Turkestan, Kazakhstan

Landsat satellite photo of Hazrat-e Turkestan

Hazrat-e Turkestan is a town situated in Southern Kazakhstan near the Syr Darya, on the Trans-Aral Railway between Ak-Mechet (Perovsk) to the north and Tashkent to the south. It is normally known today simply as Turkestan, and was originally called Yasi.

The name Hazrat-e Turkestan literally means "the Saint (or Blessed One) of Turkestan" and refers to Khoja Ahmad Yasavi, the great Sufi Shaikh of Turkestan, who was born here at the turn of the 11th century AD, and is buried in the town. In the 1390s Timur erected a magnificent domed Mazar or tomb over his grave, which is without doubt the most significant architectural monument to be found anywhere in Kazakhstan.

Throughout its history Turkestan has been a border town, lying as it does on the fringes of the settled Perso-Islamic oasis culture to the South, and the world of the Turko-Mongol Steppe Nomad to the North. Accordingly at times it has been an important Kazakh political centre, and at others a frontier town under the control of the Khanates further South.

When it fell to the Russians in 1863 it was under the suzerainty of the Khanate of Kokand. Turkestan was in the Syr-Darya Oblast of the Governor-Generalship of Russian Turkestan. When the Tsarist regime fell in 1917-18 it was briefly part of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic before being incorporated into the new Kazakh SSR in 1924.