Karnak, the sacral complex

The outskirts of Turkestan are full of ancient villages/kishlaks, which have two or three medieval hillforts on their territory. Usually they are also connected with several sacral objects, which are places of worship for numerous visiting pilgrims. One such centre, rich in cult monuments, is the village of Karnak, located 25 km north of Turkestan.

In addition to being known as the casting site of the famous bronze cauldron, which was set up by the Emir of Timur in the center of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi's khanaka, this village remained a famous center of culture and education. It was in Karnak that the father of the famous Kazakh writer Mukhtar Auezov was educated. Here pilgrims visit the old mosque-madrassa Shammat ishan. Its foundation and the initial stage are connected with the name of the Sufi preacher of the Yasawi school Sheikh named Shammat, who lived in the XVII century.

The mosque is located on the western side of the hillfort, on the trading square. It was built as an architectural complex by the 1870s. The building of the mosque includes a large hall for prayers, a small hall - hilvette with an underground garage, a utility room and a corridor. The diversity of stages of construction of these buildings was reflected in the planning composition and in significant differences in the height of floors, reaching 1.5 m. The complex was completed with architectural and decorative coordination of all the rooms included in the single volume of the building and received the general artistic design of interiors in the form of gypsum moldings and wall paintings, remotely repeating the decoration of the Turkestan khanaka Ahmed Yasawi (stalactites, the panel of the basement, the blue tone, the floral nature of the subjects of the wall paintings). The yard facade of the mosque is decorated with high iwan with polychrome paintings of wooden ceiling details. Both halls on the facade are marked by the device of false domes, partly hidden under the late, iron roof. Finally, the complex was formed by the addition of a madrassa, which is an L-shaped one-storey building with numerous small rooms - hujras, connected by a common iwan from the side of the yard.

Further to the west of the hillfort, on the opposite bank of the small river Sai, on the counters there is an old necropolis, which clearly appeared in the Middle Ages, but continues to be used to this day. Throughout its vast slightly sloping area one can see numerous traces of different shapes of burial mounds, stone burial grounds, ruins of a land sagana, failures of underground crypts, etc. The cemetery has a small sacred grove with a huge (up to 3.5 m in diameter) centuries-old mulberry tree. According to the legend, spread by local spiritual authorities, the emir Timur himself used to rest under his canopy.

In the upper part of the cemetery there is a revered mazar of Imam Bakhli. He was one of the commanders of Kuteiba ibn Muslim. The mausoleum looks like a "new model" simple building stretched for 22 m (about 8 m wide) under a gable roof. Underneath it is a long sagana over a saint's grave. The hypertrophied elongated sagana of Imam Bahi is similar to the grave structures above (allegedly) the graves of Ukush ata and Saduakas ata. All these three personalities are positioned as the first missionaries, the spreaders of Islam, who died in the struggle for the strengthening of faith. They are naturally endowed with outstanding qualities and abilities in the folk consciousness. Their apparent life force, reinforced by faith, was so great that it allowed them to grow even after death. Their gravestones also "grew" with them.