Research on the Otrar

The detachment of the South-Kazakhstan expedition of the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR continued research on the city quarter of the 11th-12th centuries in the southwestern part of Shahristan of medieval Otrar.

The layout of another multi-room residential building with an area of about 200 sq. m was discovered. The plan of which is based on a corridor 10 m long. On both sides of the corridor, there are two (possibly three) residential sections, including a living room, utility rooms and sanitary compartments. Along the living room walls, there are sufas with an obligatory tandoor at the entrance and a ceramic hearth-altar in the center of the room. A new type of focus has been identified - a horseshoe-shaped one. It is possible that the hearth-altars in residential buildings of the 11th-12th centuries are miniature copies of fire temples. All hearths are decorated with stamped, cut-out patterns and moldings of clearly symbolic content, the combination of which on different hearths is strictly individual. For the first time, carvings on clay plaster were discovered on the sides of sufas. Carved patterns depict sacred symbols: a circle with a dot, a cross in a circle, etc.

There are always several tiny sanitary rooms in residential buildings, where a ceramic trough is installed on the floor with a spout-drain directed into the hole of a vertically fixed ceramic pipe. These pipes-kuburs are let into vaulted underground galleries about 2.50 m high and 0.70 m wide, built of raw brick. In danger, valuables were hidden in the sewer collectors-tazars: a massive copper mortar and copper lamps were found in one of the hatches, and a treasure trove of coins came from the other.

Excavations continued on a mosque located in the southeastern corner of the central hill of Otrar, not far from the city gates. The building has undergone significant restructuring and the original plan is not yet fully clear. The main entrance is decorated with powerful rectangular pylons and shifted to the corner where the round tower of the minaret was located. The architectural decor of the building is interesting, from which colored glazed bricks, polychrome majolica with ornamental and zoomorphic scenes in the paintings have been preserved. Perhaps the mosque is part of another architectural ensemble, only partially captured by excavations. The preliminary date of construction is the turn of the 15th-16th centuries.