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Herat and the Minaret of Jam‘The world is like an ocean,’ it was said in ancient times, ‘and in the ocean is a pearl, and the pearl is Herat.’
Herat is one of the legendary cities of Central Asia. During the European Middle Ages it was the capital of the empire created by Timur – Tamerlane. The empire contained the cities of Samarkand and Bokhara but its capital was Herat. Men of discernment regarded it as a painful banishment to be sent from Herat to Samarkand. The best painters, the best architects, the best musicians, all came from Herat. "In Herat if you stretch out your feet you are sure to kick a poet," said Ali Sher Nawai, a governor who was himself a poet and artist.
But it was principally famous for its architecture. The British destroyed most of it in the nineteenth century to make Herat more defensible. Robert Byron wrote:
‘The most glorious productions of Mohammadan architecture in the fifteenth century, having survived the barbarism of four centuries, were now razed to the ground under the eyes, and with the approval, of the English commissioners. Nine minarets and the mausoleum escaped.’
There are now (from memory) four minarets and the mausoleum of Gohar Shad, the Timurid queen. The Friday Mosque also survives, its huge courtyard completely tiled and with the world’s oldest tile factory in an outbuilding. The kiblah of the mosque does not face towards Mecca and is said to reproduce the plan and orientation of an earlier Zoroastrian temple.
The site was first settled 5,000 years ago. Alexander conquered it and renamed it Alexandria-of-the-Arians. His foundation probably lies underneath the Timurid fortress that dominates the town today. I am trying to organise a survey of it with Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to locate Alexander’s city exactly and perhaps what the world has never seen, a portrait of him executed in his lifetime. I hope that this survey will be undertaken in the autumn of 2003.
Herat suffered more than the rest of Afghanistan under the lunatic rule of the Taliban. It has always been a hospitable, easy-going place and the first thing the Taliban did was string up the inhabitant’s television sets on poles around the city. Ismael Khan, one of the heroes of the jihad against the Communists and who had led the city’s revolt against the Russians in 1979, has re-taken control and established a liberal, tolerant regime, where unveiled women walk at night in public parks – something one does not see in Kabul.
One could spend days in the city’s fascinating bazaars and seeing what is left of the Timurid buildings. Outside the city is the beautiful Sufi shrine of Gazargah with Chinese decoration brought there along the Silk Road.
Five day’s journey by horse is the Minaret of Jam – a 213 foot minaret (the second highest in the world) leaning slightly off the vertical. Otherwise, there is nothing in every direction. Its provenance is a great mystery. It may be part of a lost city.
The Minaret of Jam, photograph by Bruce Chatwin
I want to complete a project I started in 2002, which is to attempt to follow up a clue in Peter Levi’s book The Light Garden of the Angel King:
‘we heard of a place called Malminj on the Murghab river which lies between Maimana and Chagcheran; the story is that close by the river there are men and lions carved in relief or in outline on two stones, one each side of the water. This report that we heard from the headman and mullah of Jam, might refer to anything or nothing. It was not an eyewitness report. But if the carvings really exist it is possible, amongst many other possibilities, that they are the monumental boundary stones of the Persian Empire.’ Levi, Pallas Athene edition, 2000, p. 69
It is perfectly possible that there are many more undiscovered antiquities in this area. The Minaret itself was only discovered in 1943 and first surveyed in 1957. In 1962 twelfth-century Jewish graves with Hebrew inscriptions were discovered near here. By 2003 I will have satellite photos of the area supplied by the United States Geological Survey and the Expedition will be able to conduct a search of areas that these photographs suggest as possible locations.
A selection of Robert Byron’s pictures of Herat from the journey immortalised in The Road to Oxiana is available at: www.artandarchitecture.org.uk
Read the Glazed Expressions article
