Ideas

On the road to Kazakhstan, the 'state of nomadic men'

A travel story retracing the exploits of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane

11 December 2025

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

According to a famous definition, the Silk Road was the space where 'a virgin can walk undisturbed with a gold plate on her head'. A condition that mainly occurred with the 'pax mongola', an oxymoron evoking the absence of turmoil, but only thanks to the terror inoculated by Genghis Khan and his successors in the vast space from the Mediterranean to China, razing cities to the ground, building towers of skulls and using defeated rulers as stepping stools. Something similar happened in Otrar. I arrive there after a half-day's journey from Šymkent, driving across a semi-desert plain. Sand devils, herds of camels and horses in the wild accompany the route under a vast sky criss-crossed by flocks of fast-flowing clouds. Otrar was one of the largest oases on the Silk Road.

Kazakhstan means 'state of nomadic men'

Today, all that remains are a few ruins and a remote-sounding name in Turkestan, the southern region of Kazakhstan, a state the size of Western Europe, but with a population of not even twenty million, where Mongol, Persian and Russian influences have stratified and now, following Stalin's deportations, more than a hundred ethnic groups live. Kazakhstan means 'state of nomadic men' and for millennia, this name has indicated a territory of people devoted to herding and transhumance under tents called yurts in a climate ranging from freezing to scorching hot.

The remains of the legendary Otrar blend in with the reddish soil, creating varying degrees of ruin, between dust and stone. Around a walkway, at the archaeological site, I see bones poking out. "They are human bones. During and immediately after the destruction of the city, people were no longer buried, but left where they fell,' the guide explains. Otrar was a caravan oasis, an aggregation of fortified structures beside the Syr Darya river, at the intersection of several Silk Road routes. One of these structures has been reconstructed and is entered between two towers through an imposing, crenellated gate. Outside the walls a caravan of camels laden with goods, led by a Bedouin in desert attire, waits to enter. They are all obviously sculptures because camels are now only for fermented milk, the Kazakhs dress European-style and transport goods by truck.

The destruction of Otrar in 1220 was due to the massacre of a caravan of 450 Mongol merchants bringing silks, silver and precious furs to the city and was the premise for the subjugation of Khorasmia, an Islamic empire that included the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan. The merchants often supplemented their income by working as spies, but their mission was also diplomatic and to attack them was an affront also because they were envoys of Genghis Khan. The governor of Otrar, Inalčuk, would be punished by pouring molten metal into all his orifices.

Among the most recognisable and colourful remnants of the Otrar ruins is a floor with circular basins and powder-blue tiles, among which a pattern of intertwined swastikas stands out. 'Swastika' is a Sanskrit term derived from 'swasti', 'well-being'. It is an auspicious symbol and, according to René Guénon, represents the rotation of the stars around the Axis Mundi. The Nazis, in their search for esotericism, adopted the symbol, 'rubbishing' it forever. "The Fall of Otrar", a sepia-toned film by Kazakh director Ardak Armiklulov, circulates freely on YouTube in fragments or full versions and looks like a classic of the Soviet avant-garde, but it dates back to the period of the collapse of the USSR (1991), and allows us to immerse ourselves in the atmosphere of the siege.

Tamerlan

Otrar is also known as the scene of the death of Timur-i-lang, Timur the lame, Tamerlane, the other great Mongol conqueror. Tried by now by a life of battles and revelry, he was about to launch himself on China with his endless nomadic army when he was struck down by the cold, which he had tried to soothe with a colossal hangover. He was brought back to Samarkand lifeless and buried in the grandiose mausoleum he had prepared for himself and his family. Here, Tamerlane ordered the construction of another mausoleum, that of the Sufi Ahmad Yasawi, who had been lying here since 1166. Today the city, which prospered after the fall of Otrar, is called Turkistan, more or less like the region where it is located, Turkestan. The construction of the mausoleum, interrupted with the death of Tamerlane in 1405 and resumed later, represents the beginning of the Timurid architectural style and one of its grandest and best-preserved expressions, and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2003.

From Otrar to Turkistan there are about sixty kilometres and I drive them through a landscape that is always semi-deserted. The façade of the mausoleum, where the great portal towers above the visiting pilgrims, is truly imposing and the turquoise dome the largest in Central Asia. With each conquest, Tamerlane would kidnap the most skilled craftsmen and make them work for him. Decorators, mosaicists and masons came from Persia. At the entrance to the mausoleum is the 'kazan', the cauldron around which the worshippers circle. In a more secluded space, under the eyes of a guardian, is the tomb of the mystic, to whose memory Tamerlane erected the mausoleum, restored after the Soviet decadence, but in a more respectful manner than was done by the Uzbeks in Samarkand. The association between kazan and temple, food and mysticism evokes a Sufi eucharist or the Zoroastrian rites of fire worship. During the period of Soviet atheism, the mausoleum was visited clandestinely by pilgrims at night. Under a carpet of stars and over a Persian carpet, people secretly prayed to Allah.

Not far away, a newly built complex evokes sandy-coloured Central Asian architecture, but houses restaurants, a 'Dodo' pizzeria and clothes shops amidst canals and Venetian-like docks ploughed by tourist boats with oriental motifs and dragon-like figureheads. A cross between a caravanserai and Las Vegas.

If Tamerlane's life, also due to the scarcity of sources (not unlike Genghis Khan), is shrouded in legend, Tamerlane's fame in the West is based on a few historical episodes, such as the defeat inflicted on the Turks by Sultan Bayazid, who was put in a cage and used as a stool to get on and off his horse according to legend. This is recounted by the famous orientalist Michele Bernardini in his biography of the "conqueror of the steppes", Tamerlane, (Salerno Editrice), a rich and compelling book, the result of years of research. The humiliation of the sultan, enemy number one of Christian Europe, made Tamerlane popular and hopes and mythologies, lyrical plays and pictorial representations flourished about him. It is difficult to separate them from reality if this in turn resembles legend, as the incipit of the biography shows and Bernardini himself tells me: the opening of Tamerlane's tomb in Samarkand, in June 1941, takes place just as the Wehrmacht invades the Soviet Union, as if in divine punishment following the desecration. What emerges is a massive man, over 170 centimetres tall, with legs deformed by his waist on horseback, one of which is shorter than the other.