Lyabi-Hauz: Bukhara's Pool Square
The 1620 pool at the centre of Bukhara, the buildings around it, the Nasreddin statue, and an honest verdict on eating and drinking under the mulberry trees.
Every old city needs one place where everybody ends up. In Bukhara it is a rectangular pool with old mulberry trees round the edge, a bronze man on a donkey at one corner and chairs set out under the branches from breakfast until late.
Lyabi-Hauz means "by the pool", which is exactly what it is. You will cross it several times a day without planning to, and if you are staying in the old town you will probably eat here at least once.
The pool
The hauz was dug in 1620, under the vizier Nadir Divan-Begi, and it is one of the few survivors of a system that once gave Bukhara its water. The city had many dozens of these stone-lined reservoirs, filled from canals, and the population drew drinking water from them.
That system was also why Bukhara had a reputation for disease. Standing water in a hot city, refilled irregularly and used for everything, spread infection efficiently, and most of the pools were filled in during the 1920s and 1930s on public health grounds. Lyabi-Hauz was kept because of the buildings around it.
The pool measures roughly 36 by 45 metres and is around five metres deep at its deepest, with stone steps running down on all four sides. The mulberry trees shading it are old, and the usual claim is that some predate the pool itself by well over a century.
The three buildings
The square is an ensemble, which means the buildings were designed to be looked at across the water.
The Kukeldash madrasah, on the north side, is the oldest, built in the 1560s, and was the largest madrasah in Central Asia when it went up. Its plain, enormous facade is the wall that closes the square.
The Nadir Divan-Begi khanaqah, on the west, was built as a Sufi lodge where travelling dervishes could sleep and gather.
The Nadir Divan-Begi madrasah, on the east, is the one people photograph, because of the tiled birds above its portal. The story attached to it is that the building was designed as a caravanserai, and the khan publicly praised it as a madrasah at the opening, which left the vizier no choice but to convert it. Whether or not the anecdote is literally true, the building does read oddly for a madrasah.
Look up at that portal properly. Two simurghs, mythical birds, fly towards a sun with a human face, carrying small white deer. Figurative images like this are unusual in Islamic architecture and this is the most famous example in Uzbekistan.
Nasreddin on his donkey
The bronze statue at the eastern corner shows Khoja Nasreddin, the trickster of folk tales told from the Balkans to Xinjiang, sitting sideways on a donkey with one hand raised. Bukhara claims him, as do a dozen other places.
The stories are short, funny and usually turn on a fool who is smarter than the powerful people around him. Ask a Bukharan to tell you one; almost everyone knows several, and they translate well. The statue is the most photographed object in the square after the birds.
Eating here: an honest verdict
The restaurants around the pool are the most convenient in the old town and not the best. You are paying for the trees, the water and the view, and the cooking is competent tourist food at roughly twice what you would pay two streets away.
That is not a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to know what you are buying.
- Best value: a pot of green tea and a plate of fruit in the late afternoon, which costs very little and buys you an hour in the best seat in Bukhara.
- Best meal: breakfast, before the tour groups, when the square is quiet and the light is on the madrasah.
- Skip: the plov here. Have it at a plov centre or a neighbourhood place instead; our plov guide explains why the difference is so large.
- Evenings: some restaurants run folklore shows with music and dancing in the courtyard of the Nadir Divan-Begi madrasah. They are unashamedly for tourists, and quite enjoyable if you take them in that spirit.
Prices are displayed in most places. Check whether service is added, and expect the bill in cash if the card machine is having one of its days.
When to come
The square changes character three times a day and it is worth catching at least two of them.
Early morning is local: men reading newspapers, staff hosing down the terraces, almost no one else. Midday is hot and quiet, with the trees doing the work. From about six in the evening the square fills up, families come out, the lights go on in the water, and it stays busy until eleven.
In summer, evening is the obvious choice. In spring and autumn the late afternoon is better, because the low sun hits the Nadir Divan-Begi portal and the birds light up.
Getting there and what is nearby
Lyabi-Hauz sits in the middle of the old town, five minutes from the trading domes and ten from Po-i-Kalyan. The Magoki-Attori mosque is on the lane heading northwest, and the Jewish quarter begins just south of the square.
Most of Bukhara's guesthouses are within a ten-minute walk, which is the main reason the square works as a base; our where to stay guide covers the streets around it. For the rest of the city, see the Bukhara travel guide.
The historic centre of Bukhara has been on UNESCO's World Heritage list since 1993, and Uzbekistan's official tourism portal has a page on the ensemble. Neither of them will tell you the most useful thing, which is this: sit on the north side in the evening, so you are looking at the lit portal rather than at the restaurant behind you.
Featured image: Arian Zwegers (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons.