It is somewhat difficult to discover the principles on which the public draw the line between those practical objects which are deemed suitable for the earnest consideration of Christ's public servants, and those which are not … There are some secular or social arrangements that have such a palpable and undoubted influence on the state of religion, that by universal consent they are deemed worthy of the earnest consideration of all Christians – even the most spiritual.

In a sermon commemorating the Glencalvie evictions of 1845, the current Principal of the Free Church College is quoted as stating:

I represent the Church … I confess that it instilled a spirit of resignation which went far beyond Christian humility. I confess its guilty silence. Like the German Christians under the Nazis, the clergy of the Highlands failed to open their mouths for the dumb.

Whilst this view of the role of the church in relation to the Highland land question is commonplace, this study suggests that the Principal need not have been so forthcoming with his confessions.

The land question was the most contentious and problematic issue in the nineteenth-century Gaidhealtachd. The ramifications of the problem affected the lives of many hundreds of thousands of people over a number of generations. Amongst other things they encompassed the extent of property rights in land, the widespread implementation of agrarian capitalism, and the social consequences of large-scale eviction, migration, and emigration. The land debate was paralleled by the prevalence of such a radical, powerful ideology as evangelical protestantism. In the Highlands – where the majority of the population existed near subsistence level – economic survival on the land and the Christian religion were the predominating features of everyday life.

Having examined the earliest intact example of Qarakhanid funerary architecture, attention now turns to the earliest fragmentary tomb, followed by the two later tombs connected to it. This series of buildings span the broad period of Qarakhanid rule, with the earliest, and largely rebuilt, tomb attributed to Nasr ibn ‘Ali ibn Musa (d. 1013). He was the first Qaghan of Farghana, and his tomb represents what is probably the earliest surviving architectural remnant of the dynasty. In contrast, the latest tomb, added to the south of the central structure and dated 1186, represents, along with the minaret in Vabkent and the portal of the Chashma-i Ayyub mazar near Bukhara, the final phase of Qarakhanid architectural development. The process of stylistic development is clearer to establish in Uzgend than elsewhere in the region as there is another tomb, attached to the north and dated 1152–3, which gives an example of something approximating the mid-point as well. All three structures have a square plan with a single dome on an octagonal zone of transition and feature a single pishtaq portal on the west side (Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

The three structures are near the centre of Uzgend, a town near Osh, at the eastern end of the Farghana Valley in Kyrgyzstan. Located just to the east of the confluence of the Yassy and the Karadarya rivers and thus protected to the north, south and west, Uzgend was one of twelve cities in Farghana with mints known to have been in operation during the Qarakhanid period. It became the capital of the entire dynasty in the early eleventh century, during the reign of Nasr ibn ‘Ali ibn Musa and subsequently, after the division of the Qarakhanid lands into two separate regions, it was the capital of the eastern Qarakhanid confederacy from 1025 under Yusef Qadir Khan.

The earliest intact Qarakhanid structure is the Shah Fazl tomb, located in the village of Safid Buland, at the northeastern end of the Farghana Valley. While the content of most of the wide array of different inscriptions is well published, the style and the relationship between the decoration and the structure are less well known. By combining new analysis with the work of Cohn-Wiener from 1939 and Goryacheva's 1983 publication, alongside Nastich and Kochnev's reading of the inscriptions in 1988, this building can be better understood in relation to both the earlier and later developments in the region through a close study of the internal stucco decoration.

The tomb, dated to 1055–60, was built for the Qarakhanid ruler Muhammad ibn Nasr by his son Mu’izz al-Dawla ‘Abbas. The two upper inscription friezes on the interior, which provide the names that led to this identification, are the earliest surviving examples of the use of Persian on a building in the entire corpus of Islamic architecture. The austere and unornamented exterior represents the pinnacle of honesty to form, with a solid brick mass topped by a stepped octagonal zone of transition and an unusually attenuated dome (Figure 2.1). This is in total contrast to the richly decorated, and originally polychromatic, interior which features a wide array of different decorative and epigraphic styles on almost all of the available surfaces.

The tomb measures 11.1 m × 11.7 m in plan externally and 7.84 m2 internally, with a height of 15.5 m, and a slight batter to the external walls. The current appearance of both the interior and the exterior of the tomb is marred by large steel armatures which were installed in the latter part of the twentieth century in order to prevent further structural damage. As a result, it is primarily archival images that are used below to illustrate the overall appearance of the structure, with more recent images used to highlight some of the individual decorative elements.

This volume and its companion present a critical edition and translation of the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, a thirteenth-century CE Persian translation of a lost twelfth-century Arabic local history and biographical compilation of Balkh and its ulama. Work on the two volumes began within the framework of the Balkh Art and Cultural Heritage Project (2011–15), generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust. It was our original intention to publish the edition and translation as a two-volume set. In the end, however, it proved more practical to publish the Persian edition in Iran and the English translation in the UK. We thank the Gibb trustees for accepting the volumes for publication in the Gibb Memorial Trust Series. Although the two volumes are being published by two diff erent publishers and in two diff erent countries, this project has been a close collaboration of the three editors and translators, Arezou Azad, Edmund Herzig and Ali Mir-Ansari.

A great many people in the UK, Iran and elsewhere have helped us with this edition and translation over its long gestation. They are too numerous for us to thank each of them individually here, but we are grateful to them all. In particular, following the dictum of the author of Faḍāʾil-i Balkh that, “Ignoring all is bad; proclaiming some is sweet,” we take this opportunity to thank: Majid Montazermahdi for his vital contribution in identifying the Arabic hadiths, translating them into English and comparing them with the Persian versions, and also for his research into Arabic works for the annex entries on persons and sources; Paul Wordsworth for the maps; Bahareh Badafras for typesetting the Persian edition

Although the monuments built within the territories under the direct or nominal control of members of the Qarakhanid dynasty share many similarities with monuments erected beyond the lands under their control, there can be seen to be a number of distinctive decorative motifs. Through the detailed study of elements from a number of different structures, including brick plugs, wall paintings, terracotta and stucco decoration, along with structural elements, a clearer understanding of the wider aesthetic can emerge.

The buildings addressed in this chapter include the Ribat-i Malik in Navoi and the nearby tomb of Mir Sayyid Bahram, the tomb of Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan, the ‘A’isha Bibi tomb near Taraz, and the fragmentary wall paintings from the Qarakhanid royal pavilion in Afrasiyab (old Samarkand). The emphasis is primarily on the architectural ornament employed by the builders, rather than the overall plan of structures, in order to establish the distinctive elements most commonly, if not necessarily exclusively, found on monuments built under Qarakhanid patronage. In addition, reference is also made to various aspects of several of the monuments examined in detail in the earlier chapters.

The Ribat-i Malik

Although only part of the pishtaq portal now survives, one of the most important Qarakhanid buildings, a larger portion of which remained extant in the early twentieth century, is the Ribat-i Malik. It is located in Navoi, 110 km northeast of Bukhara on the road to Samarkand. Following fire damage to the existing early eleventh-century structure, the complex was greatly expanded in 1078–9 by Shams al-Mulk.