Rewriting History

Tajikistan ranks 122^nd out of 140 countries in terms of cultural resources in the World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. This gem of information may have escaped you but it strikes me as surprising given that the country can boast over five thousand years of recorded history (see History blog from August). We’ve had the Persians, the Greeks, the Turks, the Chinese, the Arabs, the Samanids, the Mongols, the Imperial Russians, the Soviet Russians and even, more recently, some Scots.. But, true enough, there’s not an awful lot for the culture seeking tourist to see. It’s as if everyone cleaned up carefully on departure to leave no trace – or someone else did, later.

I can see three main reasons for this. Firstly, the country is devoid of signage, maps and interpretation to avoid the security risk of anyone knowing where they are, so it’s difficult to find the cultural sites. Secondly, the best tangible relics are probably all in St. Petersburg (and what’s left probably went to London). Thirdly, whole swathes of history are “no-go” areas. The Soviets were not keen on much before 1917; their story seems to be that nothing meaningful really happened before the triumph of the proletariat, unless it could be dug up and given a scientific label.

The new, imposing National Museum in Dushanbe is a case in point. It’s big and airy, and there’s stuff from 3,000 BC; then lovely frescoes from the 8^th century AD; then pictures of the current President meeting Tony Blair and Barak Obama. If you like glass cases with odd shaped bits of stone and metal, with the added excitement of indecipherable labels in cyrillic, then this is your place. But what happened  between the stone age and Tony Blair?

Then there’s the National Museum of Antiquities, which is a much older building where they keep older bits of stone in older glass cases. This does house the world famous sleeping Buddha of Adjina-Tepe however. Excavated in 1966, it’s 13 metres long and over 1500 years old, the largest Buddha in Central Asia. It’s very impressive.

Sleeping Buddha

I exaggerate about the dearth of sites and artefacts a bit of course but it does seem that successive waves of rulers have either eliminated the past or rewritten it to fit their present. We found Lenin (below) for example on a bit of waste ground behind an office in a small town called Aini. This revisionism makes you nostalgic for dog-eared school history text books describing the Tudors and the Stuarts. (Though we’re not completely innocent given our own reinterpretation of history for the small screen. The recent series on The Tudors certainly revealed more than I learned at university).

Yesterday's Hero

Tajikistan is a new, old country… History is now being rewritten again, this time to create a national identity around two figures from safe berths in the distant past, Abu Abdollah Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki and Isma'il ibn Ahmad Somoni.

Rudaki is acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of modern Persian literature, and by modern we mean here 9^th century AD. He was a singer and a poet and a royal favourite of the Samanid dynasty but it’s difficult to tell how good he really was as most of his reputed 1.3 million verses have been destroyed long since. We have to rely a bit on hearsay so there’s not much in the museums. That’s Kate below getting inspiration from him in the park (a funny way to get inspiration you might think)..

Kate and Rudaki

Ismail Somoni  was the most famous ruler of the Samanid dynasty referred to above. He built up Bukhara as one of Islam's most glorious cities, attracted scholars, artists, and doctors of law into the region, developed the economy and organized a powerful army to extend his empire. That’s his modest new statue below. We also have somoni as the national currency, Peak Somoni  as the highest mountain, Somon Air as a national airline etc. etc.

Ismail Somoni

There’s a lot more rich heritage out there amongst the people of the country that is being suppressed however. I feel this can’t be good though I’m not sure how important it is. At least we don’t have people bleating on about historical injustices and fanning the flames of intolerance and prejudice, but where are the lessons from the past to guide the present?

There’s one thing for sure, we need a bit more than the lost verses of Rudaki to build up cultural tourism. Did Genghis and Stalin realise the damage they were doing to the future of the tourism industry when they rampaged around central Asia? I think not, and the new history should hold them to account.