The ghosts of Otrar

When we visited the ruins of Otrar, a prosperous city on the silk route destroyed by Genghis Khan, there were only two bits of its long history that I recognized. One was the story of the atrocity that attracted the wrath of the Khan. Inalchuk, the governor of Otrar, massacred a Mongol caravan, along with a Mongol ambassador travelling with it. Inalchuk was a representative of the Khwarizmian empire. When the Khan sent ambassadors to Samarkand, its capital, one of the ambassadors was killed, and the others sent back with their beards shaved. The Khan laid siege to Otrar, and other cities of the empire, razed Otrar to the ground, and completely destroyed Otrar and the new empire of Khwarazm. I remembered this as the story of the beginning of the Mongol expansion.

The other piece of history that I recognized was that exactly four centuries before the sack of Otrar, the Arab polymath Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, or Muhammad”from Khwarazm” the son of Musa, was appointed the head of the Grand Library of Baghdad. This man wrote a treatise on a new branch of mathematics and thereby gave his name to both the subject, algebra, and the method, algorithm.

Our guide bought tickets from us, and ignoring the blood-sucking midges which raised lumps all over my head (I’d put on a mask as soon as they appeared), led us to a little mud hillock, the Otrar Tobe, where the ruins of the city are located. The Family is fairly immune to mosquitos and midges, and did not even bother to wind her scarf around her face. Fortunately the midges were only laying siege, and not intent on blood inside the city. So I was fairly at peace when I examined the fortification: a thick mud wall, bricks of unfired clay. But this was enough to protect the city perhaps since its founding some time in the 1st century CE, about when the silk route first came into existence.

During the Soviet times archaeology and the study of the history of this region was pursued with diligence, and continues till today. As a result significant bits of the city have been uncovered. We looked at an ongoing dig which was uncovering a jigsaw maze of lanes and houses. All made of bricks, in roughly the same shape as in use today in this region. In these plains, bereft of hills, clay was the building material of choice. With Syr Darya flowing nearby, and merchant caravans passing through this oasis, the stage was set for the rise of a major historical player.

Behind the dig was a large open space, the kind that easily fit into our notions of marketplaces. Perhaps it was more likely to have been the kind of multi-functional central space which the classical Greeks called the agora. Older communities I looked at the interesting remnant of a platform or other structure at one end of it. What was carved on it? It wasn’t a repeating motif which would mean a design. It had the non-repeating but regular shapes which seemed to indicate a written language. I know too little about the civilizations of central Asia and the Fertile Crescent immediately to its south to form a guess about the script and the language it presented.

A few days later in Astanan’s Central Museum of Kazakhstan (very much worth a visit) I saw this script again in a display of copper and bronze coins from Otrar. Would a trading town mint its own coins if it wasn’t also something of a political power? Pursuing this line of thought later led me to writings about the power balance between the mobile nomads of the steppes and the settled towns. Apparently trade kept them together, both profiting from the flow of goods through the area, each having rights of access to markets, and giving protection to traders. Apparently, the sudden expansion of the Khwarizmian empire in the early 13th century CE curtailed the trade rights of the nomads. Seen in this wider context, Inalchuk’s atrocity was perhaps the last straw that provided an excuse for a war.

As I read, other little pieces of local history slotted into place. Before the 13th century Islam had begun to make conversions in this region, but many people followed the older customs. Power in the Khwarizmian empire was divided between the Islamic emperor, and his non-Islamic mother, to whose camp the governor of Otrar belonged. This brought to my memory the fact that Aristan-bab, the teacher of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, was active in this region around the 12th century. It wasn’t till Timur’s time that Islam became the majority religion in this region. In fact, it is sometimes believed that Timur’s constructions of mausoleums for Arsitan-bab and Yasawi were part of his attempt to legitimize his rule.

The 11th century glazed chirag (lamp) from Otrar that I saw in the museum in Astana was decorated in a design familiar from the the ceramics of nearby Sayram, another silk route stop, which became Genghis Khan’s camp while he beseiged Otrar. The different fates of Sayram and Otrar seem to indicate that Genghis Khan was not out to pillage and sack in general, but had specific political and economic motives in his campaigns.

We wandered around the parts of the town which have been restored carefully after being dug up. I’ve seen this kind of painstaking work before: the jigsaw puzzle of the restoration of each house often leads to the doctoral dissertation of one student. The way to the underground chambers was blocked by a modern gate. For millennia the cities of this region: from China to southern Europe have had facilities invented at the dawn of city living: civilization. Things like sewage, town planning, zoning, are seen in cities five thousand years old or a thousand. Only when law and order begins to break down one sees its material footprints in the disorderly arrangement of houses and shops. This doesn’t seem to have happened in Otrar. One year it was a functioning and ordered town, the next, a traitor had let the Mongol hordes in to raze the city.

As we left by the gate through which the Mongols are said to have entered, we passed a house where someone had left this interesting piece of stone. There was a clear central hole, and part of it had been shaped into an arc of a circle. It was clearly a broken potter’s wheel. In this place where the nearest mountain was more than a hundred kilometers away, this would have been a prized item. I’d seen fragments of pottery recovered and stacked in various places: usually simple fired pieces.

Later, in the museum in Astana I saw the pottery that was produced here. The clearest attribution was to this misfired piece, which had collapsed as it was being heated in a kiln to bring out its glazing. I have seen misfired pieces dotting the grounds of potters’ houses even today, The good pieces are sold. Once I knew the design I could look for it elsewhere in the museum. It seems that the towns of the Zhetysu (seven rivers area) all traded pottery with each other, and I saw several similar pieces among others with different colours. I suppose simple fired pieces would have been for daily use, and glazed pottery was more prized. It was this way even three generations ago in Indian households. I remember the wonderful flavour of water stored in fired clay pitchers, cool on a summer day. Between the ruins, the museum and history books, I was beginning to get a clearer view of life in old Otrar.

This post appears at a preset time while I’m travelling. I’ll look at your comments and posts as soon as I have a stable connection.