Khiva has sold its soul.
The city, overal, contains the antique inner city, surrounded by an ancient wall, and the outer areas of more modern Khiva. Within the “old city” are a warren of pathways, domed areas, mosques, squares, madrassas and minarets. All these areas have been converted for the tourist trade. Madrassas are now hotels, squares are now heaped with cheap and gaudy trinkets, bases of minarets places to sell woolen hats and inexpensive scarves made in China. Rooms within mosques sell heaps more trinkets and other easy-to-manufacture crap. So, so disappointing.
But such an odd mix of what is truly beautiful, albeit rebuilt as new in most cases, and the profane. I asked our guide today what she thought of madrasses used as tourist accommodation and she pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows and looked sadly at the ground.
There is little to find here that is remotely authentic. In fact, I found myself photographing door after door after door because, being wooden in most cases and quite ornate, they seemed the last vestiges of what was once here. Truly, they became portals for me from the profane-without to the profane-within, by way of beauty in the portal. But it is an interesting dichotomy in my mind between this re-use of the sacred here and the way churches back home might be sold to be refurbished as dwellings. I could not care less if churches back home are modified and re-used. But where does the respect for the sublime here go, when I return home? Granted, there are not too many 15thC churches in Canada, let alone any being privately inhabited now. This said, the madrassas and mosque rooms used here in the way described, are government-sanctioned and rented, ownership remaining with the state.
The time to have visited this town and gotten a feel for it in antiquity is long past – perhaps 20 years ago or more. A theme park. It feels like a theme park.
We look forward to a day trip tomorrow outside the city and into the Kyzyl Kum desert to see old crumblies and ancient structures hammered by the sun and time.
This madrassa is now a tourist hotel:
The minaret below is short because the fellow in charge of building it circa 1861 was told to build it taller than the one in Samarkand and when the Khan of Samarkand got wind of that he said he’d hang the builder – so the builder vanished and the minaret was never completed:
Just-dyed silk on drying racks:
Silk carpets. The one in the lower right took 12 months to make and costs USD$10,000.
