Day 7

 Day 7 

We are going to Mag'oki Attor mosque. The weather is hot. I don't like hot weather.

In the very center of the historical part of Bukhara there stands Magoki-Attori Mosque. Since the 16th century this building with two domes on faceted drums and a tall peshtak portal of the eastern façade has been known as a neighborhood mosque. The archeological excavations in the 1930s proved that the structure dates back to pre-Islamic time.

At the beginning of the Common Era there used to be a fire temple at the place where the mosque stand nowadays. Around the temple there bustled a busy market called Makh (‘lunar’) where on Navruz, traditional ancient festival of Persian New Year, the traders used to sell modeled figures of Zoroastrian gods of fertility.

 After Islam was established in the area, the ancient pagan temple was demolished and in its place there was constructed a mosque. During the excavation works archeologists opened its floor on four foundation bases and discovered the lower parts of the older walls and remains of the 10th-century gunch plaster decoration. In the 12th century the building was completely rebuilt. Of that time there remained intact a fascinating southern façade of the mosque. To expose the facade, archeologists had to remove 5 meters of archeological strata.