The towering mausoleums, mosques, and shrines of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, exist as long-standing reminders of the city’s cultural and religious history. A city with a history that spans over five millennia, Bukhara was the primary hub of Persian civilization. Now, as a destination on the Silk Road trading route, it has flourished into Uzbekistan’s fifth-largest city.
1,100 years ago, construction began on the Ismail Samani mausoleum. Remarkably, in this time, the expertly-crafted structure has not required any significant repairs or retrofitting. This durability mirrors the strength of devotion that the people of Bukhara feel towards the mausoleum’s namesake. Samani achieved semiautonomous rule over Bukhara and the surrounding areas in the 10th century; his grandfather, Saman Khoda, founded the Samanid Dynasty—the first dynasty native to Iran after the conquest by Muslim Arabs. Another structure, the Chasma-Ayub mausoleum, was built to honor Job. It is said that he visited Chasma-Ayub, creating a healing well there with a blow from his staff. Even the commercial sector of Bukhara has a deep spiritual component: their trade festival, which has its origins in the 19th-century, allows them to trade idols that depict various goddesses.
In a time when televangelists and Cults of Personality distort and manipulate the actual meanings of their respective faiths—and subsequently benefit from the intense commercialization of various religious sects—it can be nearly impossible to imagine the solemn pillars of Bukhara. These relics, upon which their national and spiritual identities were built, demand nothing of the Uzbek people—except their quiet and sincere faith. If a country, like the United States, is so thoroughly entrenched in an economic and social system that thrives on wealth generation, does this inadvertently taint their relationship to the spiritual world? Perhaps it is the reverential elements of Bukhara’s culture that have allowed it to exist for so many thousands of years; by contrast, the United States has only existed as a nation for two-and-a-quarter centuries, and its infrastructure is already on the brink of collapse. Is this the logical conclusion to a commerce-based society, or can we revise our cultural mores to include a less-commercialized view of the spiritual world?
