Water Supply History Museum

About

The museum occupies the Chashma-Ayub mausoleum in the north-west of Bukhara, a building raised and rebuilt between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Its name means spring of Ayub and points to a legend: the prophet Ayub — the biblical Job — struck the ground with his staff and clean water rose in a year of drought.

The first structure was founded under the Karakhanids in the twelfth century and extended later. Under Amir Timur it took on features of the Khorezm school, including a conical dome that is unusual in Bukhara. No burials were ever found inside; the spring, however, survives and is still venerated.

The exhibition deals with how the city and the oasis handled water over the centuries. Cases hold leather water skins, clay and copper vessels, ceramic pipes and other items from the tenth to the twentieth century used to store and move water.

The museum belongs to the Bukhara State Museum-Reserve and neatly combines three threads: architecture, city legend, and the very practical history of Central Asian water systems.