In late 1999, I was Program Recruiter for ACCELS/ACTR in Kyrgyzstan for 4 months. During this short time, I was able to journey to the majority of the towns and cities by car. One of those small cities was called Naryn where the Naryn River, one of the head rives for the Syr Darya, flows. It is a beautiful city with a picturesque mountains scenes. I took many of the photos from the top of a minaret at the local mosque with the help of some young boys.
Naryn, Kyrgyzstan
Published: January 19, 2010Posted in: Countries, Kyrgyzstan, Naryn, Qeeboa
Hi. What kind of mosque is that? Or is it a tomb/shrine? What does it say above the entrance door? I know.
Clarence
It is the name of the mosque/meshit. I can’t tell from that angle of the name though. The Arabic above is the same name.
Hi. I figured it out! It says (in a funnily mis-spelled Arabic), “Hazrat-i Ali Mosque,” making it to be what I suspected it to be: an Ismaili Shia Mosque. Narin has been selected by the Ismaili High Council, headed by Imam Aga Khan, as one of the three locations for their “University of Central Asia”. The other location, Khorog, is in Tajikistan, and the third one in Kazakhstan, in the same Tien Shan mountains. I know for a fact that almost the entire population of Khorog is Ismaili Shia. I had no idea about Narin. But thanks to you and that strategically taken photo of the local mosque, it all makes sense now. Wow. Ismailis dominate all of the Tien Shan mountains, from Wakhan in Afghanistan to Narin in Kyrgyzstan, and on into Kazakh Tien Shan. This information has been so far totally unobtainable.
Thanks Kentai. You are the information hero! Any more photos of that mosque or others like it?
By the way, the very small letter in the Arabic writing says something in Kyrgyz that I can’t read because it is too small and so badly mis-spelled. After 70 years of Communism, I dont think any Kyrgyz knows how to spell in Arabic alphabet! Even the name of the mosque is mis-spelled!!