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Document Details :

Title: Urgut Revisited
Author(s): SAVCHENKO, Alexei
Journal: ARAM Periodical
Volume: 8    Issue: 2   Date: 1996   
Pages: 333-354
DOI: 10.2143/ARAM.8.2.2002205

Abstract :
In this paper I shall attempt to locate a monastery, most probably of the Church of the East, for which there is no archaeological evidence but a brief literary record:
‘Al-Sawadar is a mountain to the south of Samarkand... On al-Sawadar [there is] a monastery of the Christians where they gather and have their cells. I found many Iraqi Christians there who migrated to the place because of its suitability, solitary location and healthiness. It has inalienable properties (wuquf), and many Christians retreat to it; this place towers over the major part of Sogd and is known as Wazkird’.
I begin with the assumption that Barthold was right in 1893, locating ‘al-Sāwadār’ in the mountain range of Shawdar straight to the south of Samarkand indeed, and accordingly placing ‘Wazkird’, as Ibn Hawqal, or rather his editor, had called the locality, somewhere near modern Urgut. In modern usage the name of Shawdar is applied to an irrigation canal branching off Dargom in Juma-Bazar; it then runs parallel to and north of Dargom, while to the south of Samarkand it divides into a number of streams which supply the city with water.


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