Archaeologists have discovered a submerged medieval city at the bottom of a salt lake in northeastern Kyrgyzstan.
This place was an important stop on one of the Silk Roads between China and the West during the Middle Ages. However, the city there was hit by a major earthquake in the 15th century and is thought to have sunk under water.
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submerged city
According to the Kyrgyz government, Lake Issyk-Kul is one of the deepest lakes in the world, reaching 2,300 feet (700 meters) below the surface in parts. There is no river outlet, so the saltiness is modest.
The researchers investigated four submerged sites near the northwest shore of the lake, ranging in depth from 1 to 4 meters. This place was called Tor Aigir and was inhabited mainly by Muslims during the Middle Ages.
“The monuments studied are cities or large commercial agglomerations in one of the important areas of the Silk Road,” archaeologist Valery Kolchenko, head of the expedition’s Kyrgyz research team, said in a statement.
“In the early 15th century, as a result of a terrible earthquake, the city sank under the waters of a lake…The tragedy may be comparable to Pompeii.”
The research team discovered the remains of several buildings made of kiln-fired bricks that are now submerged in water. This includes buildings that once contained stone mills, evidence that this was once a grain mill.
Also discovered were collapsed stone structures, wooden beams, and the remains of public buildings with exterior decorations that may have been mosques or Islamic schools known as madrassas.
medieval muslim cemetery
One of the underwater sites revealed the remains of a Muslim cemetery covering an area of about 14 acres (6 hectares), the equivalent of 11 soccer fields.
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The team recovered the remains of two of the dead from the cemetery and found that their faces were facing towards Mecca, which is now located in Saudi Arabia. This is a common practice in Muslim burials.
Archaeologists believe the cemetery dates back to the 13th century, when Islam was brought to the region by the Golden Horde, a Mongol state that ruled much of Central Asia from the 1240s to 1502.
According to the statement, the region had previously been ruled by the Karakhanids, a Turkic dynasty centered in Kyrgyzstan, since the 10th century.
Maxim Menshikov, expedition leader at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in a statement that Tor Aigir was a multicultural city when it was founded before the 13th century. “The people here practiced a variety of religions, including pagan Tengrianism, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity,” he says. But the introduction of Islam changed the character of the city, as people preferred to trade with other Muslims, he said.
Other remains of the sunken city have uncovered some medieval Islamic pottery, including a large, intact qum, or water jar, which researchers hope to salvage in a future expedition.
Three burials were also discovered nearby, but these are thought to have been in an earlier non-Muslim cemetery.
Researchers also discovered the remains of mud-brick buildings and conducted underwater drilling at the site to collect sediment cores that can be used to reconstruct the city’s developmental stages, the statement said.
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