"Osh. Monuments of Osh"
Cult Structures of the City
Pre-revolutionary Osh was not very rich in historical and architectural monuments; nevertheless, some of them, even those that have not survived to this day, deserve at least a mention, if not a description. Mainly, these are cult structures. We can name the dome of Kurbandzhan-dakhi, built at the foot of Suleiman Mountain in 1907; the mosque of Muhammad Yusupa-Baykhodji, erected in 1909-1910, next to which was the domed mosque of Sydykbay from the 19th century, the mazar of Muhammad Rahim from the early 20th century, and the garrison church of St. Michael the Archangel, built for military officials and Orthodox settlers in the 1880s, which has been repurposed into a House of Culture in our time. In the report on the state of the Turkestan Diocese for 1885, we read: “The Osh church — St. Michael the Archangel... built of raw brick, covered with iron, and even has a wooden dome.
Church bells hang under a canopy, but the church is sufficiently equipped with utensils, a sacristy, and even a library.” From here, from the church, according to the plans of the military administration of Osh, “culture” was supposed to spread among the local residents and settlers.
But the most famous, tracing its origins back to antiquity, was the already mentioned mausoleum of Asaf ibn Burhiya, the last reconstruction of which dates back to the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century. The ancient residential area adjoins the northern slope of Suleiman Mountain, where even today one can find beautiful examples of folk architecture from the 19th — early 20th centuries.
A remarkable cult monument of Suleiman Mountain is the quarter mosque of Muhammad Yusupa Baykhodji-ogly (at the intersection of the modern streets Alabastrovaya and Telmana). In plan, it is a rectangle divided into two almost square rooms — winter and summer prayer rooms. The summer room is an iwan with a mihrab niche and carved wooden columns, the walls of which are richly decorated with carved plaster, and the ceilings are painted with picturesque floral ornaments in tempera and covered with varnish. The winter room is decorated somewhat more modestly. This is a typical architectural monument of modern times for the Fergana Valley, which usually had two iwans and a central winter room.
In addition to the fact that the mosque of Muhammad Yusupa Baykhodji-ogly has only one iwan, it is, according to the qualified conclusion of B. Pomaskin, remarkable for being not a domed structure but having an iron roof, which should undoubtedly be regarded as a manifestation of Russian influence in the architecture of Osh at the beginning of the 20th century.
A mosque named Jami was added to the mausoleum of Asaf ibn Burhiya at the eastern foot of Suleiman Mountain in the early 20th century. At the same time, repairs were made to the mausoleum itself — with bricks of “Russian standard” stamped from Osh brick workshops. The decor of the 17th-18th centuries was replaced so that the Jami mosque (demolished in 1978) and the mausoleum of Asaf ibn Burhiya appeared as a single ensemble in the style of similar architectural structures of the early 20th century.
Nearby was the building of the mosque of Ravat Abdullah Khan from the 16th-27th centuries, which was repeatedly reconstructed by the beginning of the 20th century (now the Osh Regional Museum).
In the late 19th — early 20th centuries, the madrasahs of Alimbek-dakhi (on Karasuy Street, where there was a circus for some time later), the madrasah of Khalmurzabay (at the intersection of modern Sverdlov and Telman streets, at the site of the current cinema "Kosmos"), Turk-madrasah (where later the Uzbek Musical and Dramatic Theater was located), and others continued to function in Osh. In the maktabs attached to the mosques, children were taught basic literacy and reading the Quran, while in the madrasahs, the children of wealthy Muslim townspeople acquired the basics of knowledge.
