Tours on historical monuments in Samarkand.

“That was the day the ancient songs of blood and war spilled from a hole in the sky
And there was a long moment as we listened and fell silent in our grief and then one by one, we stood tall and came together and began to sing of life and love and all that is good and true
And I will never forget that day when the ancient songs died because there was no one in the world to sing them” 

Brian Andreas.

Tours across mosques in Samarkand.

Samarkand has many ancient mosques like any other city of Islamic culture. Mainly, these are small single storey buildings, by size much differed from monumental cathedral mosques of Bibi-Khanym and Tillya-Kari, which were usually constructed in account of supreme governors.
Some mosques are popular throughout the city. Believers and tourists visit them by quantities. These are so-called memorial mosques: Hazret-Hyzr, Ruhabad, Khodja Akhrar, Abdi-Darun, summer mosque at Shahi-Zinda and Mahdum-i A’zam necropolises.
Muslims come here to exercise sacred memorial ceremonies. Besides that, almost each quarter (mahalla) has its own mosque. Such mosque forms a public center and, as a rule, a major architectural structure of mahalla.
They represent public architecture and were constructed chiefly in the period of Samarkand reviving, the XIX - beginning of the XX centuries. The most famous are mosques in the centre of the city: Kuk-mosque, mosque of Khodja Zud Murad and mosque of Khodja Nisbatdor.
The architecture of the Samarkand mosques reveals well-recognized architectural tradition. "Khanaka" – a square, sometimes rectangular, premise with inner mihrab forms a core of a mosque.
An open verandah - "aivan" with wooden columns and painted ceiling adjoins one or several sides of “khanaka”. A characteristic feature is a small reservoir - "houz" and small minarets with dome-shaped "lanterns" on the top.
So, the mosque forms closed and all-sufficient world, symbolically exposing basic elements of the universe: greenery of trees, water in "houz", prayer house and minaret skyward. 

Authority:
Alexey Arapov. Samarkand. Masterpieces of Central Asia. Tashkent, Sanat. 2004.

Photos
Alexander Petrov.