Hazrati Imam Complex

Hazrati Imam is the part of Tashkent worth leaving the modern avenues for. The ensemble grew around the grave of Abu Bakr Muhammad Qaffal al-Shashi, a scholar and Quranic authority buried in 976 in the Bogi-Keykaus garden by the city wall. The spot became venerated at once; a mausoleum went up over the grave in the sixteenth century, and the quarter took the name Hast Imam — the Great Imam.

The oldest buildings date from the sixteenth century: the Barak Khan madrasah with two mausoleums built into it and a library of Eastern manuscripts. Opposite stands the Tillya Sheikh mosque of 1856-57, raised under the Kokandi Mirza Ahmad Kushbegi, with a square winter prayer hall, an ayvan for summer prayers, two minarets and panjara window screens carved in ganch.

The square's great relic sits in the museum opposite the Barak Khan madrasah, built in 2007 on the site of the former Muy-Muborak madrasah. It is the Quran of Caliph Uthman of the mid-seventh century, written on dressed deer hide; brown marks on some pages are held by tradition to be the caliph's blood. The book lay for centuries in the treasuries of Medina, Damascus and Baghdad, reached Maverannahr under the Timurids, was taken to St Petersburg in 1869, returned to Tashkent in 1924, and passed to the Muslim Board in the nineties. Beside it are more than 22,000 religious books.

The ensemble also holds the al-Bukhari Islamic Institute and the Hazrati Imam mosque, built in 2007 to sixteenth-century canons. The restoration of that year tightened up the old buildings and landscaped the grounds; storks arrive in spring and stay through summer.

The buildings are lit at night, and from a distance the square reads like a silhouette out of an Eastern book — the best hour for photographs.