Introduction to the built environment
Mankind functions within two types of environments—the natural and the built. The built environment—individual structures and the complex ways they are combined into settlements (camps, villages, towns, cities)— is the principal means for adapting to, coping with, and exploiting the natural environment (land, space, and climate). The built environment is also a way to create and organize local symbols representing underlying systems of belief (religious, economic, social, and political). In this module, we will look at the various ways the peoples of Central Asia have organized their surroundings over the course of the last two centuries in light of the natural environment and what they build to address their social, political, economic, religious, and esthetic needs.
Natural and built environments
Central Asia’s natural environment has historically placed tight constraints on human activity. Water is very limited: rainfall amounts to less than 10 inches a year (for comparison New York City gets an average of 48 inches) so snow melt and glacial melt provide much of the water for the region’s rivers. In order to make use of that water, Central Asian societies have created elaborate systems of irrigation which require continual maintenance and investment. The need to maintain and control the flow of water shapes the kind and scale of economic opportunity, and places limits on those opportunities.
Climate also shapes the built environment. What is called a continental climate (low precipitation and a fairly wide range of temperature) and the long history of herding livestock means the total land area of Central Asia is dominated by desert (about 75% of the region) and a virtual absence of forests. This in turn has resulted in little topsoil and therefore the need to artificially nourish the existing soil with water and nutrients. The lack of forests means wood for building construction is scarce. Instead, the predominant building material for permanent structures is clay-based (brick, both sun-dried and fired, and adobe) for roofs as well as walls and foundations.
The built environment is also a way to create and organize symbols representing local religious, economic, social, and political beliefs. We can better understand the history of Central Asia and add a human dimension often missing from narratives that focus on the activities of political organizations if we examine the kinds of structures people have built, whether for shelter, as symbols of their spiritual and societal beliefs, or as means of exploiting the economic potential of the natural environment.
Study plan
The political and social history of Central Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries took place within both a natural and a built environment. Although maps can provide a rendering of the natural environment and can locate the built environment—that is cities and towns, maps cannot convey the actual form of the built environment and its many components— homes and places for worship, business, leisure, government, and education.
The purpose of this section of the website is to give students the “props” for the stage on which human activity took place, not just the political activities that most historical studies like to emphasize. It can be used as an introduction to the other parts of the website so that students will have mental images of the structures and land and cityscapes within which the events of the 19th and 20th centuries unfolded. For example, if students are asked to read “The Village School” about Aini’s maktab, they then should familiarize themselves with the structure (a picture of which is on the “maktab” page) and then see what more they can learn about the building from the story. In that same book, Aini relates about his going to the Mir-i ‘Arab madrasa in Bukhara. Students should be asked to find the madrasa on the website and then using Google Earth locate it today. What does its location tell us about his life as a student? On reading the section of Burnes, Travel to Bokhara, where the Englishman passes Balkh, the student might then be asked to identify on the website a building he describes (the shrine of Abu Nasr Parsa). Students could be asked to follow the memoirs of the judge, Sadr-i Ziya (The Personal History of a Bukharan Intellectual) as they relate to the city of Bukhara, using the website and Google Earth as aids to orient themselves and locate his activities (page on court administration, e.g.)
The built environment pages should be used as a point of reference, as a guide to the subjects covered and not something that should be treated as complete in and of itself. Students should be encouraged to use it as a starting point to pursue their own research in the library or on the web. Afghanistan and the Soviet republics in Central Asia had very different histories in the 20th century. Afghanistan best preserves the look and feel of a 19th century pre-Westernized Central Asia and so the imagery used to illustrate the this section of the website comes disproportionately from Afghanistan.
Dealing with names
The continual influence of polyglot peoples through Central Asia has left us with a bewildering variety of spellings of names. Google Earth does its best to give alternate spellings of well-known names but here a few tips for the interested.
First the letter k and q are often used interchangeably for the original Arabic letter q�f . Hence Samarkand/Samarqand, Qandahar/Kandahar. kishlak/qishlaq (winter pastures for nomads) But Kabul is always Kabul because its first letter in the Arabic alphabet is k’f.
Uzbek, because it employs the Cyrilllic alphabet and is heavily influenced by Russian renders the long ‘a’ as ‘o’. Thus Bukhoro for Bukhara (also Bokhara) and Uzbekiston for Uzbekistan. The Arabic vowel ammah which in transliterating Arabic is usually rendered ‘u,’ under Persian influence is often transliterated in Central Asia as ‘o’ (hence Bokhara, Mohammad, and Kabol for Bukhara, Muhammad, and Kabul). These are a few of the problems when the Latin, Arabic, and Cyrillic alphabets are all in play as they are in Central Asia.