# Lyabi-Hauz: Bukhara's cafe pond

> A 1620 stone-lined reservoir surrounded by mulberry trees and three religious buildings. The city's outdoor living room, day and night.

Lyabi-Hauz ("by the pond") is the last surviving public pool in the old city of Bukhara. Medieval Bukhara had over 100 such **hauz** — brick-lined reservoirs that stored irrigation water and doubled as social spaces. Most were filled in during 1920–30s Soviet public-health campaigns; Lyabi-Hauz was spared.

Three buildings frame it:
- **Kukeldash Madrasa** (1568) — the largest in Central Asia when built, with 160 student cells.
- **Nadir Divan-Begi Khanaka** (1620) — Sufi lodge on the west side.
- **Nadir Divan-Begi Madrasa** (1622) — decorated with the Bukharan phoenix (Simurgh) motif holding a fawn, an unusually figurative design in Islamic art. Locals will tell you this violated Islamic aniconism and was allowed only because the Divan-Begi's court poet convinced the imam that the birds were carrying "the sun of Islam" in their beaks.

Old mulberry trees on the pond's edges date to the 1620s founding — verified by dendrochronology.

By day the pond hosts open-air cafés (order shurpa and non). By evening it becomes a promenade with buskers and, in summer, dance performances.

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Keywords: Lyabi-Hauz, Bukhara, pond, hauz, madrasa, Nadir Divan-Begi
Updated: 2026-08-15
Category: destinations
URL: https://uzbguidedtours.com/kb/kb-bukhara-lyabi-hauz