COURTROOM AND TRIBUNAL

On the right as you enter the Tash Khauli palace, a corridor leads to the audience hall, or ishrat khauli. The black carriage on display at the end of the corridor is a gift from Nicholas II to his eastern vassal, the last khan of Khiva, Asfandiar Khan. The latter was suffering from a "shameful" disease, and his physician told him that the only way to cure himself was to consume a virgin... So the carriage circulated the city in search of prey. The locals nicknamed him "the black death".

The courtroom is a square courtyard flanked on the south by a single-column iwan, decorated in the same admirable style as the harem, again the work of Abdullah Djinn, the genius who also decorated the Pakhlavan Makhmoud mausoleum. In the past, two yurt sites were used to accommodate guests in winter.

Wandering through a maze of corridors, you come to the court room, or arz khauli. And for those who haven't admired the majolica in the iwan of the harem or the reception hall, those in thearz khauli offer a breathtaking opportunity to catch up. The court had two exits, one for the acquitted, the other for the condemned. The khan sometimes received guests in a yurt placed on a brick elevation in the middle of the courtyard.

At the far end of the courtyard, a small door leads into dark galleries where doors and columns salvaged from various Khiva monuments are displayed in a jumble.