From the historian's notes

Bukhara, 943

Uzbekistan · Central Asia · September 943 · autumn

What it was high

one of the great cities of the Islamic east — walled shahristan, sprawling suburbs, the court and chancery of a state ruling from the Aral steppe toward the Hindu Kushancient oasis city of Sogdiana on the Zarafshan delta; capital of the Samanid amirate through the 10th century

That year

• Narshakhi is composing/dedicating his History of Bukhara for the new amir in these years — the city is being written down as she walks it c. 943-944 highone book; the reason posterity can check this pack at all
• the Samanid silver engine: dirhams minted here and at Samarkand flow north along the fur roads in such quantity that they end up buried in Baltic and Scandinavian hoards ongoing through the 10th century highhemispheric trade fact, archaeologically verified

Who held it high

Samanid amirate, nominally under the Abbasid caliph's blessingAmir Nuh ibn Nasr, newly succeeded — his father Nasr II died in this year after a reign that made Bukhara the ornament of the easta fresh succession with its usual purges and prayers; and a cultural changing of the guard — the great court poet Rudaki died just two years ago, out of favor and blind

Its name high

Bukhara (Persian بخارا, Bukhārā)Written in Arabic script writing both Arabic and the newly literary New Persian — the Samanid court is precisely where Persian is becoming a written literary language again

The date, there medium

AH 331-332Hijri calendar for record; the Persian solar year (Nowruz-anchored) still runs the agricultural and festival rhythm underneathThe five calls to prayer structure the day; caravan departures are called by cool hours — before dawn and after evening prayer in the hot months. Water-shares on the canals are timed allotments: in an oasis, time IS water, measured out in turns.

Money medium

Samanid silver dirhamcopper fulus for market change; gold dinars for treasury-scale sumsbread and melon money is coppers; 10th-century Bukharan retail prices are not reliably recoverable

Weather medium

September: the mercy month — hot noons easing, cold nights beginning, harvest of grapes and the famous melons at flood

Things

ObjectsSamanid dirhams in honest silver; paper — Samarkand paper is the standard fine writing material of this world; glazed slipware with black-on-white Kufic borders (the austere beautiful pottery of exactly this court); leather waterskins and camel harness; cotton bales; silk lengthsFoodflatbreads from tandoor walls; melons and grapes at peak; rice dishes with mutton and carrots — the pilaf lineage, without claiming the modern word; dried apricots, pistachios; wine exists at court and in poetry; discretion governs it in publicClothcottons (the region's boom crop), silks, wool for the steppe cold; zandaniji-type patterned weaves — Bukharan district cloth with a trade reputation; veiling wraps for respectable urban womenGetting aboutcamel caravans (Bactrian), donkeys in the lanes; horses — the steppe frontier is close and cavalry-minded; canal boats and irrigation skiffs at garden scaleIn the airdust and irrigation water — wet clay in dry air; melon sweetness at the gates; tandoor smoke; leather and camel in the caravan yards

What she'd hear

New Persian in the street and increasingly on the page; Arabic in mosque, law and chancery; Sogdian lingering in villages; Turkic in the garrisons. She can move in Persian with an eastern accent story, and her Chinese-merchant-kin cover explains everything her face starts.

Where she could stand

• the Samanid mausoleum — the domed brick tomb of the dynasty (built for Ismail, d. 907) — basketwoven brickwork, already the finest small building in the east
• the registan (sand square) before the citadel — the open ground between ark and city where troops muster and proclamations land
• the book bazaar and copyists' row — stationers, paper-sellers, copyists — the trade that will later feed Ibn Sina's education in this same city
• a melon market at the caravan gate — mountains of melons, camel trains loading; the region's melons are famous enough to travel
• a canal-side teahouse-less courtyard (no tea yet — a sherbet and bread house) — shaded courtyard by a hauz (tank), travelers fed and news traded

Researched for this card · confidence medium-high