Suppose you are a Baghdadi caravan trader in the 9th century CE. You are making the long and arduous journey eastwards to the trade entrepot of Osh in the Fergana Valley, almost exactly halfway between the Mediterranean coast and the markets of the opulent Tang Chinese capital of Chang'an, and thus the halfway point of the famous Silk Roads. Set between the Tianshan cordillera to the north and the Pamir-Alay mountains to the south, the Fergana Valley is divided between the modern republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyztan. In a similar fashion to its modern geopololitical setting, it has for the last 3,000 years sat in a great frontier zone at the crossroads of world empires. By this point in history, the Fergana Valley was already a storied place. In 329BCE, the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria Eschate at the site of present-day Khujand, bringing Hellenistic culture to the southwestern corner of this broad triangular valley. Two hundred years later, the Fergana Valley became the obsession of the Chinese Han Empire, who coveted its indigenous breed of "celestial horses" to fuel the empire's vast cavalries. In the following centuries, Hellenistic peoples, Persians, and Turks successively ruled the valley, until all of Central Asia came under the Islamic fold as the Arab Caliphates exploded onto the world stage by the 8th century. At our tentative point in time in the early-9th century, Osh and its surrounding territories had recently come under the rule of the Persianate Sunni Muslim Samanid dynasty (819-999 CE), who patronised the arts, promoted an Islamised form of high Persian culture, and who were heavily invested in the Silk Roads trade.
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| Fergana in the 10th century with key cities and transport routes based on information provided by the Arab geographer Al-Istakhri. |
As you travel through the valley from Khujand, to Kokand to Fergana (city), you are met by a seemingly endless steppe of arid brown. The snowcapped mountains that frame the boundaries of the valley are a distant sight, like clouds on the horizon. As you approach Osh however, you slowly encounter a mass of limestone rising abruptly above the western edge of the city. This is Sulaiman-Too (modern Kyrgyz: Сулайман-Тоо, Sulaiman-Too, lit. "Solomon's Mountain"), a five-peaked ridge of rugged stone, running about two kilometers by 250 meters and rising to a maximum altitude of about 1,175m above sea level. Though it rises only a modest 175m above the city of Osh, it contrasts immensely against the backdrop of the steppes, emerging like an island over the surrounding plains. For all the history of Osh, Sulaiman-Too acted as a beacon for travelers like yourself, orienting all peoples towards the city. Moreover, since at least the first millennium BCE, Sulaiman-Too has been revered as a sacred mountain and an important cult center. Its five peaks and slopes contain a large assembly of ancient cult places and caves with petroglyphs with links to shamanism, Zoroastrianism and Tengrism. By medieval times, Sulaiman-Too had become a major site of Islamic pilgrimage, drawing Muslims from all over Central Asia to benefit from the supposed healing properties of its sacred rocks.
Note. Outside of Central Asian and Russophone circles, there is remarkably little information that can be accessed about Sulaiman-Too. For that reason, I am reliant mainly on a PhD dissertation by Jennifer Rose Webster entitled Toward a Sacred Topography of Central Asia: Shrines, Pilgrimage, and Gender in Kyrgyzstan that has a chapter covering this topic. As such, much of what follows will be a synthesis of Webster's research.
Pre-Islamic Sulaiman-Too: Archaeology and Early Textual References
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| Flying Horse of Gansu, c. 200CE. This Chinese bronze sculpture represents one of the "heavenly horses" of Fergana which the Han so coveted. After a Chinese embassy to Alexandria Eschate was degraded and murdered in 104BCE, the Han emperor Wudi launched a punitive expedition against that resulted in the vassalisation of the Dayuan to the Chinese, and the Han procurement of Fergana horses. |
There is scant information about Sulaiman-Too before the arrival of Islam. Fergana, then ruled by the Greco-Bactrian polis Alexandria Eschate, had been visited and written about in 130BCE by the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian (d. 114BCE), who called it Dayuan (大宛, reconstructed Later Han Chinese pronunciation [dɑh-ʔyɑn], lit. 'Great Ionians'). Zhang Qian made them out to be sophisticated urban dwellers similar to the neighbouring Parthians and Bactrians but makes no mention at all of Sulaiman-Too. The earliest textual mention of the sacred mountain comes from another Chinese source, the Book of Han (漢書), a historiographical work by two generations of scholars of the same family: started by Ban Biao, continued by his son Ban Gu (32-92CE) and completed in 111CE by Ban Gu's sister Ban Zhao, who was interestingly one of the first known female historians in world history. The Book of Han describes Osh in such terms:
The capital [from where the king governs] of the country of Dayuan is called Guishancheng [Osh]. It is 12,550 li distant from Chang'an. It has 60,000 households and 300,000 inhabitants and is garrisoned by a military force of 60,000. The original: 大宛國，王治貴山城，去長安萬二千五百五十里。戶六萬，口三十萬，勝兵六萬人。~ Book of Han (漢書), Volume 96: Traditions of the Western Regions 西域傳, On the Country of Dayuan (my own translation of the Classical Chinese).
What is interesting to note here is the nomenclature through which the Chinese referred to the capital of Fergana. Guishancheng (貴山城) in Chinese translates approximately to "the city of the revered mountain." This obscure reference to a distant land by the Chinese betrays a vague awareness of the city of Osh as a site of mountain veneration. Until the Islamic period, this is the only conscious reference towards Sulaiman-Too as a sacred site.
Petroglyph on Sulaiman-Too representing a labyrinth
The archaeological record of Sulaiman-Too is certainly more voluminous compared to the textual record for this pre-Islamic period. A UN conservation report notes that the site of the mountain has been settled since at least the Neolithic, with the majority of ancient archaeological remains dating from the Bronze Age, in this case, between 1500-600BCE. One such find are the remains of a fortified settlement associated with the Indo-Iranian Chust culture, with over a dozen remaining buildings as well as a large wealth of painted ceramic finds, indicating that the settlement may have had ritual associations. Over 400 hundred petroglyphs also survive on the mountain, dating over a long pre-Islamic chronology from 1500BCE to 500CE. These petroglyphs are generally divided into three categories: anthropomorphous, zoomorphous and geometrical signs. Illustrations of animals and hunting scenes, anthropomorphic images, and a prominent collection of solar signs. The petroglyphs typically accompany certain ritual sites on the mountain, such as gullies, seats, gutters for libations, grottoes, and caves, many of which were intricately cut and polished, many of which were linked by footpaths cut into the mountain. On nearly all of these sites, there is evidence of fire, likely from the burning of aromatic herbs. Many of these sites have also been polished smooth from cumulative centuries, pre- and post-Islamic, of pilgrims sliding along or touching the rock surfaces as part of their mountain austerities.
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| Sassanian relief of the god Mithra at Taq-e Bustan, c. 300BCE. |
Most of this archaeological evidence points to Sulaiman-Too as an ancient cult center with ritual practices for seasonal worship and sacrifices to Tengri (the Turko-Mongolian god of the sky) and to fire and sun in accordance with Zoroastrian practice. Zoroastrianism, an ancient Iranian religion, certainly figures much more heavily in this early historical period. It has been suggested that the Sulaiman-Too started off as a cult center for the worship of Mithra, the God of Light, Union and Agreement, and a major figure in the Zoroastrian pantheon. Mithraist rites included the libation of haoma, a sacred beverage made of plant extract. Many cult places on Sulaiman-Too appear to have been made for these purposes, especially the gutters for libations, and some caves and grottoes with polished floors appear to correspond to the Zoroastrian myth of Mithra's birth from a rock in a cave. All of this is circumstantial deduction and has no basis in textual evidence. Nevertheless, what is clear is that Sulaiman-Too was certainly a sacred place by the Bronze Age.
Sulaiman-Too as a Popular Islamic Pilgrimage Site
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| Gate at the starting point of the pilgrim path. |
To the southeast of the walled town lies a symmetrical mountain, known as the Bara Koh. On the top of this, Sultan Mahmud Khan built a retreat and lower down on its shoulder, in 902 AH (1496), I built another with a porch. Though his lies the higher, mine is the better placed, the whole of the town and the suburbs being at its foot...On the flank of Bara-Koh is a mosque called the Jauza Masjid (Twin Mosque) ... ~ Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Baburnama, Section 1: Fergana, translated by Daniel C. Waugh, 1999.
Though in Babur's time, the mountain was still known as Bara-kuh, it soon came to assume its current name by the 1500s. Until modern times, the mountain has had an enduring association with the Quranic figure of Sulaimān ibn Dāwūd and his vizier Āṣāf b. Barak̲h̲yā, and thus the mountain has also been known as the Takht-i Sulaiman (Persian: تخت سلیمان, lit. "throne of Solomon"). Local legends suggest that the Biblical Solomon and other Islamic prophets including Adam, Abraham, and Muhammad travelled there and stayed on the peak at various times in the past. One other legend relates of how the primordial man Adam had taught the people of Fergana agriculture from his mountain abode on Sulaiman-Too. There is little certainty as to how these legends came to be associated with the mountain, but anyone's best guess is that these sacred linkages resulted from a combination of various factors: the dramatic prominence of the mountain over the surrounding plains, enduring knowledge and continual practice of the mountain as a sacred site predating Islam, and a case of clever public relations and marketing by the rulers of Osh in the early modern period to boost visitation to Osh and thus the local economy via the influx of pilgrims.
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| The inhabitants of Osh driving out the enemy. Miniature illustration from a late-16th century edition of the Baburnama. Sulaiman-Too features prominently as the backdrop of the city. |
The Takht-i Sulaiman Mosque on the summit of Peak One, the culmination of Islamic pilgrimages to the mountain. It was built in the 16th century but destroyed by the Soviets in 1963. The present structure was reconstructed in 1988.
By the early 19th century, Sulaiman-Too had transformed into a major Islamic pilgrimage site, drawing pilgrims from far afield from all the different states of Muslim Central Asia. In 1812, Mir Izzatullah, an Indian Muslim surveyor and clandestine agent under the employ of the British East India Company came to Osh, then ruled by the Khanate of Kokand, as part of an expedition with the specific purpose of scouting markets in Central Asia for quality horses. He provides a detailed description of the pilgrim economy in Osh:
Osh is celebrated by the name of Takhti Suliman, and the tomb of Ascf Barkhia, the vizir of Suliman, is still shown here: it is of great size. The throne of Suliman is on a small hill west from Osh, surmounted by a building with a dome. In the spring great numbers of people repair hither in pilgrimage to the tomb from all the surrounding countries, bringing with them articles of various descriptions for sale and barter. ~ Mir Izzatullah, Article XXXI - Travels Beyond the Himalaya, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 324.
Just a few years after Mir Izzatullah, Filip Nazarov, an agent of the Russian Empire, described Sulaiman-Too as well. His account closely resembled Mir Izzatullah's having similarly been informed that spring was peak pilgrimage season, and that people went there to worship in the belief that Solomon's spirit resided at the mountain. By this point, the mountain came to be seen as possessing curative properties. Many Central Asian peoples were firmly convicted that they should make the pilgrimage to Sulaiman-Too at least once in their lives. Pilgrims regarded the entirety of the mountain ridge as a sacred site and performed a series of rituals on it in the belief that it would guarantee good health and to boost reproductive fertility. For instance, pilgrims would slide down a large slab of smooth stone called the Bel Tash (black stone) just below Solomon's Throne on the first summit seven times, an auspicious number, with the perception that each slide granted an additional year of health. There is also a cave that infertile women would enter in order to be able to conceive a baby, and various rocks that pilgrims would rub against or touch in hopes of removing sores and pains. Many of these practices have persisted to the present day.
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| Pilgrims sliding down the Bel Tash in October 2011, Figure 2.9 from Webster's PhD thesis. |
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| View of Osh from atop Sulaiman-Too. |
Sulaiman-Too in Modernity
This tomb [of Asaf] is characterized best of all by a crude ignorance and superstition amongst Asiatic Muslims…The sheikhs of Osh were also numerous. Each year pilgrims come to worship at these sites with their kin from Kokand, Margilan, Andijon, and other cities of the Ferghana Valley. ~ Chokan Valikhanov c. 1855-1859, Sobranie sochinenii, v. 2, p. 368.For centuries the black shadow of Soloman’s Mountain eclipsed the light of reason of the faithful. ~ Iurii Gregor’evich Petrash, “Ten’ Suleimangory,” Nauka i religiia (Science and Religion, a Soviet journal), 1961.
In 1876 the Russian Empire forcefully annexed the Kokand Khanate. Half a century later, when the October Revolution germinated the seeds of what was to become the USSR, so too did Turkestan, as the Russians came to know their territorial holdings in Central Asia, fall under the Bolshevik gaze. Though the Bolsheviks initially promised the Central Asian Turks autonomy, the intrinsic commitment of Marxism-Leninism to state atheism would eventually catch up with the Soviet Republics of Transoxiana. The 1950s and the 1960s in particular saw an intense state-sponsored anti-religious campaign that targeted Sulaiman-Too with a ferocious resolve. Various Islamic buildings and mosques on the mountain were demolished; scientific institutions were founded on the base and summit of the mountain; the narrative that Sulaiman-Too's legends were invented by greedy and conniving sheikhs to make money; and the physical environs of the mountain were converted to secular use in much the same manner as a public park. Much of this damage is now irreversible. The modern visitor path to Suleiman-Too's five peaks overlap the ancient pilgrimage trail; there is a TV antenna and an observation lookout on the second and first peaks respectively; a frontier post with military barracks and apartments now sit near the Western foot of the mountain. Most irreparably, the Soviets created a two-storey restaurant in the natural cave of Rusha-Unkur. Today, this former restaurant has been converted into a museum. It is one of the main attractions for modern tourists to Suleiman-Too, and some regard it as an eyesore that contrasts disharmoniously with the natural environs of the mountain.
Sulaiman-Too's controversial cave museum.
Nevertheless, the often-inconsistent intervention of the Soviets proved to be futile in comprehensively drying up the trickle of pilgrims who continued to come from across Kyrgyzstan, and in even larger numbers from neighbouring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to perform austerities at the mountain. To many Central Asian Muslims who lived in the USSR, the pilgrimage to Sulaiman-Too was regarded as a worthy substitute for the Hajj to Mecca in times of war and instability in the Middle East. Indeed, many Kyrgyz people regard the pilgrimage to Sulaiman-Too as a second Hajj and an equally pious enterprise for those who lacked the means to go to Mecca. Perhaps it is worth commenting here on the durability of religious veneration with respect to the mountain. Regardless of how truthful, unscientific, or narratively inconsistent many of Sulaiman-Too's legends and ritual practices appear to be, they have endured. Not even the atheist state-apparatus of the mighty Soviet Union could do away with the traditions of mountain veneration. Much of the appeal of religious austerities comes in the form of social bonding over commonly held beliefs and traditions, and above all, its capacity to order and control one's perceived place in the world. This sense of communal solidarity and ritual efficacy goes beyond mere placebo. It is and has been an affectionally potent means for communities to set the boundaries of social behaviours and practices, and as a means of maintaining social cohesion.
Sulaiman-Too Mosque located at the southern foot of the mountain. It is a relatively recent construction, dating from around 2009.
Sulaiman-Too was designated as a UNSECO World Heritage Site in 2009, the only such site in all of Kyrgyzstan. Signage at the site under its new UNESCO management is provided in English, Russian, and Kyrgyz, with a clear focus towards attracting international and domestic tourists with a heavy emphasis on its historical and archaeological value and a general absence of signage with information regarding pilgrim rituals. Although the management of the site aims to be inclusive, the presence of Kyrgyz-only signage for Central Asian visitors, in line with the Kyrgyz Republic's recent shift towards a national Kyrgyz language-policy site, has tended to disparage and discredit Suleiman-Too's historical and ongoing influx of Tajik and Uzbek pilgrims. In spite of this, pilgrims from far afield still manage to learn about the sacred sites on the mountain and the various ritual practices they are to perform, thanks to an enduring tradition of hiring local mullahs to serve as pilgrim guides on the mountain. Our current epoch is a time of transition for Sulaiman-Too. It has only recently been incorporated into the fairly novel ethos of Kyrgyz nationalism. Representations of the mountain by its legitimate custodians continually shift with sociopolitical and ethnographic changes in this turbulent part of southern Kyrgyzstan, that has only so recently experienced ethnic violence between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek peoples. If the lessons of the Soviet experience are anything to go by, pilgrims to the mountain will no doubt continually adapt their practices and perceptions within these dynamic contexts.
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