Excavations by F. V. Poyarkov at the Burana Settlement
In the late 19th century, Semirechye attracted the attention of several all-Russian archaeological organizations due to unexpected discoveries. In the summer of 1885, land surveyor V. A. Andreyev, who was working on mapping the cultural lands of Jetysu, a prominent local historian fluent in several local languages and the author of several literary and ethnographic works, including translations of folk works from Uzbek and Tajik, discovered a large medieval Christian cemetery in the vicinity of Pishpek, containing numerous grave stones with decorative crosses, “anchors,” and inscriptions in an unknown language. A few days later, a similar cemetery with analogous grave stones was discovered by physician F. V. Poyarkov 1.5 versts south of the Burana minaret, closer to the Alexandrovsky ridge. The first information about this was published in the press by F. V. Poyarkov (a report through the editorial office of the newspaper "Vostochnoe Obozrenie," published in issue No. 44 for 1885 on November 14). In it, he wrote that “14 versts from the village of Bolshoi Tokmak, in the middle of an abandoned fortress (i.e., the Burana settlement. — M. M.) stands a tall tower made of beautiful burnt brick, partially destroyed by time, and partly dismantled by local residents, as well as the surrounding structures, the ruins of which are visible on the surface of the earth. The locals do not know who built the fortress and the tower. The tower itself is good in technical and architectural terms, and it is a pity that it may soon completely collapse.”
F. V. Poyarkov found more than 20 stones with images of crosses and inscriptions in an unknown language in three locations. The crosses were present on all the stones, while inscriptions were absent on some. One stone had an image resembling a Russian "roller" used for threshing grain. Later, F. V. Poyarkov conducted small exploratory archaeological excavations at the Burana settlement. In close proximity to the tower, he discovered traces of monumental brick structures surrounding it, with remnants of Muslim burials.
The deciphering in St. Petersburg of the inscriptions on the stones with crosses from the vicinity of Pishpek and Burana, which represent Nestorian epitaphs, sparked increased interest in the local cemeteries among the scientific circles of the capital and Moscow. With intensified searches for new similar objects, several grave stones with Arabic inscriptions were found. Inspired by his discoveries, F. V. Poyarkov planned to start more detailed explorations at his own expense the following year, but the then-capital archaeological commission entrusted the study of both Semirechye cemeteries in 1886 to the senior official of special assignments under the Semirechye military governor N. N. Pantusov. He, in turn, entrusted the actual conduct of archaeological excavations to the scientific gardener of the Pishpek state garden A. M. Fetisov. The work was mainly focused on the cemetery near Pishpek. A total of 611 grave stones were registered on the surface of this cemetery. A. M. Fetisov excavated 85 graves here, while 34 graves were excavated at the cemetery near Burana.
From the report submitted by N. N. Pantusov to the Archaeological Commission and his brief message to the Russian Archaeological Society, it is evident that the author was only interested in general questions about the burial practices of the Jetysu Nestorians, regardless of which cemetery a particular grave was located in. Therefore, it is difficult to establish which of the findings should be attributed to the burials at Burana. Apparently, the types of burials were more or less common in the main features at both cemeteries. The deceased were placed either in special containers at the bottom of solitary or family graves at a depth of about two meters (or even less) from the surface of the earth, or in side niches. The body was placed with the head to the west, feet to the east, face to the north or upwards, and then covered with earth. The sides of the grave were lined with raw bricks or boards, and the burial was covered with a relieving arch made of two inclined raw bricks. In some cases, the head was either placed in a special niche or covered with a millstone. The grave was filled to the top with earth, and the surface was covered with burnt bricks. Remnants of decayed clothing, copper bracelets, perforated shells, beads, rings, and earrings, mostly made of a copper-silver alloy, were found on the skeletons. Six pairs of earrings were gold. At the cemetery from Burana, a cross was found on the cervical vertebrae of one of the deceased.
Description of the Burana Tower by V. D. Gorodetsky
In October of the same year, 1886, inspector of public schools in the Semirechye region V. D. Gorodetsky inspected the ruins of the Burana tower and, at the request of Professor V. M. Florinsky of Tomsk University, sent him a report of his observations. These, despite some shortcomings, turned out to be the most detailed of all the previous descriptions of the tower published in print. V. M. Florinsky included the text of V. D. Gorodetsky in full in his major work on the monuments of prehistoric life of primitive Slavs.
Probably due to a typographical error, the indication that the Burana tower was located “8 versts” southwest of Tokmak should be attributed. The author later indicated that it was situated “inside a quadrangle formed by the river and a significant rampart, but not in the middle of it... The nearest side of the rampart to the tower is open, but not along its entire length. The northeastern part of the quadrangle adjoins the mentioned river, which undermines this side, revealing bricks from former structures and shards of clay dishes.
In one place on this side, two clay water pipes were found. The area of the quadrangle is about 3-4 square versts and contains five “kurgans,” two of which can be called enormous, while the others are smaller but still of significant height and volume. Additionally, near the tower on the side facing Tokmak, there are ruins of a former structure with a mass of burnt bricks.” Further, V. D. Gorodetsky provided a fairly detailed description of the general appearance and structure of the tower, which at that time, according to measurements made by one of the local topographers, reached a height of 12 sazhen. The almost monolithic masonry of the minaret, inside which only a narrow spiral staircase winds, in the opinion of V. D. Gorodetsky, gives grounds to conclude that “this structure corresponds not to a tower in the current sense, but to a compact column or pillar.” He noted the absence of traces of a staircase by which one could have entered the entrance hole located 5 arshins above the modern ground level. After providing a rather detailed construction-architectural description of the tower, consisting of a regular octagonal base and a round shaft rising above it with an internal staircase, the author drew attention to the presence on the wall to the left of the window of carved inscriptions, “apparently in Arabic script.”
At the end of the “introductory part” of the aforementioned work by V. M. Florinsky, illustrations were included: “View of the Burana tower from the west in 1886,” its cross-section, and a photo of the general view of the tower from 1891. The photo shows the inscription: “P. Borel” — presumably the name of the person who took the picture.
During his visit to Burana, V. D. Gorodetsky likely also inspected the excavations of the neighboring Nestorian cemetery. In the same year, 1886, he sent several photographs of Nestorian grave stones to the Archaeological Commission.
At the end of 1886 — beginning of 1887, D. A. Khvolson shared the results of deciphering the inscriptions on some grave stones in three preliminary articles and notes and established their dating to the 13th-14th centuries. He noted a rather significant number of stones dated 1648-1650 (dated according to the Seleucid era, i.e., 1338-1339 AD) with the indication: “died of the plague.”
From this, D. A. Khvolson concluded that the plague epidemic that ravaged Western Asia and Europe in 1347-1351 began in Central Asia 8-9 years earlier.
Grave Stones (Kairaks) of Burana
The revived interest in Burana contributed to the fact that discoveries of various ancient objects made in the area quickly became known to a wide audience and could be timely recorded by them. One of the most notable finds of this kind was a hoard of gold coins. This hoard was discovered in the summer of 1887 when diggers working on the slope of the Burana hill found a water-washed vessel filled with whole and cut-up gold coins. The finders sold them for 20 kopecks each, while the prices quickly rose to 2 rubles among middlemen. By the time the news of the hoard reached the district authorities, most of its contents had already changed hands, and only 8 coins were received by the regional administration. The report of the Archaeological Commission for 1887 indicates that in August, five whole and 18 fragments of gold Khorezmian coins were found, which were then sent to the Hermitage.
At the end of that same year, two grave stones (kairaks) with Arabic epitaphs were sent to the Moscow Archaeological Society by F. V. Poyarkov from Tokmak. The protocol entry regarding this suggests reading the name Abu Mahmud-Khodja on one kairak and notes that “by shape and size they are contemporary (? — M. M.) with Nestorian ones, but how Muslims ended up in the same cemetery with Nestorians is difficult to explain; they probably died during the plague.” Judging by the images presented in the book, these kairaks are no older than the 13th century. On the poorly executed and hard-to-read, but decipherable inscriptions of three kairaks (although the protocol mentions two), there is no name Abu Mahmud. Their attribution to the Nestorian cemetery may be a random misunderstanding, as F. V. Poyarkov does not mention this. The finds of Muslim kairaks, not as numerous as the Nestorian stones, occurred at the Burana settlement later, but not at the site of its Nestorian cemetery.
A new visit to Burana by V. D. Gorodetsky in the autumn of 1888 allowed him to make corrections (for example, in the orientation by cardinal directions) and additions to his previous description. The most significant were the measurements he took, during which the height of the tower in the remaining above-ground part was determined to be 10 sazhen, 2 arshins, and 1/2 vershka (without indicating from which side). On the territory of the settlement, he counted 6 “kurgans” (i.e., elevated areas) from what were once significant ruins. Of these, four were on the western side of the tower, and two on the northern side. Besides ceramic shards, V. D. Gorodetsky found nothing.
Meanwhile, finds continued. In 1889, F. V. Poyarkov sent a small copper cube, apparently a gaming piece similar to a die, found near the tower to the Archaeological Commission, which was then sent to the Russian Historical Museum, and another ten grave stones from Nestorian cemeteries near Pishpek and Tokmak were delivered to the Moscow Archaeological Society, as reported by M. V. Nikolsky at the society's meeting on December 1. There may have been some inaccuracy here, as the Pishpek cemetery was entirely under the control of N. N. Pantusov. The latter collected Nestorian grave stones before sending them to central scientific institutions in the district administration. Among the stones delivered by N. N. Pantusov, one had instead of the usual Nestorian cross an engraved drawing resembling a candelabrum.
At the same time, intensive work was underway in St. Petersburg and Moscow on deciphering and analyzing the epitaphs of Nestorian stones obtained from both the Pishpek and Burana cemeteries, which was reflected in a number of special works.
Orientalist V. V. Bartold on the Settlement
The publication of the processed material resulted in a decision to continue the research of the Nestorian cemeteries of Jetysu, which was again entrusted to N. N. Pantusov. In the autumn of 1892, he assigned this task to A. M. Fetisov, who earned the nickname “chichkonchi-tyurya” (“mouse lord”) among the local population for his archaeological excavations and which remained in the folk memory even in the first two decades after the victory of the Great October Revolution. This time, the main focus was again on the cemetery near Pishpek, with the primary goal being the collection of new grave stones with epitaphs. At the cemetery near Burana, five more coarse-grained and weathered stones were discovered. Photographic images were taken of three of them already in the city of Verny, to which these stones were transported at that time.
In addition to excavating graves, A. M. Fetisov, as the residents of Tokmak told M. E. Masson at the time, also conducted small excavations at the Burana settlement, to the west of the tower. There are no mentions of this in the report provided by N. N. Pantusov to the Archaeological Commission.
Excavations at the Burana settlement, which were visited by incoming specialists, and the attention of the Semirechye administration to the tower made the ruins of the ancient city a place for spring and summer walks. Celebrations (“gapy” and “saili”) began to be held there, and in the autumn of 1892, the Tokmak merchants established a garden near the tower and created a monument protection committee, for which a special guard was hired.
As previously mentioned, in 1894, an article by N. F. Petrovsky appeared, published in Tashkent and later in St. Petersburg under various titles, discussing the identity of Burana with the settlement of Munora mentioned by Muhammad Haydar. Almost simultaneously, a work by V. M. Florinsky about primitive Slavs was also published in Tomsk. In it, the author attempted to draw a parallel between the Bulgarian pillars, the Burana tower, the minarets of Sauran, Uzgend, the towers near Kabul, and Buddhist stupas. In his opinion, “the attribution of the Bulgarian pillars to the Muslim era should be recognized as a false theory; the construction of the pillars, and perhaps the very name of them, most likely originates from Central Asia.” And since there are no balconies for azanchis and no places for Christian bells on these monuments, “it can be asserted that both the Bulgarian pillars and the Burana tower were not built as minarets, and therefore not by Arab architects.” Regarding all the mentioned Central Asian minarets, V. M. Florinsky concluded that “they developed from the Indian stupa based on Buddhist ideas and belong to monuments of religious significance.”
In the summer of 1894, while passing through to Issyk-Kul and the Ili River, the orientalist V. V. Bartold visited the Burana settlement, inspecting it in the company of E. P. Kovalev and the teacher of the Russian-native school in Tokmak, V. P. Rovnagin. The future academician testified that the nature of the construction of the Burana tower and especially the ornamentation suggests its construction by Muslims. The inscription on the left side of the tower window is a specimen of the Arabic-Syrian script that is found in Semirechye on some grave stones. In his report, V. V. Bartold noted that the high hill located inside the quadrangular fortification, defined by S. M. Dudina as being up to 3 sazhen high, is apparently made of raw bricks. Near the tower, traces of ancient graves were visible. The settlement near Burana, in V. V. Bartold's opinion, was not extensive, as no objects were found above the Nestorian cemetery in the riverbeds and irrigation ditches. All the grave stones previously encountered on the surface and excavated from the Christian cemetery had already been removed by the time of his visit to the settlement, but whole stones with crosses were sometimes washed out of the ground along with shards of dishes and coins. Among the local population, V. V. Bartold saw one gold coin with Kufic inscriptions, which served as something like an amulet for the Kyrgyz and was considered “a remedy against various diseases, especially throat ailments.”
Description of the Burana Settlement and Tower by V. P. Rovnagin
Information about the ruins of Burana also reached the Turkestan Circle of Archaeology Lovers, which opened in Tashkent at the end of 1895. In the pages of its published “Protocols” during the first year of its activity, a brief description of the Burana settlement and tower, prepared by V. P. Rovnagin and sent to N. P. Ostrovumov, vice-chairman of the circle, was published, which he read at the next meeting on October 28, 1895. From the compiled description, which in some cases is more specific than all previous ones, it follows that the space inside the walls of the Burana settlement (“located 12 versts south of Tokmak”) was still littered with shards of burnt bricks and broken ancient ceramic utensils. To the northwest of it, towards the ruins of the Ak-Peshin settlement, V. P. Rovnagin noted small hillocks-kurgans; in this, he found confirmation that Burana and Ak-Peshin represent the remnants of one enormous city, the ruins of which stretched in length from the southeast to the northwest for about 15 versts and in width for about 5 versts. He considered Burana to be the aristocratic part of the city, while Ak-Peshin was the actual city with citadels, private houses, and streets extending in various directions. As a construction feature of the Burana tower itself, V. P. Rovnagin noted the difference in the composition of the mortar of the inner masonry and the outer facing (“the cement inside is clayey, while the facing is lime”).
In addition to the general description of the tower, he indicated its height (77 feet), the diameter of the base (up to 20 feet), and the height of the prismatic base (up to 13 feet). The tower was guarded, and a ladder was attached to its entrance. Around the tower, as seen in the photograph sent to N. P. Ostrovumov, a garden was laid out. In conclusion, V. P. Rovnagin noted that Kyrgyz traditions about Burana and Ak-Peshin are not very contradictory, but all informants relate the history of Burana to ancient times.
The Turkestan Circle of Archaeology Lovers returned to the question of the Burana tower once again at a meeting on October 16, 1897, listening to a report on the Uzgend monuments. The vice-president of the circle, N. P. Ostrovumov, drew the attendees' attention to the similarity of the Uzgend “tower” with the Burana tower. He expressed the assumption that both served as minarets for mosques, which have now been destroyed, and that perhaps their construction belongs to the same historical period. At that time, the circle could not resolve the question of a more precise determination of this period.
In 1897, the aforementioned report by V. V. Bartold on his trip to Central Asia in 1893-1894 was published. In it, the author provided a detailed analysis of historical information about the Chui River valley and compared it with the results of his observations on site, as if summarizing the previous works on the study of the Burana settlement. In this, he rejected his earlier hypothesis about the location of Balasagun, the capital of the Karakhanids and later of the Qarakhanid gurgans, at the site of the Burana ruins. He believed that if the reports of the location of Balasagun in the Chui River valley are accurate, then “it can be identified with greater probability with Ak-Peshin, in which case Burana could represent some kind of suburban outskirt... We do not have enough data for a definitive resolution of the question about Balasagun.”
The simultaneous appearance of a new work by D. Khvolson on the Pretorian grave stones from Semirechye exhausted the material on Christian grave stones from Jetysu by that time. This halted the direct study of the Burana settlement, and for a long time, the influx of fresh material ceased; interest sparked by the novelty of the discovery of medieval Christian monuments cooled. The attention of metropolitan scholars and local historians was diverted to resolving other questions. The stage of preliminary research on Burana was completed.
The previous interest in the site gradually waned among the local population as well. Traditionally, saili was still celebrated at Burana. People occasionally went there for walks. In warm weather, the usual gapi were held. However, they paid little attention to new finds. Some time later, the protection of the minaret ceased. The ladder disappeared. The garden, which had grown, remained without watering for a long time from 1900 and began to wither. By the time of the work in the Burana area before the First World War, only two half-dried trunks and several similarly dying trees remained at the site of the former garden near the minaret. Soon they were cut down by the residents of the Pokrovsky village after the unrest in Turkestan in 1916.