A short, shady walk north-east from here, past a stretch
of ruined city wall beyond a pond on the left, is Chashma Ayub, the Spring
of Job, where curative water miraculously gushed from the desert at the
Old Testament prophet's behest. The spring is still there and a mazar (shrine,
not mausoleum) was built over it in the 12th century. It was rebuilt in
the 1380s, according to an inscription over the entrance, with cells, dormitories
and dining rooms for pilgrims and dervishes. The large and incongruous
conical dome was designed by architects brought from Khorezm by Tamerlane.
Nowadays there are un-house-trained doves inside, and an exhibition on
the Amu-Bukharski Canal. You are encouraged to drink of the Spring of Job,
which now comes out of a tap.
The entrance to the new kolkhoznaya bazaar is opposite
Chashma Ayub and not far from the site of the old slave market (vaguely
located by Soviet literature 'beyond the Registan'). It opened at dawn
on Mondays and Thursdays for three hours only, until the Russians forced
the abolition of slavery in the late 19th century. Slaves were only exhibited
here; deals were struck in the traders' caravanserais. The modern bazaar
is good for Uzbek snacks and has a wall-less but shady chai-khana.
 A
4-km section of ruined city wall comes to the edge of the bazaar. Bukhara's
first defences were built in the mid-9th century, reinforced in the 12th
and 13th, destroyed by the Mongols and rebuilt by the Sheibanids. What
survives is a section of the inner wall, all 13 km of which was intact
when Alexander Burnes visited in the 1830s. Built of packed clay faced
with adobe brick, it stood 11 metres high, tapering towards the top from
its massive base. Behind the battlements was a firing gallery, and rounded
buttresses enabled the defenders to pour lateral fire on an attacking force.
Despite these defences, the walls were no match for the Bolshevik artillery
which reduced them to their present ruinous state in 1920.
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