Gijduvan

Gijduvan is an old settlement of the Bukhara oasis, standing on the irrigated land watered by the lower Zarafshan at a point where the caravan road towards Samarkand crossed the district's canals. Its early fame is religious: Abdul Khaliq Gijduvani, a Sufi teacher of the 12th century, lived, taught and was buried here, and the principles he set out were later carried into the Naqshbandi order that spread from Bukhara across the Muslim world. His tomb made the town a place of pilgrimage long before it had monuments.

In the Timurid period Gijduvan gained its most prominent building: a madrasa founded in the 1430s by Ulugh Beg, the astronomer-ruler of Samarkand, and the smallest of the three he built alongside those in Samarkand and Bukhara. The madrasa and the shrine together turned the square into the ceremonial centre of the district.

Under the Emirate of Bukhara the town lived from farming, weaving and pottery, and its kilns supplied glazed dishes to the bazaars of Bukhara. Russian and then Soviet rule brought cotton quotas and a district administration; craft production was organised into workshops, and several potter families kept their techniques and clay sources through the Soviet period. In November 1512 the Battle of Ghazdewan was fought beside the town, where a Safavid army supporting Babur was defeated by the Uzbek Shaybanids, ending Timurid rule in Transoxiana. Since independence the ceramic tradition has been revived as an attraction in its own right, the shrine complex has been restored and extended, and Gijduvan has become a regular stop for travellers moving between Bukhara and Samarkand.

Two traditions define the town: Sufism and pottery. The shrine of Abdul Khaliq Gijduvani keeps a steady flow of visitors, most of them Uzbek families who come to pray, walk in the courtyard and eat afterwards in the town, and the square is treated as a religious space rather than a tourist site. The rhythm of the visit is familiar across Uzbekistan — a short prayer, a donation, bread bought for the journey home.

The Gijduvan school of ceramics is recognised as one of the distinct pottery traditions of Uzbekistan. Its dishes are thrown from local clay and painted with pigments mixed from ground minerals, in patterns of geometric rosettes and stylised plants under a glossy glaze, with a colouring the town is known for across the country. Skills pass down within families, with sons learning at the wheel and daughters often doing the painting, and several houses now welcome visitors to watch the whole process from clay to kiln.

Otherwise the manners are those of rural Bukhara province: elders greeted first and served first, guests seated on the raised platform with the best view, a hand on the heart in greeting, and bread never wasted. Weddings are large, loud and financed by whole extended families, with plov cooked for hundreds and music continuing well into the night.

Gijduvan is the centre of a farming district rather than a city, and it is small enough that the square, the market and the main road make up most of its public life. Houses are single-storey, built around courtyards with vines and a tapchan, the raised platform where families eat in warm weather, and the streets behind the main road are quiet, dusty and shaded by mulberry trees.

The economy rests on irrigated agriculture — cotton, wheat, vegetables, melons, grapes and fruit — along with karakul sheep on the drier land, and small-scale industry serving the farms. Pottery is a serious local trade, not only a demonstration for visitors, and tourism adds work for guesthouses, drivers and cooks. Many households also depend on money sent home by relatives working in Russia or Tashkent, a pattern common across Bukhara province.

The day starts before dawn in summer, when the bazaar opens and field work is done before the heat; the middle of the day empties the streets, and the evening brings people out again. Water allocation, the price paid for cotton and wheat, and the reliability of the power supply in winter are the things people complain about most. The younger generation increasingly leaves for Bukhara or the capital, while the craft workshops try to keep a handful of them at the wheel.

Gijduvan is known across Uzbekistan for its shashlik, skewers of beef or lamb grilled over charcoal, sold at roadside grills along the highway and near the bazaar; drivers between Bukhara and Samarkand stop here for them specifically. The meat is marinated overnight, served with raw onion rings, vinegar and bread, and eaten straight off the skewer.

Otherwise the cooking is that of the Bukhara oasis. Plov made with mutton, carrot and cumin is the dish for guests and celebrations; shurpa, a broth of mutton and vegetables, is the everyday soup; manti, steamed dumplings of minced lamb and onion, and samsa baked against the wall of a tandoor are sold through the day. Bread is baked in clay ovens in flat, patterned rounds, stamped in the centre and broken by hand.

The district's fields and orchards set the table for the rest of the year. Melons ripen from July and are stored hanging in net bags for the winter; grapes, apricots and mulberries are dried in the sun; and walnuts, almonds and raisins are sold by weight at the bazaar. Dairy comes from sheep and cows as fresh milk, soured katyk and qurt, hard salty balls of dried yoghurt. Green tea is poured all day, taken with navat sugar crystals and, in the houses of the potters, often served in their own glazed bowls.