Chor-Bakr: The City of the Dead Outside Bukhara

Five kilometres southwest of Bukhara, in the village of Sumitan, there is a walled complex of courtyards, domes and tomb enclosures that locals call the city of the dead. Most visitors to Bukhara never go. Those who do usually describe it as the quietest hour of their trip.

Chor-Bakr is a necropolis rather than a monument: a burial ground that grew around one grave and kept growing for 500 years. It is still in use, and on a weekday morning you may be the only foreigner in it.

Whose city of the dead

The grave at the centre belongs to Abu Bakr Said, a religious scholar and a descendant of the Prophet, who settled at Sumitan and died in 970. Pilgrims came to his tomb, and over time three more graves of men also named Abu Bakr were venerated nearby. That is where the name comes from: chor bakr, four Bakrs.

The buildings you walk through are much later. In the 16th century the Juybari sheikhs, a dynasty of enormously influential Bukharan clerics, made this their family shrine. Their leader was spiritual mentor to Abdullah Khan II, and around 1560 the khan paid for the mosque, the madrasah and the khanaqah, the Sufi gathering hall, that form the core of the site today.

That relationship explains the scale. This is not a village graveyard that acquired a shrine; it is a shrine built with royal money for a family that could influence a khan.

What you actually see

Chor-Bakr is laid out as a grid of walled courtyards, each one a family plot, separated by lanes and linked by gateways. Some hold a single gravestone under the sky; others are roofed, domed and finished in carved plaster.

The main ensemble sits at the western end: the mosque and khanaqah face each other across a paved court, with the madrasah beside them and a tall minaret added in the early 20th century. Behind, the courtyards run away in rows, and this is the part worth your time. Wander the lanes rather than standing in the main square.

A few things to notice as you go. The brickwork is plain compared with Bukhara's centre, and the decoration is mostly carved ganch plaster and the geometry of the walls themselves. Many enclosures are open to the sky on purpose, so that rain falls on the graves. And the doors are low, which forces a bow on the way in.

There is also a garden with peacocks near the entrance, kept by the caretakers. Children love it; purists find it odd. It has been there long enough that arguing about it is beside the point.

Who the Juybari sheikhs were

It is worth knowing a little about the family, because Chor-Bakr is essentially their monument. The Juybaris took their name from a quarter of Bukhara and, across the 16th century, turned religious authority into something close to state power: they held vast landholdings, ran their own commercial interests and stood behind the throne of the Shaybanid khans.

Their position depended on a Sufi lineage rather than on birth into a ruling clan, which is why a burial ground mattered so much to them. A family shrine with royal patronage, a madrasah teaching in its shadow and a steady traffic of pilgrims was both a spiritual claim and a very visible political one.

Keep that in mind as you walk the courtyards. The grid of walled plots is a family tree laid out on the ground, and the closer a plot sits to the central grave, the more important the people in it were.

Getting there

Chor-Bakr is about 20 minutes by road from Lyabi-Hauz, on the Kagan side of the city.

• Taxi: the simple option. Agree a round trip with waiting time; expect roughly 60,000 to 100,000 som depending on how long you stay and how well you bargain (last checked: July 2026). Yandex Go works from the centre, but getting a ride back from Sumitan is harder, so keep the driver.
• Marshrutka: shared minibuses run towards Sumitan from near Chorsu in Bukhara. Cheap, slow and only sensible if you have the language or the patience.
• On a tour: most half-day city tours can add it, usually bundled with Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa and Bahouddin Naqshband.

Entry is a small fee at the gate, and the site is generally open through daylight hours. Allow 45 minutes to an hour, plus travel.

Combining it with the other out-of-town sites

Chor-Bakr on its own is a thin excuse for a taxi. Combined, it makes an excellent half day, because all three of Bukhara's main out-of-town sites sit on the ring around the city.

The obvious pairing is the Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa summer palace, the last emir's residence, which is about 20 minutes away on the northern side. The two are a study in contrast: an austere 16th-century burial ground and a palace where Russian chandeliers meet Bukharan plasterwork. Add the Bahouddin Naqshband shrine, the most important Sufi pilgrimage site in Uzbekistan, and you have a three-stop loop of roughly four hours with one driver.

If you only have time for two, take Chor-Bakr and Naqshband, which sit closer together in spirit as well as distance.

Etiquette and practical notes

People are buried here now, not only in the 16th century, and families come to visit graves.

• Dress as you would for a mosque: shoulders and knees covered, a scarf for women inside the prayer hall.
• Don't photograph families at a grave, and don't climb on the enclosure walls for a better angle.
• Keep to the lanes between the courtyards rather than walking across plots.
• There is little shade and no café. Bring water in summer.
• Morning light is better for photographs; late afternoon is better for quiet.

Our guide to Uzbek etiquette covers the wider customs around shrines, and our Bukhara travel guide has the rest of the city, including how to plan the day around an out-of-town trip.

One last reason to go. The centre of Bukhara, which has been on UNESCO's World Heritage list since 1993, can feel like a museum with a ticket office. Chor-Bakr is the opposite: a working place, half asleep, where the people who built it are still lying in the ground.

Featured image: RK (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.