PEACE TO YOUR TEMPLE: one of the oldest Christian churches is in Turkmenistan
August 07, 2017 | 08:50 |1792
Among the thousands of archeological and architectural monuments of Turkmenistan, there is one absolutely unique object that not only tourists, who visit our country, know nothing about, but also the most of the Turkmen people. What kind of palace was it? At first glance, these are absolutely plain clay ruins of a small building located right by the road leading from the city of Bayramali to the north, towards the Karakum River. Since old times, local residents have called it Kharaba-kyoshk, which in literal translation from Turkmen means "Ruins of the palace." People do not remember anything about it. There are no any legends that would be somehow attached to this place. Although it seems as if it has ... [caption id="attachment_679" align="aligncenter" width="1202"]Ruslan MURADOV
View from the wall of Kharaba-kyoshk on the Dujechyoken hill[/caption]
Not far from Kharaba-kyoshk, just three hundred meters above the flat plain, stands a huge hill, square in plan, which is known as Dujechyoken (Camel's Shelter). Turkmens called such massive hills, strewn with fragments of pottery ceramics, "depe". These are the collapsed ruins of ancient fortress cities or once impregnable castles that stood in the center of small settlements of the ancient era and the early Middle Ages. Their original names are forgotten. It is very difficult to judge their age without archaeological excavations. Only a few monuments have been thoroughly studied in the past century, but now we know enough about them to talk about the era when they were erected. For what and for how long they have been used.
Kharaba-kyoshk - one of them...
In 1951, this monument was discovered by a special detachment of the South Turkmenistan Archeological Complex Expedition (UTAKE) headed by Galina Anatolyevna Pugachenkova, at that time - a young specialist, and later - an academician, doctor of architecture, professor at Strasbourg University.
Her name is known to everyone who is interested in history and archeology, ancient and medieval architecture and the fine arts of Central Asia. The scientific legacy of G.Pugachenkova includes four dozens of monographs and several hundreds scientific articles. It was she, who examined a rather unusual for this area construction and came to the conclusion that it was the earliest type of a Christian temple - the basilica.
The first basilicas (in translation from the ancient Greek "Basil's house", that is, the king) appeared, apparently, in Greece. This term stood for a rectangular-shape structure with one hall – more long than wide. In the II century BC, the basilicas were built in Rome.
"The purpose of such buildings was to serve as a place of judicial shipments and trade," wrote the famous Russian archaeologist, Professor N.V. Pokrovsky, who in 1910 answered the question: "Where does this type of Christian church come from?"
The most common both in the epoch of the formation of this religion, and during its heyday in Western Europe, the Roman basilica was very convenient for the meetings of the first Christians. When the new religion won polytheism, becoming the state religion in the era of the emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian churches looked like pagan buildings.
[caption id="attachment_680" align="aligncenter" width="1227"]
Roman basilica[/caption]
Many people today are surprised and even shocked by the fact that Christianity in the East and, in particular, in Central Asia took root much earlier than in Europe and in Russia. Meanwhile, historians are well aware that the emergence of Christians in the territory of modern Turkmenistan is associated with the Parthian era. Probably, this happened after the year of 64 from the Nativity of Christ, when mass repressions in the Roman Empire fell on the followers of the new religion.
Biblical legends tell that in a few decades after the execution of Jesus, Saint Andrew the First-Called preached among the Scythians, and the Word of Christ was delivered St. Parthia and India by the Saint Apostle Thomas. There is also a legend that at the descent of the Holy Spirit to the apostles, among the peoples who gathered there in Jerusalem, the first Parthians who arrived with gifts for the worship of the infant Jesus were the Parthians (in the Gospel they are “Magi”, they are also “Zoroastrians”).
In the II century, the flow of Christian missionaries to Parthia intensified. Preaching among nomads achieved success. The 196th year document in Syriac indicates that some people living near the Oks River (Amu Darya) adopted Christianity.
The first Christian community in Merv was recorded in the III century. According to the legend, Christians built 365 temples in the Merv area. Archaeologists confirm that Christians lived there from the III to the VI century, although several times they were persecuted by Zoroastrian priests.
A so-called "oval" building was excavated in the settlement of Gyaur-kala - the oldest part of Merv. Apparently, in the IV century it was a large Christian monastery.
In the fifth century, when Nestorianism - the teachings of Bishop Nestorius - and, as a reaction to it, Monophysitism arose in the capital of Byzantium - Constantinople (Istanbul), the Nestorians and monophysites were expelled from the empire and moved far to the east, reaching Merv, which was a part of the Sassanid state, who professed Zoroastrianism. After several years of struggle for the influence on people, the Nestorians occupied the leading position there and formed a bishopric, which in 420 was transformed into a metropolitanate.
G.Pugachenkova reasonably suggested that if there was a large number of Nestorian communities in the Mersk Oasis, one of them, apparently, was grouped in the town, that is now called Dujechyoken, which grew up around the castle of a rich landowner. Kharaba-kyoshk, built in the V-VI centuries in the traditional form of the basilica, was, of course, closely connected with this town.
When 60 years later, there was a small excavation there, G.Pugachenkova’s guess found another convincing confirmation: among the objects found was a massive bronze Nestorian cross. Now it is kept in the exposition of the Mary Museum of Local History.
[caption id="attachment_681" align="aligncenter" width="368"]
Nestorian bronze cross from Kharaba-kyoshk[/caption]
Hardly this church stood in an open field, as it is now. The local landscape has changed for a long time: shady gardens have completely disappeared, which, judging by historical chronicles, were famous in ancient times in Merv and surrounding villages. The monumental architecture, though entirely created from clay, has survived centuries.
This raw building, almost fifty meters long and about ten meters wide, consists of one single spacious hall with an altar part (apse) in the end wall. Once the building was covered by large arches, but after 1,500 years only the lower parts of the walls were preserved.
Such a layout Christians in Merv used to build their church, because it is related to the nature of their cult practices. The construction of the Kharaba-kyoshk is entirely performed in the local construction tradition. G.Pugachenkova also found out that such a compact and solid building was used for at least five centuries.
This is evidenced by the traces of numerous repairs and, of course, finds of ceramic and bronze products of later eras, up to the XII century. By that time, there were no Christian communities in Merv, and their reconstructed church apparently performed some other functions.
[caption id="attachment_682" align="aligncenter" width="1312"]
Kharaba-kyoshk in 1951[/caption]
Today there are very few temples of the early Christian period in the world - they were preserved mainly in the Middle East and Asia Minor - therefore the interest of specialists in the Kharaba-kyoshk is quite understandable. A few years ago, this monument - the only one of its kind in the whole of Central Asia - was the topic of a special project of the National Directorate of Turkmenistan for the Protection, Study and Restoration of Historic and Cultural Monuments and the Ligabue Research Center (Italy), which received sponsorship from the Government of the District of Venice.
The official ceremony of the presentation of the project Kharaba-kyoshk took place in this famous city. It was covered by Italian mass media as another concrete step towards the development of the Turkmen-Italian cooperation in the field of culture.
[caption id="attachment_683" align="aligncenter" width="990"]
Turkmen-Italian expedition to Kharaba-kyoshk, 2011[/caption]
The project was initiated by Professor Gabriele Rossi-Osmida, who worked for ten years in Turkmenistan at the excavations of Gonur-depe. According to the Italian architect-restorer Stefano Trakanelli, who spent three weeks managing the field works on Kharaba-kyoshk, time ruined the monument. The remains of the building can tell a lot about the culture of the great city of Merv in the pre-Islamic era.
That is why the important task of restorers is to preserve this relic for future generations as carefully as possible. This topic acquired special relevance at the end of the twentieth century, when the whole complex of Merv monuments was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
