Fayaz-Tepa

Fayaz-Tepa is a Buddhist temple and monastery complex a kilometre north-west of the Old Termez site. The Tashkent archaeologist L. I. Albaum found it in 1963, and it was named for R. F. Fayazov, director of the Surkhandarya regional museum, who did much for its study from 1968 onwards.

In that same year a striking sculpture of the first to third centuries was found by the temple entrance. Time and looting had treated it badly, but the surviving head, parts of the body and the scale made it clear: this was a Buddha. The find is now in the Museum of the History of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.

The complex covers about fifteen hundred square metres. At the centre is a vihara temple, with the monastery around it and service buildings along the perimeter; nineteen rooms in all, with deep niches. A fragment of a haloed Buddha head survives by the sanctuary door.

In the ninth century the ruins had become an ordinary-looking mound — and a hoard of silver Umayyad and Abbasid dirhams was hidden in it.

Fayaz-Tepa now works as an open-air museum, with a research centre attached. Come early or towards evening: there is almost no shade.