Amir Temur and the history of the irrigation system during the Timurid era

Rajabova Sarvinoz Utkir’s daughter

Bukhara State University, Faculty of History and Law, student of group 5.3 Tar 22, majoring in history and countries

Abstract: During the period of Amir Temur and the Timurids, the construction of ditches and canals was of great importance in the socio-economic life of the region. During this period, most of the land, water and handicrafts were under state control. Water management systems, including canals and ditches, were important for providing water for agriculture, facilitating trade, and supporting the development of cities. Information is provided on the water supply of the regions, the connection with trade relations in economic life.

Key words: Amir Temur, waterways, Angor canal, water resources, Samonjuq steppe, crafts, Murgob oasis, Barlos stream

Enter

The construction of waterways during the Timurid period is evidence of the development of engineering and infrastructure of that time. The canals were strategically designed to use water resources for irrigation, to ensure the fertility of agricultural land, and to support the growing population of cities within the state. In addition, these waterways are strategic and logistical served, facilitated transport and strengthened the defense of cities. During the reign of Amir Temur, the canal that started from the Red River (Syr Darya) is noteworthy. This canal played an important role in irrigation and agriculture in the Bukhara oasis and served the region’s prosperity and development. [1]

The main part

The careful planning and implementation of water management projects during the Timurid era reflected the state’s desire for sustainable use of resources and economic growth. The legacy of Amir Temur and the ditches dug during the Timurid era continues to inspire admiration and admiration for their engineering achievements. These water management systems not only shaped the landscape and infrastructure of the region, but also played a decisive role in the socio-economic life of the state. The remains of these ancient waterways are evidence of the ingenuity and foresight of the Timurid dynasty, and show their contribution to the development of civilization during that period.[2]

The main purpose of the ditches and canals built during the era of Amir Temur and the Timurids was to serve as a necessary water management system for irrigation, agriculture and urban development. Ditches and canals are built primarily to use water resources for irrigation purposes. By diverting water from rivers and other water sources, these systems ensured the fertility of agricultural land, the production of agricultural crops and the livelihood of the population. The construction of canals and ditches helped the development of agriculture and provided reliable water for crops.[3]

Canals and ditches served as important transportation routes, facilitating the movement of goods and people between different regions. They also supported commercial activities by transporting goods through waterways and enhancing economic exchange within the state. In addition to their economic benefits, ditches and canals also served strategic purposes in terms of defense and security. They helped strengthen the defenses of cities, provided a natural barrier against potential invasions, and contributed to the overall security of the state.[4]

Amir Temur and the Timurids paid great attention to agriculture, which played a key role in the country’s economic life, and irrigation, which was its basis. By the middle of the 14th century, land development began in Movarounnahr and Khorasan. Amir Temur paid particular attention to the irrigation and development of the Samarkand oasis.  72 villages were supplied with water by irrigation networks such as Abirakhmat, Bazar, Korand and Nahri Jadid. Amir Temur built water facilities not only in Movarunnahr, but also in Khorasan, Iran, and the Caucasus.  By his decree, the Bodon ankhor or Barlos stream in the Caucasus was established in the Murgob oasis and near Kabul. [5]

After conquering Khurasan in 1381, Amir Temur tried to provide water to Marv region. Each of the generals and state officials separately led the digging of the canal and called it by name.  According to Hafizi Abro, the names of Dilkusho, Davlatshah Jondor, Gulbogon, Hasan Jondor, , Sahdak, Purdor, Ali Malik, Aq Bugo, Davlatshah bihisht, Sanjidak, , Kebekchi yurtchi, Kutlug Khatun are mentioned among these channels. The Barlos canal from the Araks river was considered one of the major irrigation facilities of the time. Its length is 10 farsakhs (60-70 km).[10]  The isolation of ships in this channel plays an important role in trade relations. In the first half of the 15th century, during the reigns of Shahrukh and Ulugbek in Movarounnahr and Khorasan, irrigation networks expanded. During this period, the Timurids and their regional governors built large irrigation facilities in Samarkand, Bukhara, Kashkadarya, Marv oases, Tus Valley and Herat and its surroundings, and the water supply was fundamentally improved. One of the largest irrigation works carried out during the Timurid era was the restoration of the ancient Angor Canal on the Zarafshan River in the Samarkand oasis.[8]

Through this canal, which is considered the largest irrigation network of its time, part of the water of the Zarafshan River was discharged into the Kashkadarya oasis, and the surrounding areas were supplied with water. It is known from the archaeological research conducted along the ancient irrigated lands of Bukhara, that the water farms destroyed by the Mughal invasion were restored by the 15th century.[11]

During the reign of Ulugbek (1409-1449), water was released to the Samonjuk steppe, which is located in the southeastern part of the Bukhara oasis, and new lands were reduced.  Due to the restoration by Shahrukh of Sultanband, the headwaters of the Murgob river, which was destroyed during the Mughal invasion, and the cleaning of irrigation networks, the water supply of the city of Marv and the Murgob oasis was radically improved. During the reign of Husayn Boygaro, a large area of ​​land was irrigated and improved due to the construction of a new canal from Harirud on his initiative. [9]

Summary:

In general, the canals and canals built during the reign of Amir Temur and the Timurids were important infrastructure projects that played a multifaceted role in the kingdom’s agriculture, urban planning, trade, and security. Their construction reflected the advanced engineering capabilities of the Timurid dynasty and the strategic vision of managing water resources for the benefit of the population and the entire state.[7]

References:

1. Boboyev Kh.B. Amir Temur and the kingdom of the Timurids. – T.: Kamalak, 1996. – 200 p.[1]

2. Azimov E. The reign of Amir Temur. – T.: Literature and Art Publishing House, 1996. -88 p.[2]

3. Akhmedov B. Two words about Timur’s tukuz // Eastern star. -T. 1989. – #8. – B. 132. [3]

4. Akhmedov N., Badirov A. Introduction to the history of Amir Temur and the Timurid period (text of lectures). – Samarkand: Zarafshan, 1999. – 74 p.[4]

5. Lucien Keren. The reign of Amir Temur. B. Ermatov, author of translation and comments from French. – T.: Manaviyat, 1999. – 224 p. [5]

6. Proceedings of the II Republican Scientific-Theoretical Conference on Amir Temur’s World History b-219[6]

7. Materials of the Republican scientific-practical conference on Amir Temur – the great general and statesman T; 2023 [7]

8. Z. Saidboboyev Historical geography T:.2010.  -125b [8]

9. History of land-water relations in Uzbekistan T:.2023. 182b [9]

10. AMIR TEMUR IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD T:. Sharq publishing house 2001. -102b [10]

11. Nizamiddin Shami Zafarnoma T:. Publishing House of Uzbekistan 1996. -154b [11]

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

I walked briskly west to 40^th and Sixth to catch the F train home to Queens, where I lived with my parents. It was already dark and cold even though it was only 4pm, early for me to be leaving the bank, where I had worked for six years, since I turned 24. 

In the station, there were a lot of people on the platform.  An empty train arrived, and I got a seat.  Commuters hung over me, so I bent my head down to my paperback copy of Wuthering Heights.  It had been my mom’s favorite book when she was a girl.  I was midway through, engrossed in the story of Catherine and Heathcliff. 

I loved imagining my mom young. It wasn’t difficult, even though I came late in her life.  We had so many black-and-white pictures from her youth in Lebanon, where I could tell she had lots of friends and was clowning in almost every shot.  In one she hung upside-down on a metal bar; in others she was skiing, swimming, and sticking out her tongue.   

In junior high, I used to think that if somehow my mom and I were classmates, she wouldn’t choose me as a friend.  I would run through every possible scenario where we might become friends and turn over in my bed with a sinking feeling that it could never happen. 

In school I was bookish and had only one or two friends. We wondered how we could become like the popular girls, but it seemed out of our reach.

My mom was popular even at age 66.  She had many friends. She oozed charm and wit.  Maybe it was because she was my mother, but I saw her as the vibrant center of any gathering.  I admired the magnetism in her. 

The subway car screeched to a halt as someone stepped on my black ballet flat.  I looked up.  It was my mother.

She never took the subway anymore.  When I was a teenager, she was nearly choked in the turnstile by a mugger trying to grab her gold chain, which wouldn’t break.  Instead she drove a Caprice Classic with velvet blue seats. 

I couldn’t believe I was seeing her under the florescent lights of the subway car, amidst the advertisements for clear skin and hemorrhoid creams.  She wore dangling earrings and looked glamorous. She seemed out of place, out of context in her stylish coat and high-heeled boots. 

“Mom,” I said, loud enough for many to take notice.

“Lellybelle!” she said with a smile that embraced me. 

I stood up, grabbed her arms, turned her in coordinated baby steps, and placed her in my seat. “What are you doing on the subway?” I asked

“My car broke down on 57^th Street,” she said, brushing her brown hair out of her face.

She had been at a bridge tournament that day with her friend Mireille. She played all kinds of card games and was good at them.  As we headed home together from the Forest Hills subway station along 108^th Street, she told me that when she was walking down Lexington Avenue, she was overcome by perspiration, so much so that she went into a coffee shop and got napkins to wipe down her panty-hosed legs.  “That’s weird,” I said. “Maybe you should go to a doctor.”

“Don’t be ridiculous” she said.

Instantly I stopped being ridiculous.  We made a right on 68^th Drive and were finally home.

Two days later, my mother collapsed. 

That night as she was dying on the floral couch of our house, my sister, Debi, cradling her until the EMS arrived, I was on the subway.  The trains were delayed.  I got out at my exit; the air was arctic, my boots crunching on the snow, my breath visible in the night sky. Walking along 108^th Street, I hopped aside as an ambulance went by, lights flashing and sirens wailing.  I didn’t know it was racing down side streets to save my mother. I came home while they were trying to get her to breathe.  A machine was doing it for her, and the ambulance took her to the hospital, but she was never able to wake up and breathe on her own.  Four days later, declared brain dead, the apparatus was unplugged. For those four nights, my brother Dorian stood vigil at the foot of her bed.

Dorian and I left the hospital and made the arrangements at the funeral home and cemetery for a burial in the morning. That night, I fell into bed exhausted and depleted and finally went to sleep. I dreamed I was in bed with my mom having coffee.  We were in her bedroom, which for some reason was on the first floor instead of the second, and we were wearing our nightgowns.  Her gold bangles chimed as she lifted the cup from the saucer to drink. The doorbell rang.  It was a couple, friends of my parents, a box of pastries in their hands. “Who was it?” my mom asked.  “Valley and Marco,” I said and showed her all the goodies as if we had won a prize.  As I was climbing back into the bed and getting settled for a grasse matinee, the doorbell rang again. “What’s going on?” my mom asked.  I shrugged, ran to get the door to find more of her friends, and then got back into her bed. But as I snuggled next to her, smelling her smells, I realized that her friends, whom I’d known all my life, had looked at me with pity.

After the funeral, the friends who had populated my dream came to our door.  It was the first night of the shiva.  The friends had food just like in the dream, but my dream had been kinder.

I didn’t pick up Wuthering Heights again until the shiva was over and I had to go back to work.  On the subway that morning, seated on the hard plastic orange seat, I opened the book to where I had left off.

The next chapter was the funeral of Catherine.  I gasped. How had I stopped reading just before that point?  Catherine saw Heathcliff again and was sick with regret.  But I didn’t expect her to die.  The shock of it made me cough out a sob.  I closed the book and gathered myself.  My mom was gone, brutally taken from me, like an excision. Here I was on the train, after an interruption of 10 days, going back to the mundane advertisements overhead like nothing had happened. But I had changed. I didn’t know how to be. I didn’t know how I was going to continue my life without my mother in it.  I wasn’t ready to read a book and be in the subway.  I wished I could look up and see her again, right there, stepping on my foot.  My mom was in the hard cold ground in a cemetery in Queens, snow already covering her grave.  The finality was savage. 

My stop was next. I got up to leave the train, and with one last searching look, I stood clear of the closing doors.

BREATHE IN PAIN

The sun rises, puking the sorrows of the yester into my heart

I feel pain

Even though my heart boils

What would I gain?

Mama scolds me every dawn

Her anger spreads over my soul like a wildfire

My joy of being alive leaves me desolate

So I sing songs of sorrow

And it leaves my mouth charred

Where can I find love?

When it left in the morning with scars of sorrow

My dream might see no good morrow

Even my blood has severed ties

They said I am a mere woman

Who bleeds every new moon

In pains, I walk to the altar every morning

Dying silently

With my new moon blood on my face

Oh heavens! I give myself for atonement

Forgive me for being a woman

The waves are the silenced groans of the ocean, seeking to be freed in the foam

                 New Curfew

Now it’s a “suggested” curfew, dusk till dawn

for certain towns and it’s not hard to picture

the citizens of those towns huddled in their

homes waiting out the night. It’s not Covid

this time, with its masks and hand washing

its safe spacing away from your friend and

neighbors. It’s not all that simple this time.

No, this time it’s Triple E, a disease that once

was confined to horses and some other farm

animals. Now they only “suggest” that we keep

to the curfew. Now there’s a culprit that has been

a character in our lives for what seems like for-

ever. Don’t we all remember coming home on

a summer’s day scratching mosquito bites and

taking them in stride. But now, this nuisance

from years back is playing a part in all this. It’s

not hard to imagine them hiding in the backyard

planning their attack on us, if we don’t follow

the “suggested” curfew – they’re planning, they’re

plotting their taking over after we are all killed

off. The mosquito, that formerly unimportant part

of our lives, our summers, has risen up to take

their shot at getting control. They’re out there buzzing

that faint buzz we remember, trying to reassure us

and lure us out some time between dusk and dawn.

               Proper Form

I’m filling out the form, filling in

the blanks, you know the kind that

levels the field for us. We become

as we fill in blanks, like Name___

and Address_________ andother

relevant points of our identities.

They know us by what we put down.

Before they can assign us a number

they need to know a bit about us.

They do ask if we are a robot, which

of course I am not. I make our mark

next to that point, as if a robot couldn’t

figure it out and fill this out. They want

my Date of Birth_______________

my Phone Number______________

and in this case, for this form, they want

Full Name of Emergency Contact___

and an ominous sounding Return Airport

which notes that this would be where 

in case of emergency I should be flown.

This is the form before me, the one I will

fill out today. It lets me know what is so

important about me that I must share if

I hope to get my name on their list of

properly identified individuals who will

fill out any form put in front of him/her.

                   The End of…

A character came up with, “you can’t hide

from the End of the World in a goddamn

bathtub.” This rings especially true when

applied to our tub, white plastic fitted over

the old one, even the look-alike tiles are

plastic glued over the originals. There I’d

be sitting in the tub as the world burned up

all around me. The white plastic pouring in

like heavy cream, and I’m, of course, sitting

there becoming a tub of human chowder.

That’s if the world ends in fire, with global

warming and wildfires that seems a real

possibility. But if the opposite in the end

happens, destruction by ice would suffice and

all that was said about all that. I’d be sitting in

my plastic tub, teeth chattering, losing feeling

in my extremities, dozing off, ending up still

wondering whatever happened to the hot or

even warm water. When and if it comes, I’ll

probably run outside, stand in the middle of

my front lawn, hands at my side, looking up

then down, then all around, as it all falls apart

with me smack dab in the middle. So much

for that goddamn bathtub.

Forever London

London isn’t fuzzy 

And his memories

Of her 

Aren’t fading,

His forever London

Is here 

To stay.

Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fifth book, was published in May.

My grandmother left us today

My grandmother left us today

She flew to the skies, my love

When will you come back?

Come quickly, dear grandmother.

What will your children do now that you are

You didn’t attend your grandchildren’s weddings

At weddings, eyebrows are raised 

You did not sit in the nets.

My father left you 

You cheated and cheated 

Advising and praying

You have gone to the second world.

70 against the spring

You did the work

After the Prophet’s age 

You have entered heaven.

My child is my child

You made everyone happy

Your love is overflowing

You escaped three times.

Your daughter is Gulshanoy

Your son is Wahabjon

All your children

Grandma is waiting for you.

Be happy when a guest comes

You said write a table

He hugged the guest

You are welcome.

How much pain from your head 

You had a good time, grandma

When I say I have recovered 

You are gone, grandmother.

For children

My grandmother couldn’t get enough

At grandchildren’s weddings

He did not sit down, my dear.

May you be blessed in the hereafter, my grandmother

May your place be in heaven, my dear

May your heart always be bright

God bless you my god.

Rasulova Rukhshona Vahobjon’s daughter was born on October 16, 2008 in Rishton district of Fergana region. In 2015, she started studying in the 1st grade of school 34 in this district. Currently, she is a 10th grade student at this school. Rukhshona Rasulova is interested in participating in various competitions, writing poems and stories, and reading many books.

She regularly participates in school and district competitions and takes pride of place. She has also participated in many online contests and earned international certificates.

She is a member of various creative teams and the winner of the 2024 Science Horizon project and the owner of the badge “Follower of the Great Fighters”. She won 2nd place in the district stage of the intellectual game “Zakovat.”

As a young artist she has unlimited goals in her heart. Her biggest dream is to become a “young reader”. Rukhshona Rasulova’s poems were published in one of the most prestigious magazines of Great Britain “Raven Cage” and “Kenya Time” in Thailand. And she has participated in various anthologies covering artists across the Republic. Her creative works are included in the collections “Travel to the land of happiness”, “Young talents”, “Youth of Uzbekistan”, “Heart lines”, “Stars of the sky”, “Ijod va me”.

She also published a number of creative works in the international anthology “Buyuk jadidchilar izdoshi” almanac-anthology, which was held across the Republic. Currently, she is the head of the “Young creatives” circle at Ruhshona 34 general secondary school. At the same time, her creative works were also published in the newspaper “Tong ystziri” published throughout the Republic. And Shijoat is the regional coordinator of the free volunteering organization. We hope you will enjoy reading some of her works.