Lyab-i Hauz Ensemble

The shaded social heart of old Bukhara — a 17th-century pool surrounded by three monumental madrasas and ancient mulberry trees.

Lyab-i Hauz (‘By the Pool’ in Tajik) is the social heart of Bukhara’s old city — and one of the few remaining hauz (artificial pools) of the more than a hundred that once dotted the medieval town as the city’s water supply. The pool, a rectangular 36×46-metre basin lined with stone, was built in 1620 by the vizier Nadir Divan-Begi and has been continuously shaded by ancient mulberry trees ever since (some are 800 years old). The pool is framed on three sides by monumental buildings: the Kukeldash madrasa (1568, the largest in Central Asia at the time of construction), the Nadir Divan-Begi khanaqa (Sufi lodge, 1620), and the Nadir Divan-Begi madrasa (1622, with a frieze featuring two stylised phoenixes facing the sun — a rare figural element in Central Asian Islamic architecture). Around the pool, traditional chai-khanas serve plov, shashlik and green tea well into the night, and the whole complex is illuminated after dark. Bronze statue of Hodja Nasreddin (the wise-fool of Sufi folk tales) on his donkey marks the pool’s western end.