A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

74 A history of Inner Asia
the Sahara.Here are a few excerpts from his Kitab Surat al-ard (“Book of
Geography”):
Bukhara is the seat of the government of the entire Khurasan; the province lies
on the road that leads to the districts of Transoxania.Adjacent regions also
enter under its jurisdiction.The name of the city is Numijkat.It lies in a plain.
Houses built with lattice arranged in a trellis manner crowd the place.
[However], the city has [also] palaces, orchards, paved roads, and neighborhoods
which extend over twelve parasangs lengthwise and crosswise.This whole
complex – the palaces, buildings, neighborhoods and inner city – is surrounded
by a wall.None of this space is deserted or dilapidated or uncultivated, and the
city is a real home, summer and winter, for its citizens.There is in the interior
another wall, a strong rampart which encompasses [the inner] city with a diameter
of one parasang; the citadel stands outside this rampart but next to it, so
that this part has the appearance of a small town provided with a fortress.The
Samanid lords of Khurasan live in this citadel.There is an extensive suburb;
the Friday mosque rises in the [inner] city by the gate of the citadel.The prison
is inside the citadel, whereas the bazars are in the suburb.No city of Khurasan
and Transoxania is more densely populated than Bukhara.The suburb and the
bazars are traversed by the Sughd River, which reaches here its terminus; it
drives the water mills, waters the domains and cultivated land, and the surplus
devolves into a basin near Baykand.
Ibn Hawqal thus describes here the classical Central Asian city of the
early Islamic period.It consisted of three basic segments: the citadel (ark,
quhandiz, qala), inner city or city proper (shahristan, madina), and outer city
or suburb (rabad ).He then gives a detailed description of Bukhara’s
topography, especially of its gates and of the irrigation canals into which
the Zarafshan River ramifies as it enters the area, and he continues:
The fruits of Bukhara are the best and tastiest of all Transoxania.A remarkable
proof of the soil’s fertility is that the yield of a single jarib can provide
enough sustenance for a man with his family and servants.Nevertheless, the
density of Bukhara’s population is so high and the living expenses so great that
the food produced there covers only one half of the need, so that they have to
acquire the rest from other parts of Transoxania.
After having described the surroundings of Bukhara, Ibn Hawqal
describes the city’s inhabitants:
The language of Bukhara is Sogdian (lisan al-Sughd), with some minor peculiarities,
but the people also speak Dari (la-hum lisan bi ‘l-dariya; i.e. Farsi,
Persian).The inhabitants surpass all other Khurasanians in their culture, their
knowledge of religion and their legal expertise, their religious spirit, their
loyalty, their good manners and perfect social relationships, their absence of
bad instincts, their zeal for good works, their excellent intentions and the purity