History of Civilizations of Central Asia
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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
Architecture and urban planning during the tsarist period (nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797
Architecture and urban planning during the Soviet period (1920s–90s) . . . . . . . . 807 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 832
Introduction The history of the cities and architecture of Central Asia in the latter part of the nineteenth century and nearly the whole of the twentieth century is unique in many respects, due to the fact that the region experienced not only a colonial period – like the rest of the Islamic world – but also the Soviet period. As far as urban planning was concerned, each of these periods was marked by a severe disruption of the existing situation, leading ultimately to a radical break with tradition. During the colonial period, cities came to be characterized by a morphological parallelism, while the Soviet period brought innovations of unprecedented scope. *
1 and
2 . 795 Contents ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Introduction The driving force behind these innovations was a deliberate attempt, for the first time in history, to recast long-established social, economic and political structures into an egal- itarian society of a kind that had never been known before. Inevitably, cities and urban architecture were affected by the resultant upheavals. The old legal systems were abol- ished and social institutions were replaced by new ones; in a word, Central Asia found itself caught up in a whirlwind of far-reaching change. One of the most significant breaks with the past was the abolition, in 1929, of the status of the waqf 1 land and property. This paved the way for the alteration, even the destruction, of part of the traditional urban fabric. Urbanization proceeded at an accelerating rate in response to the advance of industrialization and the large-scale population transfers that took place in the post-war period (1940–5). In contrast to cities in the Islamic world, which had no operational urban planning until a fairly late date (1960s–70s), the cities of Central Asia were given urban development master plans for the reconstruction and development of the cities (General’niy plan rekonstruktsii gorod [Genplan]) as long ago as the 1930s and 1940s. Those Genplans were put into effect in the 1950s, and a remodelling of the urban spatial environment resulted. One of the features of that remodelling was the construction – on a vast scale – of buildings designed in unfamiliar styles to serve unfamiliar functions. The uniqueness of the cities of Central Asia thus consists in ‘objective’ properties that have endowed them with particular interest as urban entities. In this chapter, we will analyse the successive stages in their growth and the general characteristics of the archi- tecture of Central Asia as it evolved during the colonial (tsarist) and Soviet periods. The first part analyses the features of Central Asian and Russian colonial cities and examines the different ways in which architects adopted, interpreted and combined Central Asian architectural languages with Russian architectural languages. The second part considers the successive steps leading to the creation of the ‘aesthetic paradigm’ of a Soviet architectural and urban policy that sought to affirm the new political order. Such a paradigm should not be seen as the materialization of a frozen ideological cor- pus, but rather as an expression of its own temporality characterized by phases of construc- tion, consolidation and crisis. Architectural and urban policy in Soviet Central Asia was indeed clearly correlated with the historical development of cultural, social and industrial policies. Following the slump of the 1920s, Central Asian architecture flowered, with ‘icon- building’ giving the various expressions of a ‘national style’. This process matured until 1955, when all efforts were concentrated on modernizing the ‘craft-industries’ through mechanization and standardization processes. Those considerations led to a plain style of 1 A waqf is an Islamic charitable foundation consisting of property in mortmain. Income from the property was used essentially for the construction and maintenance of bridges, caravanserais, mosques, madrasas, etc. 796
Contents Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period architecture and urbanization which, with the ambitious social policy of the 1970s–90s, was influenced by an international style, while nevertheless taking account of the region’s social and climatic characteristics. Architecture 2 and urban planning during the tsarist period (nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) URBAN TRANSFORMATION DURING THE TSARIST PERIOD Before the Russians conquered Central Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century, many of the cities retained the main characteristics of the Central Asian Islamic urban structure. 3 It is true that in terms of appearance they reflected different historical periods: the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries dominate in Samarkand whereas the sixteenth and seventeenth are the focus of Bukhara, and the nineteenth and twentieth are dominant in Khiva. Consequently their urban landscapes differed in some respects. However, various features of their structure and organization, and one characteristic institution, in particular, are similar enough to be noteworthy. Every Central Asian city was surrounded by a wall, or even, in exceptional cases, two walls, 4
structure of the four main avenues leading into the shahrist¯an (centre of the city) might be radial (as in the case of Kokand, Tashkent and Samarkand) or octagonal (as in the case of Khiva and Bukhara). The buildings representing religion (the great mosque) and the civil authorities (the citadel and the palace) were concentrated in the shahrist¯an, around a main square lined with merchants’ establishments; the square led to the main avenue containing the bazaar. 5 In every city, the main streets served to demarcate four dakhas (administrative areas), each of which had its own q¯az¯ı (Islamic judge). The secondary streets were a warren of narrow lanes and blind alleys that made up the city’s rabads (residential areas). These rabad s consisted of mahallas (independent units), 6 each of which contained a number of houses and managed its own affairs. Each mahalla boasted a public centre directed by an aqsaqal (lit. ‘whitebeard’, elder), 7 a mosque, a ch¯ay kh¯aneh (tea shop) and various commercial establishments. 2 On the architecture of traditional housing, see Voronina, 1951 . 3 On this, see Shishkin, 1943
; Lavrov, 1950
; Sukhareva, 1976b , pp. 132–48; Sukhareva, 1958
. 4 The city of Khiva comprised two parts: the outer city (duchan-kala) and the inner city (ichan-kala). Each part was enclosed by a wall. 5 See McChesney, 1987 , pp. 217–42. 6 On the mahallahs of Tashkent, see Mallitskogo, 1927 . 7 Aqsaqal s were chosen by consensus from among the group’s oldest, most experienced and influential men. Russians called them starshinas (responsible for collecting taxes and other administrative duties). 797
Contents Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period The second major characteristic of Central Asian cities, and, indeed, cities elsewhere in the Islamic world, was the institution known as the waqf, or charitable foundation. As mentioned above, a waqf was the result of an inalienable donation of a piece of land or other real estate the management of which was entrusted to a pious institution and the income from which went to support either some charitable purpose or particular individuals. The point to note here is the ‘inertia’ of such an arrangement: the institution was extremely widespread, and waqfs were very numerous; furthermore, as noted, the property involved was inalienable. The combined effect of these attributes was to make the waqf system a very powerful force that tended to freeze landownership in cities and even whole districts, and, thereby, to prevent change in their structures and landscapes. 8 As such, they were a factor in keeping the cities of Central Asia generally ‘static’. Following the Russian conquest, the cities became the main arena in which Central Asian societies were confronted, submerged and destabilized by the full technological, legal and cultural panoply of the tsarist empire. The development of capitalism, the rise of cotton-processing industries and the building of the Transcaspian Railway were all cru- cial factors in bringing change to the cities of Central Asia. Housing estates for workers employed in the new industries or on the railway sprang up on their outskirts. In addition, the cities experienced substantial population inflows, especially in the late 1880s follow- ing the construction of the Transcaspian Railway: between 1865 and 1897 the population of Tashkent 9 rose from 100,000 to 156,000, and by 1912 it had grown to 253,000; 10 the
population of Samarkand rose from 25,000 to 55,128 between 1865 and 1897 and by 1914 it had grown to 97,550. 11 Between 1865 and the end of the following decade, six colonial cities were estab- lished in ‘Uzbekistan’: 12 Tashkent (1865), Samarkand 13 (1868–72), Kokand (1875), Novy Marghilan (1876), Namangan (1877) and Novy Bukhara (1887). The function of these cities was to accommodate military garrisons, bureaucrats, civil servants and businessmen. In most cases, the colonial settlement was located near the old city, which was frequently referred to as the ‘indigenous city’. Nevertheless certain settlements, especially in southern 8 Chaline,
1996 , p. 75.
9 By the end of the nineteenth/early twentieth century, Tashkent equalled Zurich in size, while Kazan and Samara had as many people as Athens or Venice, Damascus or Algiers. See European Historical Statistics, 1975
, pp. 76–8, The World Almanac & Book of Facts, 1984
, p. 202, and International Historical Statistics, 1982
, pp. 66–71, for comparative data. Figures for several Russian cities differ widely from source to source and also according to the time of year when the census was taken. See Hamm (ed.), 1986 .
Dobromyslov, 1912
, p. 70. 11 In 1893 the population of the Russian part of the city of Samarkand was 10,128 inhabitants; among them were 4,823 military families. 12 Chabrov, 1960 , p. 222. 13 On the city of Samarkand, see Sadkulov, 1973 . 798 Contents Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period Semirechye and the north-west of Syr Darya oblast’, 14 were a pure colonial creation and the influence of the ‘old city’ was insignificant. The function of these cities was mainly to accommodate Russian bureaucrats and farmers. They were the creations of topographers and military engineers and were designed from a single model. However, these cities 15 came to display different patterns of development, depending on how much room there was for them to grow at the sites where they were established. Three modes of expansion may be distinguished: in some cases the Russian colonial settlement sprawled around the traditional city; in others it developed as a parallel entity; and in still others the city was built on ‘new land’, well away from the existing urban area or small villages. • Where communication routes (such as railway lines in the case of Bukhara) were remote from the traditional city, urban development proceeded through the creation of satellite communities in such parts of the site as were suitable for urbanization. • Another mode of expansion resulted from a deliberate decision to build the new town in close proximity to the traditional city, giving rise to a parallel urban entity, as occurred with Samarkand, Chimkent, Tashkent, Namangan, Andijan and others. • Lastly, the establishment of new towns at ‘new land’ as Verny (Alma-Ata), Pishpek, Novy Marghilan (Skobelev) or at the locations that were insignificant in urban terms, as in the case of Ashkhabad, Termez, and many others, produced cities that were exclusively colonial creations. For the first and third case the octagonal system was commonly adopted. The linear configuration of buildings along two main avenues (transversal and longitudinal) leading into the centre of the city was a distinctive feature of the city’s pattern of development. In fact, the octagonal wide streets as well as irrigation-ditches and tree-lined avenues were planned following the ideal of the ‘garden city’. This master plan was adopted in Novy Bukhara and in almost all the colonial cities of southern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The master plan of Pishpek 16 in 1872 defined the future development of the city: two main crossing streets divide the city in four symmetrical parts. The commercial and adminis- trative buildings and the cathedral were concentrated in the centre around a square. These features of layout were adopted for the city pattern of development of Verny (Alma-Ata). It is important to underline that the urban development of the colonial cities of Semirechye and the north-west of Syr Darya oblast’ were very different from the colonial cities of 14 On the colonial cities of Semirechye and the north-west of Syr Darya oblast’, see Mendikulov, 1959 . 15 On the urban history of late imperial Russia, see Hamm (ed.), 1986
. 16 On the master plan of Pishpek, see Lazarenko, 1951 , p. 125. 799 Contents
Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period FIG. 1. Tashkent. Schematic master plan. Beginning of the twentieth century. (Source: Archive, Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan.) Turkistan governor-generalship: they were not surrounded by walls as in the old cities of Central Asia. Thus in the presence of the surrounding wall, the radioconcentric system was com- monly adopted for Russian colonial cities. It consisted of a series of major streets radiating outwards from a central square, connected by semicircular secondary streets. The central square was used for military parades; the garrison, the barracks and sometimes even some houses for senior civilian administrators were located nearby. This system was used for the first time at Tashkent in 1865 ( Fig. 1
), and that city served as a model for virtually all the subsequent Russian settlements in Turkistan governor-generalship. Kokand was an exception in that it was designed in accordance with a linear plan- ning system (not radioconcentric or octagonal) ( Fig. 2 ). With 82,000 inhabitants in 1897, Kokand was the second largest city in the region after Tashkent. It was the capital of the khanate, and by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it had become a prestigious centre of capitalist industry and trade, thanks to cotton-growing and cotton- processing. New types of buildings, notably commercial buildings and banks, were erected in substantial numbers, mainly along one of the main streets, which gradually became the new heart of the city. In Kokand, the linear configuration of buildings along one main avenue was a distinctive feature of the city’s pattern of development. Linear development 800
Contents Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period FIG. 2. Kokand. Schematic plan of the Russian part. (Source: Archive, Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan.) on an octagonal pattern occurred to a lesser extent in Namangan, ‘New Bukhara’ and in part of the city of Samarkand. Concurrently, other Central Asian cities, especially the larger ones such as Tashkent and Samarkand, were being transformed as the tsarist authorities carried out extensive renovations. Their streets were widened, paved and renamed, new buildings of the Russian colonial type were erected, and new commercial firms invaded the major thoroughfares. New urban systems thus arose, characterized by greater or lesser degrees of fragmentation, depending on the pattern of development of the settlements, with their space organized in novel ways, and featuring a mixture of new and old elements in varying proportions. ARCHITECTURE OF THE TSARIST PERIOD Rebirth of traditional civil and religious architecture: restoration and construction The rise of a local bourgeoisie, born of the cotton industry and the trade in cotton, con- tributed to an architectural revival in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Waqf s proliferated, providing funds for the restoration of substantial numbers of ancient monuments, while large-scale investment focused on new architectural projects and urban development. It is important to bear in mind that the tsarist authorities took very little 801 Contents
Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period interest in the ancient monuments of the conquered civilizations, and as a result their ranks included no real experts in Central Asia. It was only after the death of General von Kaufman (governor-general of Turkistan) in 1882 and the accession of Tsar Alexander III (1881–96) that various movements were founded in an effort to ‘break’ with the policy of ‘ignorance’ that had prevailed ever since the conquest. The Amateur Archaeology Circle, 17 founded in 1895 and financed partly by the local bourgeoisie, and the Turkistan branch of the Russian Geographic Society, founded in 1897 in Samarkand, undertook the tasks of studying and restoring the region’s imposing monuments. At the same time, palaces, mosques and madrasas were flourishing in Khiva, Kokand, Bukhara and many other cities. The School of Architecture and Local Builders in Samarkand, to take only one example, single-handedly developed and executed at least 34 projects after 1865, including 16 in the early years of the twentieth century, just before the October 1917 revolution. Dozens of skilled ganchakars (plasterers) or gilk¯ars (carvers) and naqq¯ashs (decorators) lavished their skills on the beautification of newly erected buildings. The Yangi Masjid (mosque), for example, was built in Dahbed in Samarkand oblast’ in 1902, and there were many other buildings that could be mentioned. 18 Khiva’s architecture was essentially monumental, with almost nothing to differentiate it from that of the first half of the nineteenth century, as may be seen from the Dust- Alama madrasa of 1882, the Kazy Kaljna Salim-Akhuna of 1905, and the ‘Abdurasul Baja and the Yusup Jasaul-Bashi of 1906; it was not until the early years of the twentieth century, when Islam Khoja (the khan’s vizier and a member of his family) introduced his political reforms, that new building techniques began to attract some interest. 19 Russian architect-engineers were invited in from Tashkent and Moscow, and in collaboration with local master builders they helped erect new buildings for the German farmers who had been settled on lands around Khiva. 20 In this way, new building techniques were combined with local traditions. New buildings within the ichan-kala (inner city) illustrate these changes, notably the minaret built in 1910 by the master builder Khudaibergen Khoja (which at a height of 44.6 m and measuring 9.5 m in diameter is one of the largest in Central Asia), the Islam Khoja madrasa built in 1913, and various others. In Tashkent, the policy of ‘openness’ adopted by the new tsar resulted in the construc- tion of a great mosque in Tashkent in 1886. The new building, erected on the ruins of 17 On this matter, see Lunin, 1958 . 18 Bulatova and Notkin, 1963
, pp. 30–1; Zahidov, 1965
, pp. 143–50; Sprague, 1994
, p. 490. 19 Nil’sen, 1988 , p. 156. 20 Pugachenkova, 1976 , p. 181; Nil’sen, 1988 , p. 156. 802 Contents
Copyrights ISBN 92-3-103985-7 Architecture and urban planning tsarist period what had been a fifteenth-century mosque (Khoja Ahrar), was ‘remarkable for its form and technique, thanks to Russian engineers, who introduced Gothic and Byzantine elements’. Download 8.99 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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