Chashma-Ayub

Chashma-Ayub means "Job's spring". Legend tells that the prophet Ayub, the biblical Job, came to this place in a time of drought and struck the ground with his staff, and a spring of pure water rose. The water still flows, and many visitors consider it healing.

A building in layers

The shrine grew over several centuries. Its oldest parts are thought to date from the 12th century, and the site was revered as a burial place long before; among those laid to rest here is an 11th-century scholar of hadith. The main hall with its conical, tent-like dome bears an inscription of 1380, from the reign of Timur, and is usually attributed to craftsmen brought from Khorezm after his campaigns there; that pointed dome, typical of Khorezm, appears nowhere else in Bukhara. Further work followed under the Shaybanid khan Abdullah II in the 16th century. The result is a long, uneven building of several chambers, each under its own dome.

The water museum

Inside is a small museum on the history of Bukhara's water supply: the canals, the pools such as Lyabi-Hauz, and the water carriers who once brought drinking water to every house, as well as the problems of disease and shortage that led the Soviet authorities to fill in most of the pools. It is a useful key to the city you have been walking through.

How to experience it

Chashma-Ayub stands at the edge of Samanid Park, a three-minute walk from the Samanid Mausoleum, and the two are usually visited together. A modern memorial to the hadith scholar Imam al-Bukhari stands close by. Stay with bottled water rather than drinking from the spring.