ZINDAN, EMIR'S PRISONS

Built in the ^18th century, these notorious prisons tried to rival hell on earth. On Fridays, a day of prayer and mercy, certain prisoners were freed from the chains that encircled their necks. On this day, relatives or sympathetic passers-by could bring them food for the week. The most dreaded punishment was not death, but a 6 m-deep well, the "black well", where the condemned were forgotten in the midst of rats and all manner of insects. Miraculously, some captives managed to survive for several months.

In 1839, an Englishman, Lieutenant Charles Stoddart, in charge of concluding an alliance with Emir Nasrullah, tasted the distress of the "black well" for having disrespected the Emir. He was criticized for riding when he should have been walking, and for walking when he should have been crawling! And as his letter of mission did not come from Queen Victoria herself... he spent six months in the pit before earning his pardon by converting to Islam. He remained a prisoner, however, but gained the freedom to move around the city and stay in his own apartments. In September 1840, a captain of the Bengal Light Infantry, Arthur Conolly, came to enquire about his compatriot's fate and attempt to rescue him. Shortly after his arrival, the British army was defeated in Afghanistan at the Battle of Khyber Pass. The Emir, in a position of strength and convinced by his advisors that Conolly was a spy, had the two men thrown into the infamous well. Back to square one! In June 1842, when Conolly refused to convert to Islam, the two English officers were executed in Registan Square, where their bodies probably still lie. Nothing is known of their burial, but it is common knowledge that Stoddart, who had converted to Islam, was beheaded or had his throat cut... without suffering. Conolly was probably not so lucky. The story is known thanks to a notebook written by Conolly and found by the Reverend Joseph Wolff in 1845. Hopkirk's book, The Great Game, recounts in detail the misadventure of these two heroic victims of the "great game". Re-enactments with mannequins illustrate their detention. Outside the prisons is the tomb of the saintly Kuchar Ata, overlooked by the traditional perch where prisoners were allowed to perform religious rites.