Tours to Central Asia and Uzbekistan.

“Architects are the people who turn the castles of the imagination into real ones”

Valery Krasovsky.

Excursion to Chashma Ayub mausoleum and museum.

Cult-religious building, including the mausoleum of an unknown person and a well (chashma ”- source), attributed to the legends of the Prophet Job (Ayoub). The masters from Kunya-Urgench built the tomb, which in the ceiling reproduced the forms of the conical tent on the drum traditional for Khorezm.
Above the well is a dome with a lantern erected in the XVIth century. Chashma-Ayub ("well" or "spring") Job is one of the oldest monuments of Bukhara. According to one of the legends, in these places the holy righteous Job, called in the Quran the prophet Ayub, passed.
From the blow of his staff there appeared a “well” with healing water. According to another version, this is the source, the ablution in which saved Ayub from the sufferings mentioned in the Old Testament book of Job. One way or another, but unknown events, somehow related to the name of Ayub, played a role in the emergence of the city and the appearance here of the diaspora of Bukharan Jews. Already in pre-Islamic time, Chashma-Ayub was the sacred center of Bukhara, next to which the Naukand cemetery was established.
The real age of the well has not been studied. The Islamic cult mazar Chashma-Ayub appeared in this place no later than the XII century. The inscription above the entrance indicates that the building was constructed during the rule of Amir Temur (1370 - 1405).
Ayub’s well is located in the middle hall of the Mazar, followed by rooms with burials by unknown persons. A distinctive feature of the building is a conical dome in the form of a tent, built, presumably, by captive Khorezm masters.
The original domes of the mazar Chashma-Ayub near the Samanids Mausoleum, giving special intimacy to small darkened rooms, quite corresponded to the mood of detached contemplation: "Muslims do not die, but only go from one door to another."
According to legend, where the biblical prophet Job (Ayub) struck with his staff, this source appeared. A short, shady walk north-east from here, past a stretch of ruined city wall beyond a pond on the left, is Chashma Ayub, the Spring of Job, where curative water miraculously gushed from the desert at the Old Testament prophet's behest.
The spring is still there and auizar (shrine, not mausoleum) was built over it in the XII century. It was rebuilt in the 1380, according to an inscription over the entrance, with cells, dormitories and dining rooms for pilgrims and dervishes.
The large and incongruous conical dome was designed by architects brought from Khorezm by Tamerlane. Nowadays there are un- house-trained doves inside, and an exhibition on the Amu-Bukharski Canal.
You are encouraged to drink of the Spring of Job, which now comes out of a tap.
The entrance to the new local bazaar is opposite Chashma Ayub and not far from the site of the old slave market (vaguely located by Soviet literature 'beyond the Registan'). Slaves were only exhib­ited here; deals were struck in the traders' caravanserais.
The modern bazaar is good for Uzbek snacks and has a wall-less but shady chaikhana. A 4-km section of ruined city wall comes to the edge of the bazaar. Bukhara's first defences were built in the mid - IX century, reinforced in the XII and XIII, destroyed bye Mongols and rebuilt by the Sheibanids.
What survives is a section of the inner wall, all 13 km of which was intact when Alexander Burnes visited in the 1830.
Built of packed lay faced with adobe brick, it stood 11 metres high, tapering towards the top from its Passive base. Behind the battlements was a firing gallery, and rounded buttresses enabled defenders to pour lateral fire on an attacking force.

Authority:
V.G Saakov «History of Bukhara». Publishing house "Shark", 1996. «Bukhara. Masterpieces of the Central Asia». The historical guidebook across Bukhara. 2012. "Bukhoro. Bukhara" In the Uzbek, English and Russian languages. Publishing house "Uzbekistan", Tashkent 2000. Mukhammad Narkshakhi. History of Bukhara. Tashkent. 1897 (translator N.Lykoshina). V.G.Saakov  "Architectural masterpieces of Bukhara. A Bukhara regional society "Kitabhon" Uzbek SSR, Exactly 1991 Robert Almeev. "History of ancient Bukhara". (Under edition of the Academician of the Academy of sciences of Republic Uzbekistan of Rtveladze E.V.)

Photos
Alexander Petrov.