Sayram
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| Sayram Сайрам |
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  Sayram
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| Coordinates: | |
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| Country |  Kazakhstan |
| Province | South Kazakhstan Province |
| Founded | 10th century BC |
| Government | |
| - Akim (mayor) | Husan Muzafarhanovich Akhmadhanov |
| Area | |
| - Total | 10 km² (4.2 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 600 m (1,970 ft) |
| Population (2007) | |
| - Total | 41,000 |
| Time zone | BTT (UTC+6) |
| Postal code | 160812 |
| Area code(s) | +7 72531 |
| Old Names include Isfijab, Saryom | |
Sayram (Kazakh: Сайрам) is a city located in southeastern South Kazakhstan Province on the Sayram Su river, which rises near the mountain similarly named Sayram Su. The city celebrated the 3000th anniversary of its founding in 1999.[1] It is among the oldest cities in Kazakhstan, site of the first mosque in Kazakhstan, and similarly among the oldest cities in Transoxania.[2] Like other Silk Road cities, this claim is difficult to prove with hard archaeological evidence. Sayram has practically no Soviet- or Russian-style architecture, and maintains an authentic Central Asian feel, like the Uzbekistani cities of Samarqand and Bukhara. Mausoleums abound, and continue to be built even today.
Archaeology in Central Asia is still emerging. There have been some finds made in Sayram while it was in the Soviet Union. Notable among them are evidence of an early plumbing system like the kinds found in Samarqand and other cities of the early Persian empires.[3]
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[edit] Pre-History
The modern city of Sayram celebrated its 3000th year[4] of continued habitation in 1999. While there is no archaeological evidence pointing to a definitive year, it is clear that the city is the oldest in Kazakhstan.
Its earliest mention in writings is difficult to date, as the first mention of Sayram is in the Avesta, the holy book, or books, of Zoroastrianism. The Avesta is dated differently by various historians and theologians, and it is impractical to use this to accurately place the city in history.
While Alexander the Great and his historians make no mention of the city itself, they were contemporaries. Sayram's location would have made it a border town in the North-eastern reaches of the Achaemenid Empire that Alexander was single-handedly pulling apart and recreating. Sayram would have been a day's ride north or east of the Jaxartes, today's Syr Darya river, as it wound its way from the Tian Shan to the Aral Sea.
The name of the city is mentioned in Zoroaster's history, referring to a river rising from a nearby mountain, and the land is called Sayram elys, which is the lands near Sayram. The original definition of the word Sayram is lost except as a place name, though the Turkic languages of the area have accepted it to mean blessing.
Sayram is also the name of the river that runs through the city. The source of the river is a 4000 meter mountain of the same name, which is a site of local campgrounds and apple orchards. The mountain is named Sayram Su in atlases, which is Turkic for Sayram water or Sayram river.
[edit] History
Persian historian Rashid Eddin(1247- 1318）wrote that Sayram was called Kary Sailam, it was a large city with forty gates, and it took one whole day to cross the city. [5]
There was no record of Sayram in Chinese historical annals prior to Yuan dynasty. In the Annals of Yuan dynasty, the capture of Sayram(塞兰) by Genghis Khan with cannons was recorded in chapter 151.
In 1220,Taoist monk Qiu Chuji left his home town Shandongin northern China and travelled through central Asia to Persia, to present himself before Genghis Khan; after returned home, his disciple recorded his master's travel in Travels to the Western Regions. Sayram was mentioned in this book.[6].
In Ming dynasty, envoy Chen Cheng (陈诚) sent by Emperor Yongle to the kingdom of Timurid, dedicated one chapter of his book A Record of the Babarian Countries in the Western Region to Sayram, then a Timurid territory[7].
[edit] The Coming of Islam
After the birth of Christ and the initial splitting of the many sects of Christianity, there came a large number of Christians to the East. Largest among them were the Nestorians, who were condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431. There was a community of Nestorian Christians in Sayram when Islam first came to Sayram in 766 AD who resisted conversion.
Islam was brought to Sayram and its neighboring cities by a detachment of Arabic and Arabic-speaking soldier-evangelicals from the already converted lands to the West. Leading this group was a man named Iskak, remembered in Sayram as Iskak-bab. The standard bearer of these soldiers of Islam was Abd al Aziz-baba, whose heroism is remembered today in Sayram, now entirely Muslim. One surviving manuscript, entitled Nasabname tells how the Muslim warriors under Iskak-bab came to Sayram and met with the Nestorian patriarch of Sayram, Nakhibar.
Iskak-bab invited Nakhibar to the true faith. But Nakhibar replied, "I am a tarsa (believer) of the seventieth generation, and my faith is true! That is why I shall fight you." Hand-to-hand combat ensued, and lasted for three days and nights. Ten thousand Nestorian tarsas and fifteen thousand Muslim evangelicals died for their faith. The color-bearer of the Muslim forces was Abd al Aziz.[8]
That same manuscript goes on to describe Iskak-bab's building of the first mosque in Sayram, which would make it the first mosque in all of present-day Kazakhstan, as well.
"After that he set up a Friday mosque in Sayram. The first stone in the foundation was laid by his hands. He sanctified the stone with holy water."
The Sayram museum keeps an old, richly illuminated Koran and stone support from the original Friday mosque. The Koran dates back 200 years, but the stone support is believed to be from that same original mosque, though it has not been carbon dated to support that theory.
Following its conversion to Islam, Sayram, now renamed Isfijab, largely dropped out of historical importance until the birth of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi. It remained a minor stop on the Silk Road, between Tashkent to the South and Taraz to the East. Taraz is today a largely Kazakh and Russian town, and lays claim to being the oldest city in Kazakhstan. It celebrated its 2000th anniversary in 2001.
[edit] Ahmed Yasavi
Very few details have been written about Ahmad's (1103-66) life, but legends abound, especially in Sayram and the surrounding region. His first teacher was Sayram's great scholar Hazrat Shayh Shaxobiddin Isfijabi. Today he is known by the nickname Oqota Bobo, which is Uzbek for White Grandfather. He is buried near the center of Sayram. Near his mausoleum, there is a small stream bridged by the main road into Sayram. This bridge is the focus of another legend, this one concerning the meeting of Ahmad as a boy and the great wanderer Arslan Bab. According to legend,[9] Arslan, Turkic for "lion", was one of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's followers. He had already lived 300 years before meeting Muhammed, and was well versed in all of the world's religions, though he chose to follow Islam alone. As Muhammed's death drew near, he asked his followers who would take his persimmon stone, the symbol of Islam, and give it to the next generation. Arslan replied that he would gladly bear this burden, and taking the stone, continued on his journey. Hundreds of years later, as he passed through the small town of Isfijab, Arslan baba [his title of respect] was stopped on the road by a young boy. "Grandfather, give me my persimmon stone!" demanded the young Ahmad. Arslan relinquished the stone, and following the death of Ahmad's father in 1113, journeyed with Ahmad to Yasa.
From there Ahmad became a prize pupil and one of the rising stars of Sufism. Arslan baba finally succumbed to old age and was buried near Otrar, where his mausoleum stands to this day. Following Arslan's death, Ahmed moved to Bukhara and followed the studies of Yusuf Hamdani before finally returning to Yasa to begin his own order. He spent the majority of his life in Yasa, taking the name Ahmed Yasavi.
Ahmad's mother and father are buried in Sayram. His father Ibrahim died when Ahmad was still just a boy, though next to nothing is known about his wife. Their mausoleums are both major sites of pilgrimage today, drawing faithful Muslims from all over Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
Ahmad's fame was such that in the time of Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas, the great conqueror decreed that the most majestic mausoleum of all time be raised over the site of the great Sufic master's grave. The reason for the attention from Timur may stem from their common ancestry [Ahmad is believed to have been Turkick-Mongol, like Timur], though more cynical historians point out that Timur was probably hoping to benefit from the positive effects of honoring a local hero.
[edit] City of Empires
Sayram, also called Isfijab and Saryom, changed hands through the ages as each iteration of the Persian, Mongolian, and Turkish empires took control of Central Asia. The Qarakhanids seized the city in 980, during the reign of Nuh II of the Samanid Empire. Following that, Genghis Khan came through, doing minor damage, as compared to the complete obliteration of Sayram's neighbor to the West, the doomed city of Otrar, also called Utrar or Farab, and the birthplace of Al-Farabi.
Sayram was well recovered when Timur arrived on the scene. Following its absorption into the Timurid empire, Sayram enjoyed the increased trade brought by his ruthless conquering.
The death of Timur led in time to the coming of Abul Khayir, another Turkic-Mongol conqueror and head of the Uzbek Khanates. Sayram was a part of the Khanate of Kokand until 1810, when it switched hands to the Emirate of Bukhara before finally falling into Russia's hands in 1864.
The descendents of Abul Khayir spoke a mixture of Persian and Turkic that eventually became the Uzbek language spoken today. It has splintered into many dialects, some more closely related to Kazakh. The Uzbek spoken in Sayram today carries many characteristics of Kazakh, while maintaining the lack of vowel harmonization characteristic of Uzbek.
[edit] Demographics
According to the last official census, taken in the mid-1990s, Sayram consists of some 37,000 people. Estimates to its population today put it at nearly 43,000 people, due to a healthy birthrate and increasing immigration from nearby Uzbekistan. The population is roughly 95% Uzbek, 3% Kazakh, and 1% Russian, with the remainder being Uzbek-speaking Azeris, Chechens, Tajiks and Iranians, but few of these minorities retain their original language. Sayram is a city of largely observant Muslims, and the call to prayer can be heard played by the cities countless mosques. As such, it is quite different from most towns in Kazakhstan, especially Chimkent, its metropolis neighbor, 8 kilometers to the West.
Sayram has thus earned the nickname Little Uzbekistan. The economy of Kazakhstan being much stronger than Uzbekistan, Sayram has since seen a marked increase of migrant laborers from Uzbekistan, as well as those coming to stay as permanent residents. A number of these are actually oralman, a term used to describe ethnic Kazakhs returning to Kazakhstan from various countries, in this case Uzbekistan. Often these Kazakhs have little or no remaining knowledge of their mother tongue. They are welcomed by Kazakhstan's immigration control, but have little access to the social services enjoyed by already naturalized citizens of Kazakhstan. This has led to some racially motivated crimes in cities with large immigrant populations, like Almaty, where Kazakh oralman lash out at their more successful neighbors, the Uyghurs. Fortunately, as Sayram is a relatively small and conservative city, such crimes are rare, though the tensions exist.
Uyghurs and Uzbeks are very similar in appearance and speak similar languages, and both have faced considerable difficulties in being accepted into Kazakhstan.
[edit] Sayram Today
Sayram is reachable via a ten to fifteen bus, taxi, or route taxi ride from Shymkent, which is host to an international airport that also receives domestic flights from Kazakhstan international hubs Almaty and Astana. Route taxis are known locally as Marshrutka or маршрутка.
Modern Sayram is still very much a part of ancient Central Asia. Unlike most of Kazakhstan, it bears almost no mark of Soviet planning or modernization. The streets curve in many directions, while the center of the town is the same crossroads that have been used for centuries. There are no apartments in the city proper, and no buildings more than two-stories high, allowing the skyline to be dominated by the domes of local minarets, mosques, and mausoleums, some more than 1000 years old.
Sayram remains a popular site of pilgrimage for local Muslims, who pass through on tours arranged around the history of Ahmad Yasavi. They visit Sayram, the remains of Otrar, and the mausoleum of Arslan baba before finally visiting the majestic mausoleum of Ahmad in Turkestan.
[edit] See also
- History of Kazakhstan
- Isfijab
- Ahmed Yesevi
- Kazakhstan
- Uzbek language
- South Kazakhstan Province
- Silk Road
- The Weather in Sayram
- Kazakhstan:Coming Of Age
[edit] References
- ^ Sayram Region, 75th Anniversary Yerkin Nurazxan, editor 2003
- ^ Kazakhstan: Coming of Age Michael Fergus and Zhanar Zhandosova, Stacey International Publishers, March 2004 (ISBN - 1900988615)
- ^ Kazakhstan: Coming of Age Michael Fergus and Zhanar Zhandosova, Stacey International Publishers, March 2004 (ISBN - 1900988615)
- ^ Sayram Region, 75th Anniversary Yerkin Nurazxan, editor 2003
- ^ ；E. Bretschneider, Sairam, in MEDIEVAL RESEARCHES FROM EASTERN ASIATIC SOURCES， Vol 2，1888 Trubner's Oriental Series, London.
- ^ ^SI YOU KI, TRAVELS TO THE WEST OF KIU CH'ANG CH'UN, by Emil Bretschneider, in Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources vol 1 1888 Trubner & Co, London; Reprint by Elibron Classics ISBN 1-4021-9303-3
- ^ E. Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches Vol 2,p250
- ^ Nasabname, Book of Generations: Sayram, Anon.
- ^ No Counting the Saints in Sayram, Makhmut Nursalaev (1999)
