Kiz-Bibi abode (18th century)

Half an hour's drive from Bukhara, where the oasis meets the desert, stands the Kiz-Bibi complex — a rare case of a Sufi retreat arranged for women. The eighteenth-century ensemble was built by Sadikhon, vizier of Mir-i Arab, in honour of Mastura-khanum.

Mastura-khanum, also called Kiz-Bibi, was a woman Sufi who, by tradition, one day vanished inside one of the retreat's cells. Local people hold that her spirit still lives here and guards the place. Another account says she was to be married against her will and, to escape it, went into the desert and lived long as a hermit. In time she found a gift for healing and helped women suffering from infertility.

The complex has three courtyards — a service yard, one for pilgrims and the so-called monastic one. On the grounds are Kiz-Bibi's mazar with a marble gravestone, a mosque-khanaka, a chilla-khana — an underground cell for the forty-day fast and solitary prayer — several kitchens, a bathhouse, hujra cells for pilgrims and rooms where the mentally ill were kept. The entrance is on the south side. The khanaka was built in stages and finished only by the eighteenth century, but it holds the same set of rooms as the medieval courtyard retreats, where Sufis could shut themselves off from the world entirely.

Women pilgrims still come from all over the country, hoping for motherhood and a settled family life. Three days in a cell, fasting, praying and alone, are said to lift the trouble that brought them. Men are strictly forbidden to enter.