Taraz
— — a Silk Road city the steppe kept.
Not only on a wall.
“An old Silk Road stop on the Talas River, on the route between Samarkand and the Tien Shan passes. The Karakhanids ruled here in the eleventh century and left mausoleums of brick and carved terracotta. The Mongols took the city in 1220, and the name slept for centuries under Aulie-Ata and Dzhambul before returning in 1997. The bazaar still keeps the old function.
Taraz, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Taraz sits in the Jambyl Region of southern Kazakhstan, on the right bank of the Talas River and about ten kilometres from the Kyrgyz border. The population is around 360,000, making it the regional capital and one of the country's oldest continuously inhabited cities. The city stands at roughly 610 metres on the steppe edge, with the foothills of the Kyrgyz Alatau visible to the south. The Tashkent–Almaty highway runs through, and a daily rail service connects to both Tashkent and Almaty.
Two eleventh-century Karakhanid mausoleums anchor the local cultural geography. The Aisha Bibi mausoleum, eighteen kilometres west of the city near the village of the same name, is faced in elaborate carved terracotta and is the only surviving structure of its kind in Central Asia. The Karakhan mausoleum stands in the city itself, rebuilt in the early twentieth century on the original Karakhanid foundation. Both are protected under Kazakhstan's national heritage list and draw pilgrims as well as visitors from across the region.
The city has carried at least four names. Founded as Talas in the early centuries CE, it appears in Chinese and Arab records as a Silk Road waystation. In 751 the nearby Battle of Talas decided the eastern reach of the Abbasid Caliphate against Tang China, and is traditionally credited with spreading papermaking westward. The Mongols destroyed the city in 1220. The Russian Empire took the ruins in 1864 and called the new town Aulie-Ata; the Soviets renamed it Dzhambul in 1938; Taraz returned in 1997.