Khanaka Kyrk-kyz

The legend of the beautiful and brave Queen Gulayim tells that foreign tribes attacked Gulayim's possessions and defeated her army in battle. All the men either laid down their heads on the battlefield, or were captured by the conquerors. Then the queen gathered a new army, but it consisted of only forty of Gulayim's friends, as brave and beautiful as she was. They put on their chain mail, took their damask swords, and mounted their fast horses. The brave girls were successful. They not only repelled the enemy's siege, but also attacked the foreigners themselves and stabbed them to death, and hid from the pursuit in an impregnable castle. This castle is called Kyrk-kyz – "forty girls". And it is located three kilometers east of the settlement of Old Termez.

This remarkable, amazingly preserved building of the 9th century, which is a square with sides of about 54 meters, vividly resembles a fortress with powerful corner towers. However, there are no loopholes in the cylinders of the towers, and they do not communicate with other rooms of the castle. The high walls, precisely oriented to the cardinal points, are pierced by narrow windows at the second floor level, rather resembling loopholes.

In the depths of the four niches are hidden entrances with overhanging slits of arches-loopholes. The interior of the Kyrk-kyz is divided into four parts by passageways. A curved corridor led to each part from the central hall or courtyard, from which you can access five spacious rooms. All rooms, built of mud bricks, have vaulted ceilings of various designs – arched, domed or boxed. The architects who built Kyrk-kyz were undoubtedly innovators of their time and went far beyond the schemes of their modern construction. They developed an ingenious sailing system supporting the arches, and the multi–domed hall on the pylons was a magnificent example of the architectural traditions of the V-VIII centuries.

Probably, this amazing structure originally served as the ruler's country castle, well fortified and able to repel the siege of enemies. However, further perestroika turned it into a khanaka on one of the caravan roads of the Great Silk Road. Here, merchants and travelers could not only receive shelter and protection from the weather and attacks of robbers, but also conveniently place goods, as well as pack animals.

It is curious that the area where Kyrk-kyz and the surrounding ruins of the settlement are located is popularly called "Shakhri Saman" – the city of Samans. Judging by the description of medieval historians and chroniclers, it was here that the ancestral castle of the ancestors of the founder of the famous Samanid dynasty, who united the Central Asian lands for the first time, was located.