Zurmala Stupa

Seen from the road, Zurmala looks like a weathered clay tower standing alone among cotton fields. It is in fact the core of a Buddhist stupa raised in the 1st–2nd centuries AD, when Termez was a Kushan city. Its surviving height is about 13 metres, and it is generally counted among the oldest standing buildings in the country.

What it was

A stupa is a reliquary monument, a solid mound meant to be circled by pilgrims. Zurmala stood on a square platform, and the tower was originally faced with stone or fired-brick slabs, some of them decorated; excavations in the 20th century recovered fragments of this cladding. What remains is the mud-brick core, its layers clearly visible where wind and rain have cut into it.

Visiting

The stupa stands in open country between the modern city and Old Termez. There is little at the site beyond the tower itself and a fence, and climbing it is not allowed. Its interest lies in its age and in the landscape: in the low sun of early morning or late afternoon the clay turns gold and the scale of the original monument becomes easier to imagine. A short stop on the way to Kara-Tepe and Fayaz-Tepe is enough.