Visiting shrines in Uzbekistan (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
Rise from behind the hill, transform the stones
To rubies and the sour grapes to wine!
— Rumi
In a post yesterday, I looked at prayer stones left behind at Sufi shrines in Turkmenistan. But to leave a prayer or wish at the side of a shrine using stones, the stones don’t need to be leaning up against one another–they can be stacked on top of one another too–like in the photo above. When I arrived at the ruins of this medieval madrassa in Uzbekistan, which was nestled in a cemetery of turquoise-domed shrines, I was surprised by the large number of stones stacked at my feet like tiny towers, as far as my eye could see. When I did conservation work this summer in Central Asia, this ritual posed a preservation problem–since stones were being pulled from the very shrines we were trying to protect…
