Tschorkuh

Chorku Чоркӯҳ
Basic data
State :	Tajikistan
Province :	Sughd
Coordinates :	39 ° 58 '  N , 70 ° 35'  E Coordinates: 39 ° 58 '26 "  N , 70 ° 34' 56"  E
Height :	1100  m
Structure and administration
Community type:	Village
Tschorkuh

Tschorkuh ( Tajik Чоркӯҳ ), other transcriptions Čorkūh, Chorku, Tschorku, is a village ( kishlak ) and a subdistrict ( jamoat ) in the province of Sughd in northern Tajikistan . The place in the narrow valley of Isfara on the border with Kyrgyzstan houses a mausoleum from the 10th century with the most important medieval wood carvings in the country's mosque of Hazrat-i Shoh from the beginning of the 20th century .

location

Completely closed farmsteads with inner courtyard. Typical alley in the town center.

Tschorkuh is located 21 kilometers south of the district capital Isfara in the extreme southeast of the Tajik part of the Ferghana Valley . The valley of the Isfara River, gradually narrowing upstream from the city of Isfara to the south, forms a narrow point of land belonging to Tajikistan, which is surrounded by steep mountains belonging to Kyrgyzstan. The place is about 1100 meters above sea level. The surrounding stony mountains with only little vegetation reach heights between around 1600 meters in the west and over 2700 meters in the south.

From the provincial capital Khujand , which is about 110 kilometers away , Tschorkuh can be reached on a good asphalt road that leads past Konibodom through Isfara. The road is narrower and more curvy for the last 21 kilometers in the valley. A new bypass road leads east past Tschorku in the valley further south to the enclave Woruch (Vorukh) in Kyrgyzstan, 22 kilometers away . From Woruch there is neither a road connection nor a border crossing to Kyrgyzstan; the only Kyrgyz border post in the region exists in Kyzyl Bel on the road between Isfara and Batken . Tschorkuh and Woruch belong to the nine subdistricts ( jamoat ) of the district ( nohiya ) Isfara.

On a hill west of the Isfara valley halfway between Isfara and Tschorkuh is the Shurab depot, the oldest brown coal deposit in the country, which was already known in the Middle Ages and has been industrially exploited from 1902 until today.

In the vicinity of Tschorkuh two grave fields with Kurganen were found, which from the 2nd / 1st. Century BC And in the majority between the 4th and 7th centuries. They testify to a sedentary to semi-sedentary culture that buried its dead under 50 centimeter high grave mounds made of gravel, gravel and sand, whose diameter was 4.3 to 9.6 meters. Tschorkuh I consisted of about 50 Kurganen lying close together. Most of the graves examined in 1958 had a skeleton stretched out on their back, while the rest of the graves were in a crouched position. The Tschorkuh II burial ground, 500 meters away, included around 20 Kurgane with diameters between 7.4 and 9.4 meters.

Townscape

Entrance to a mosque in the southern town center.

For 2013, the number of inhabitants of the Chorkuh sub-district is given as 36,485. They have 858 hectares of agricultural land at their disposal. The population is made up of 99 percent Tajiks and one percent Kyrgyz people who live in the far south in the village of Khojai A'lo.

The road coming from Isfara crosses the village of Surch (Surkh), three kilometers before the center of Tschorkuh, to which a separate sub-district with 13,941 inhabitants (2013) belongs. The small market town of Surch has grown together with Tschorkuh via the district of Nayman along the river. The main road leads on the southern bank of the river to a roundabout in the center of Tschorkuh, then over a bridge and further on the northern bank towards Woruch. Most of the residential area, which is divided into several districts ( mahalla ), lies south of the river and extends to the flat foothills of the mountains. Each district has its own mosque.

The population in the town of Tschorkuh, which has the size of a small town, and the surrounding villages mainly live in homesteads with residential and auxiliary buildings that were built around an inner courtyard and are completely separated from the street and on the other sides by a high wall. The building walls mostly consist of field stones plastered with clay, some enclosing walls also made of rammed earth . The only access is a wooden gate, which in many cases is ornately decorated according to old tradition. Life takes place in the inner courtyard, which is laid out as a fruit and vegetable garden. One of the few pieces of furniture is a Taptschan set up outdoors and indoors . A homestead should usually have a drinking water connection in the courtyard as basic equipment. In the Tschorkuh sub-district, however, according to a list from 2013, only 16 percent of the population (5,724) have their own drinking water supply. The majority of the urban population takes their drinking water from taps on the street, which are supplied by a dilapidated public pipeline system and do not deliver water all day. Industrial water is drawn from open channels on the roadside using buckets. There are several grocery stores on the roundabout.

Mosque of Hazrat-i Shoh

Hazrat-i Shoh Mausoleum, wooden roof from the 10th century

One of eight consoles

Crossbar on the back

The Mosque of Hazrat-i Shoh, also known as Hazrat-i Bobo (Khazrati Bobo, Amir Khamza Khasti Podshoh), is hidden between residential buildings in a higher-lying old town ( mahalla Langar ) about one kilometer south of the roundabout. The brick mosque with strict geometric ornaments on the portal dates from the 18th century. The ceiling is painted with colorful floral patterns. In front of the prayer room there is a large courtyard covered with corrugated iron, which offers space for several hundred believers and is entered from the street through a gate. The room known as the mausoleum ( maqbara ) of Kasim is set up in the main building of the mosque opposite the gate in the eastern corner of the courtyard. Biographical information and the name of the saint, who hides behind honorary titles such as Hazrat-i Bobo , are unknown. In popular belief, a certain Kasim is traced back in a lineage ( silsila ) to Ali , the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed . A canopy-like beam construction on wooden pillars from the 10th century above the tomb shows the most important medieval wood carvings in the country, which were included in the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage in 1999 . The ornaments consist of lively geometric ornaments, Islamic calligraphy ( Kufi script) and some animal images with the heads of owls and other birds, which are unusual for Islamic art.

The images relate to medieval Islamic culture, which developed from long-term encounters with the older traditions that the Muslim conquerors encountered in Central Asia. Up to the 13th century, pre-Islamic influences can be seen in construction methods, forms of fine art and burial methods. According to archaeological excavations, in the first centuries after the Islamic conquest, the indigenous population continued to cultivate their Sogdian cultural heritage in everyday life, for example ancestor worship and fire cults continued to be practiced. Some Islamic ornamental forms, such as acanthus or grapes, which are often found on wooden reliefs, stucco, metal and ceramic objects in the applied arts from the 9th to the 12th centuries, have pre-Islamic origins. This also includes figurative representations, which are rare in Islamic art. The palaces in Samarqand and Hulbuk (in the village of Khurbon Shahid in the province of Chatlon ) contained colorful wall paintings from the 11th and 12th centuries depicting people and animals. The Sogdian images of sacred animals that embodied deities entered Islamic art as individual components of complex geometric and floral patterns.

The canopy has a base area of ​​4 × 4.75 meters. It is fully open on two sides and partially closed on the other two sides in the rear area by seven closely spaced wooden columns. The entablature is supported by 80 centimeter long consoles that are curved on the underside and decorated with floral motifs. The fan-like curved ends of the consoles, spirals and round plant ornaments are no longer reminiscent of the bull heads of the Sogdian consoles, but the other animal figures retain the mythical tradition of their predecessors. Similar early Islamic carvings remained from some settlements in the valley of Zeravshan received: Obburdon, Kurud and Fatmev east of Aini and Urmetan and Iskodar between Aini and panjakent . A cross-shaped ornament in the center of stair-like outlines occurs several times on Seljuk buildings in Iran, for example on the stucco inside the 11th century Pir mausoleum in the city of Takestan ( Qazvin province ).

Social problems and political tensions

Mosque north of the river

From 1975 to 2008 there were multiple violent disputes over land and water between Tajik villages in the border region of the Isfara Valley and the enclave Woruch on the one hand and Kyrgyz-inhabited places in the Kyrgyz Batgen district on the other. A conflict was fought in 1989 between three Tajik villages that claimed 100 hectares of land from the Kyrgyz side and some Kyrgyz villages that claimed 144 hectares from the other side. The exchange failed because a meeting of the two presidents, which had been scheduled for May 1991 on this matter, did not take place. Several people died from bullets and dozens were injured.

After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, there were political disputes and attacks at regular intervals in Ferghanatal, which was divided between three countries and inhabited by several ethnic groups, in which mainly Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir were involved. In many cases, traditional Islamic leaders failed to fill the ideological vacuum created by the fall of Soviet doctrine. Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose aim is to overthrow the Central Asian governments without violence, has a particularly strong base in the Ferghana Valley. The Isfara district has long been a retreat for conservative Islam in Tajikistan and the Islamic Party of the Rebirth of Tajikistan (IRP) can rely on a strong following here, especially in the remote Chorkuh sub-district.

The large number of mosques in the townscape of Tschorkuh is striking. In the parliamentary elections in 2000, the IRP obtained 93 percent of the vote in Tschorkuh. In addition to the legal IRP, the residents of Tschorkuh also support, to a large extent, even more radical Islamist groups that act against the state. The high number of unemployed is given as the cause of dissatisfaction with the social situation. This social problem is exacerbated by the fact that the jamoats Tschorkuh , Surch and Woruch are among the most densely populated areas of Central Asia. Young men who have been trained at an Islamic school abroad return to Tschorkuh and try to implement their conservative Islamic ideology. They call for gender segregation, women to be veiled and alcohol to be banned. In fact, there is no woman in Tschorkuh without a headscarf. In 2004, 20 members of a newly formed Islamist group called Bayat (from Arabic baiʿa , “duty of loyalty”), whose base of operations was Chorkuh, were arrested.

Compared to the new leaders of the Islamist currents, the importance of the traditionally influential Sufis is declining, whose popular Islamic practices are now being criticized as "pagan". One of the most famous Sufis around Isfara is Nugmankhan-Tura from Tschorkuh, who traces his line of tradition back to Mahdumi Azam (actually Ahmad Kasani, 1462–1540 / 2), a Naqschbandīya master, whose mausoleum is in Samarqand .

literature

• S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley: The Art of Central Asia. (Studies of Central Asia and the Caucasus) ME Sharpe, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-7656-2998-2

Web links

Commons : Tschorkuh  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Shurab Deposit. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Ministry of Energy and Industry of the Republic of Tajikistan 
2. ↑ Boris Anatol'evič Litvinskij: Ancient and early medieval burial mounds in the western Fergana basin, Tadžikistan. (Materials for General and Comparative Archeology, Volume 16) CH Beck, Munich 1986, pp. 147, 149
3. ^ Evaluation of the Conflict Prevention and Mitigation in the Ferghana Valley project . UNDP Evaluation Resource Center, December 2011, p. 16
4. ^ Isfara River Basin Plan. Isfara Rayon. Republic of Tajikistan. ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), May 2014, p. 9 
5. ^ Robert Middleton, Huw Thomas: Tajikistan and the High Pamirs. Odyssey Books & Guides, Hong Kong 2012, p. 181
6. ↑ Jonathan M. Bloom, Sheila S. Blair (Eds.): The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture . Volume 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, p. 431
7. ↑ Mausoleum of "Amir Khamza Khasti Podshoh". UNESCO
8. ↑ R. Suleimanov: On relicts of Ancient Culture and Ideology of Islam in Central Asia. In: Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno 87, No. 1, Studies on Central Asia, 2007, pp. 203–223, here pp. 209f
9. ↑ K. Baypakov, Sh. Pidaev, A. Khakimov: The Artistic Culture of Central Asia and Azerbaijan in the 9th-15th Centuries. Vol. IV: Architecture. International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS), Samarkand / Taschkent 2013, pp. 113, 119
10. ↑ Robert Hillenbrand: Saljuq monument in Iran: II. The "Pir" Mausoleum at Takistan. In: Iran, Vol. 10 , 1972, pp. 45-55, here p. 53
11. ↑ Vorukh . In: Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. 2nd edition, Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2010, p. 378
12. ↑ Pulat Shozimov: The Ferghana Valley During Perestroika, 1985–1991. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley , pp. 193f
13. ↑ Anna Matveeva: Violent Valley. In: The World Today, Vol. 62, No. 8/9 , August-September 2006, p. 23f
14. ^ Madeleine Reeves: Materializing State Space: "Creeping Migration" and Territorial Integrity in Southern Kirgyzstan. In: Sally N. Cummings (Ed.): Symbolism and Power in Central Asia: Politics of the Spectacular. Routledge Chapman & Hall, London 2010, p. 208
15. ^ Terrorism and Islamic Radicalization in Central Asia. A Compendium Sacrifices Recent Jamestown Analysis. ( Memento of the original from June 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The Jamestown Foundation, Washington, Feb. 2013, p. 19 
16. ^ Lena Jonson: Tajikistan in the New Central Asia: Geopolitics, Great Power Rivalry and Radical Islam . (International Library of Central Asia Studies) IB Tauris, London 2006, pp. 133, 166
17. ↑ Uwe Halbach : Central Asia: Islam and nation-building in post-Soviet times. In: Klaus H. Schreiner (Ed.): Islam in Asia. Horlemann, Bad Honnef, 2001, p. 238
18. ↑ Pulat Shozimov: Culture in the Ferghana Valley Since 1991: The Issue of Identity. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley, p. 283