Science and Culture in the Samanid
period
Many advantages attracted scientists
and artisans to Bukhara: its privileged status as
the capital, a rich and gorgeous royal court, the
large number of high officials who patronized art
and science — as the Samanid emirs did. Bukhara
of the Samanid period was rightly considered to be
an "abode of glory, a meeting place for eminent
people of the epoch". Dozens of poets who wrote
in Arabic enhanced the creative life of Bukhara in
the reign of the Samanids. Accomplishments in Tadjik-Persian
poetry are associated with the great Rudaki, who enjoyed
the patronage and bounties of the Samanid vazir Balami.
Rudaki was the best but not the only poet in Bukhara
who wrote verses in Persian.
Among the numerous scholars who lived in the Samanid
capital, the most eminent one was Abu Ali ibn Sina
(Avicenna), a great physician and philosopher, a native
of a village near Bukhara.
In the epoch of the Samanids, studies were published
to illuminate the past of Bukhara. Some of them were
lost, perhaps, for ever. Fortunately, History of Bukhara
has survived. This book was written for the Samanid
Mukh ibn Mansur (943-954) by the native of Narshakhi,
Abu Bakr Mohammed ibn Djafar Narshakhi. This work
enjoyed great popularity and was reprinted, added
to, and rewritten many times (up to the nineteenth
century). In 963 Mukhammad Balami, vizir of Abdulmalik
ibn Nukh wrote his voluminous universal history, rewritten
later by the Arabian-speaking author, Tabari. There
is important data in the Bala-mi's book, which the
edition of the Tabari's work does not contain.
Another vizir of the Samanid dynasty, Mukhammad Djaykhani,
who ruled the state during the childhood of Nasr ibn
Akhmad, left us works on all the sciences. He is famous
mostly as the author of a work on geography which
was, according to a saying of his contemporary Masudi,
"the book that describes the world and contains
stories about the world with its rarities, cities,
capitals, seas, rivers, peoples, their dwellings,
and also other amazing and interesting stories."
Regrettably, this work did not survive.
As one can see from all of the above, the state high
officials were not merely patrons of science and art,
but participated themselves in creative life of Bukhara.
Bukhara comprised scholars and literati from all over
the Samanid state as well as from other countries.
Mohammed ibn Salikh al-Kakhtani, lawyer and expert
in khadises ( tales about actions and sayings of Mukhammad
the Prophet), left his native country (Spain) and
travelled much around many countries, discontent with
the knowledge he has got in Egypt, Mecca, Syria, Iraq,
Khamadan, Isphahan, Hishapur and Merv. Finally, his
craving for knowledge led him to Samarkand, and from
there to Bukhara where he settled until his death
in the late tenth century. Perhaps, it was in this
city that Mukhammad al-Kakhtani found such a concentration
of knowledge about Islam like nowhere else in the
world.
Under the Samanids, Bukhara appeared to be the center
of religious sciences and a glorious pillar of Islam.
It was the city where Mukhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari
was born. He was a famous ninth century expert in
khadises who glorified the very name of Bukhara all
over the Islamic world. Many Samanids paid their due
to studies of khadises: from Ismail. Akhmad himself
to his father and grandfather; and also their officials,
for instance, Faik28. The Samanid emirs esteemed religious
authorities so highly that they were the only subjects
granted the right not to kiss the ground in the face
of a king. It was in Bukhara that the Fardjek Madrasah
(institution of higher ecclesiastical education) was
established in the tenth century. This Madrassah,
destroyed by fire in 937, was the first such educational
institution in the entire Islamic world.
To comprehend what Bukhara symbolized for people of
that time, it is helpful to hear a fable included
in a book of either the late tenth or the early eleventh
centuries.
"Having lost a donkey, some citizen of Bukhara
betook himself to look for his animal. So, having
crossed the Djeykhun, he continued to search at every
inn and bazaar all over Khorasan, Tabaristan and Iraq.
On completing his difficult homecoming and fruitless
roaming, he looked in his stable and, suddenly, found
his lost animal". The moral of this fable is
that there is no sense in wandering abroad, far from
home, if goodness is near at hand. The fable is meant
to apply especially to Bukhara: to abandon Bukhara
in searches of either worldly profit or knowledge
— or anything else — is a ridiculous action,
just like to look for one's donkey at the end of the
world. Interestingly, the fable was included in a
book written by Abu Bakr Khamadine, who did not come
from Bukhara and had not ever been to Maverannakhr
or even to Central Asia as far as we know.
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