Explore the Ancient Ruins of a Powerful Silk Road Kingdom in Tajikistan

Published December 15, 2023

9 min read

Right at the first sight, this rectangular meadow in the Pamir foothills of central Tajikistan might not catch your attention. However, there was a time when this ground shook with the thunder of galloping hooves.

Sitting on a broad saddle, high above the majestic Panj River, this meadow is thought to be an ancient arena for the Central Asian sport of buzkashi, or dead goat polo. The playing field was the centerpiece of a once sprawling settlement, a political and religious capital inhabited for centuries but now lost to history.

What the entire 15-hectare site adds up to, according to those responsible for its conservation, is the most important archaeological site in Tajikistan. It is a cornerstone of national efforts to bring back a distinct Tajik identity from the country’s fragmented history, and a potential attraction for travelers who are already intrigued by the legendary road that winds along the Panj Valley, known as the Pamir Highway.

Its rediscovery has been likened to Machu Picchu in terms of historical significance, if not outright grandeur. Archaeologists have named it Kala-i Kukhna, or Castle Karon, the fortress “located at a height.”

It was 2012 when Yusufsho Yakubov, chief archaeologist at the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, was called to Darvoz district to look into an odd heap of rubble above the village of Ruzvat, in the western outskirts of the Pamir Mountains. For centuries a crossroads of trade and empire, Tajikistan is filled with long-forgotten citadels and caravanserai built during the heyday of the Silk Road.

But Yakubov, a veteran scientist, now 87, immediately thought that they had stumbled upon something extraordinary. “For years the site had endured only as a rumor,” he told me in July, when I met him in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital. “I knew it was a special place within an hour of being there.”

As Yakubov’s team went to work on the mound, they began to unearth an intact building, around 20 feet square, its mud-brick walls topped with a dome. Examination led Yakubov to conclude that it was a “fire temple,” which once would have sheltered an eternal flame, a relic of the Zoroastrian religion that spread out of Persia, modern-day Iran, with the rise of the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century B.C.

Other discoveries soon followed. Ancient mausoleums freckled the neighboring hills. The excavation of a suspected water temple and observatory, alongside the remains of a substantial defensive wall, reinforced Yakubov’s belief that Karon might have been a place of special ceremonial prestige. Proof of winemaking and gold processing pointed to a previously thriving economy. Coins found near the fire temple date back to the second century A.D.

Karon sits at the western edge of Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), » …
Read More rnr