National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Across Asia : vol.1 |
Ahror Khan, the Russian aksakal at Turfan, with servants and Sart visitors. |
C. G. MANNERHEIM
Ahror Khan, the Russian aksakal at Turfan, with servants and Sart visitors.
mosque was built is marked on a black stone standing against a wall with an inscription in Turki and Chinese. My companion pretended that he was able to decipher the inscription, which I doubt, and asserted that the building was 180 years old. On the left, about 2/3 of a mile from the road, we caught a glimpse of the white cupola of a mosque embedded in verdure. This was the Appag Khoja mosque built in memory of a visit the great man paid Turfan. About 2/3 of a mile further east we passed the Sugul Khoja mazar on the left, a mosque-like building and immediately after, on the right, a similar one standing on the edge of the cultivated land and seemingly guarding it against the sand and gravel of the desert.
Here a barren plain begins, its surface being strewn as far as we could see with karys wells surrounded by mounds of gravel and sand. A small chain of red mountains coming from the E appeared on the left at a distance of a few miles. The village of Bujluk, smiling in its verdure, was visible at the mouth of a gorge. A narrow belt of green extends from it across the dark plain of gravel until it reaches the Turfan oasis. On the right the oasis continues in the shape of a narrow tongue that seems at a distance to run parallel to our road. Beyond it is a streak of silver, which could easily be taken for the sparkling surface of a lake, but is said to be only a large deposit of salt. (No one has heard of Lake BDdjanta and I am assured that between Choltagh in the S and our road there is no large sheet of water.) Choltagh rises in the distance beyond the streak of white. The löss had turned to sand strewn with gravel and finally pure sand in long undulations in a SE—NW direction.
Almost io miles from the edge of the oasis stand the massive ruins of some kind of tower among the sand dunes of the desert. It is hard to guess what the building was. Now it is a huge block of clay rising from the sand. The name of the ruin is Kotu Yoghan — or, in translation, »the big rump», which sounds much less distinguished. A small sarai lies
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