Historic Sights of Tashkent

2.3 Janbas-Kala, a fortress of the “The Lands of Ancient Irrigation” is most protruded one to the north-east. It is situated on the northern-western slope of the desert flat elevation which extends from the north-west to the south-east, locking a chain of hills stretching to the south-east from Sultanuizdag (S.P. Tolstov “Ancient Khorezm”, page 87).
The Fortress represents a rather regular triangle, oriented to the cardinal directions. Its sizes are 200*170 m. A relative preservation of the Fortress can be explained by the fact that over many centuries the Fortress walls were covered with sand-drifts which contributed in a certain way to the building façade remained preserved.
The Janbas-Kala walls are almost 10m high indicating the immensity of the building. Behind the outer wall there was another wall as though backing up the main one, built certainly to strengthen a defensive fortification of the Fortress. The outer wall thickening to the bottom is as wide as 1.30m and the inner one – 1m. The narrow embrasures in the Janbas-Kala outer walls also indicate its military function.
The peculiarity of the Janbas-Kala architecture which distinguishes it from the other fortresses is a full absence of corner towers that is unusual for the East. Another its peculiarity is a structure preserved up to date in front of its gates. This peculiarity allowed the defenders of the Fortress to force the invaders in the narrow corridor connecting this structure in front of the Fortress with the gates and shoot the enemies from above.
The inner arrangement of the Fortress represents rather an ordinary construction. From the gates in the direction from north-west to south-east there was a main (and possibly the one) city street stretching till a large building located at the southern gates. Residential buildings-blocks were located along the both sides of the street. Every such block was divided into rooms. There were about 150 rooms per block.
2.4 Koy-Krylgan-kala:
Ruins of thousands of fortresses are disseminated at boundless open spaces of the Khorezm steppes, but the remnants of Koy-Krylgan-kala, the Fortress of Lost Rams, are unique. The fortress was discovered by archeologists of the Khorezm expedition casually in 1938. Archeologists were surprised with the form of ancient construction, unprecedented till then in Khoresm: the powerful citadel with the remains of a protective wall was not square and or rectangular as it was used to see, but it was round. Outside, protective constructions had the form of a correct circle with the citadel in the center, it was surrounded with an external fortification with towers. The space between the central building and the wall named the "ring" appeared completely built up. The clay construction was enormous: diameter of the central building was 42 m, height in the best remained part was about 8 m, the diameter of the whole construction - about 90 m.
Thousands of fragments of magnificent pottery have been scattered on sandy barkhans round the fortress and among its ruins. Along with other findings, in particular bronze tips of arrows, they were used to identify its age - archeologists found out that it was the most ancient of all the monuments to ancient Khorezmian statehood known by that time. The earliest finds dated back to 4th-3rd centuries BC.
1950 marked the new stage of excavations at fortress ruins. The results revealed that the fortress had two stages of the development. Earlier stage dated back to 4th-3rd centuries BC. The second period of the fortress referred to the first centuries AD. It was revealed, that at early stages of development, the central part of the fortress was destroyed by a fire. It still remains a puzzle whether it was an arson or an accidental fire.
Koy-Krylgan-kala was the powerful well fortified fortress with a number of protective walls which were destroyed with time, it was possible to trace them only in a small site. Similar fortifications were peculiar to all monuments of antiquity and the early Middle Ages of Khoresm.