Study of the Buran settlement by the Central Asian Archaeological Expedition in 1927-1929.

Identification of Burana with the settlement of Munora

The identification of Burana with the settlement of Munora, mentioned in the 16th century by Muhammad Haidar Guragani, is widely accepted among contemporary scholars. In this regard, particular interest is drawn to this author's account of an epitaph he saw and read on a slab for the "glorious imam," "most perfect sheikh," "a scholar of both branches and fundamentals of jurisprudence," the capital scholar Imam Muhammad-Faqih of Balasagun. Specifically considering the overall historical situation, it seems that there was an error in the transmission of the word "hundreds" in the date of death of this learned sheikh (as 711 AH, corresponding to 1311/12 CE, instead of 611 AH, which corresponds to 1214/15 CE) during the analysis of the inscription on the monument or during the transcription of the manuscript. Muhammad-Faqih was honored with the title of spiritual leader of such an important administrative point as Burana in the 12th century, and he passed away in the early next century, shortly before the Mongol conquest of Central Asia.

In the 11th-12th centuries, some circumstances compelled the government administration to pay special attention to Burana, which is particularly felt in the fate of the local Christian community. This is evidenced by the aforementioned fact of the liquidation of its cemetery at the city gates of the northern facade of the city wall. The community was by no means significant. In its cemetery in the southern part of the suburb, during many years of research, only a little more than thirty gravestones with crosses and corresponding epitaphs were found. It is noteworthy that only one scholastic, Kubuk, a teacher of Ushin and priest Kutluk, is mentioned among them, while all the other gravestones belong to more or less ordinary individuals. At the same time, the peculiarities in the letter forms and the presence of certain expressions that distinguish the Burana epitaphs from those on the monuments of the Nestorian cemetery in the Pishpek area draw attention. Apparently, this is related to the later functioning of the latter. The earliest date on its gravestones is 1261, i.e., when Burana had already ceased to exist as a prominent settlement. The overwhelming majority of gravestones (several hundred) date back to the 14th century. The epitaphs from 1338-1339 indicate that the city's residents died from a terrible plague epidemic that began in China in 1334. Later, it spread to European countries, where about 24 million people perished, almost a quarter of the then population. In Semirechye, this plague undoubtedly affected not only the large Nestorian community but also the entire settled and nomadic population of the region.

However, the plague was not the only reason for the city's decline. It is known that the area in the valley of the Chu River did not suffer particularly during the Mongol invasion, as its inhabitants largely submitted to the conquerors without much resistance. Meanwhile, due to the still insufficiently studied overall political and economic situation, the decline of urban and generally settled cultural life began as early as the second quarter of the 13th century, resulting in the residents of the Chu and Talas river valleys leaving the cities.