arab conquest of Bokhara, received carved stucco ornamentation and reliefs depicting hunting scenes, fishes and animals and musicians, and dancers.
By the 8th century the territory of Bokhara, fairly large tor its time, had reached 87 sq acres; there were seven gates in the Bokhara wall, and a citadel some distance to the west.
SAMARKAND
The town of Samarkand, one of the most ancient urban communities in Central Asia, liad its past, between the mil-idle of the 1st millenium В. С. and the 10th century, buried under the lifeless hillocks of the ancient stronghold Afrasiab, or Bolo-I lissar. In the years before the Arab invasion (it fell to Arabs in AD 712), and, in particular, under the reign of the Samanid rulers, Samarkand prospered. In the 9th-10th centuries its territory, with a citadel and several lines of wall, reached 50Е acres;
12 passages cut through the outer wall. Bv the llth-12th centuries the city had outgrown its former borders and, in consequence, an 'Outer town' was begun south of Samarkand proper, and was presently surrounded by a new circular wall. It lived undisturbed until 1220, when the Mongols laid waste the town, slaughtered its inhabitants and smashed the canal, the town's main route of water supply. After that, Afrasiab came to an end, and Samarkand reappeared in the 14th century on the territory of the 'outer town' of Hissar.
