Dynastic History | Abdulaziz Khan Madrasa — An Ashtarkhanid Answer to a Timurid Facade

In 1645 the begs and landholders of Bukhara, dissatisfied with Nadr Muhammad Khan, proclaimed his son khan in his place. Abd al-Aziz was the fifth ruler of the Ashtarkhanid house, which claimed descent from Jochi, and he held the throne for some thirty-five years. In 1652 he began a madrasa on Khoja Nurobod street, a couple of hundred metres east of the Kalyan minaret.

He put it directly across from the madrasa Ulugh Beg had built in 1417, so that the two form what Central Asian architecture calls a kosh — a facing pair, read together. The Timurid building opposite is plain to the point of austerity. This one is not. The museum service that keeps it notes that the portal carries a Chinese dragon and the Simurgh, figures on the front of a teaching mosque, and inside there is relief majolica, carved marble, alabaster, gilding, and a bright yellow tile that had not been used in the city before. Fireplaces were installed, which was new here as well. Whoever designed and cut all this goes unrecorded. What the record keeps is the name of the man who paid.

His reign ended much as several Ashtarkhanid reigns did. After years of war with the khanate of Khiva he handed the throne to his brother Subhan Quli around 1680, and he died in 1683 on hajj.

The madrasa stands inside the historic centre UNESCO inscribed in 1993. The Bukhara museum-reserve uses it for an exhibition of the region's woodcarving, and carpet and textile sellers work under the tilework in the entrance arch.

📸 Cover: The portal of the madrasa, Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons