Archaeology in Central Asia was active following its conquest by the Russian Empire, but remains a relatively understudied area.

[4] There is another city named Sayram in Xinjiang, China located between Kucha and Aksu, which, according to local tradition, was founded by captives captured by the Qalmaqs.

[5] The oldest name of the city according to historical evidence is Isfijab (Espijâb, Isfījāb, Asfījāb), which remained until the Mongol conquest.

The Russian Orientalist N. S. Lykoshin suggested that Sayram's correct name was Sar-i ayyām, or 'Ancient of Days'.

It has a long history of commercial and political importance as a border town and has been the site of numerous conquests and reconquests.

[11] Some local historians have attempted to find proof of Sayram's prehistory in the holy book of the Zoroastrian faith.

[15] Islam was brought to Sayram and its neighboring cities by a detachment of Arabic and Arabic-speaking soldier-missionaries from the already converted lands to the south.

In 840 AD, the Samanid chief of Samarkand Nūḥ ibn Asad, wrested control of the city from the Turks.

Sayram was also the main contact between Samanid Islam and the Qaghan Turks of Turpan, Kashgar, and Kucha.

[18] Sayram is significant for maintaining a degree of independence from the Samanids, remaining a possession of the local Turkic dynasty.

Sayram was divided into three districts, like others of the time: qohandez (citadel), madīnah (inner town), and rabaż (suburb), the latter two being protected by walls.

There were four main gates to the inner town, each guarded by a ribat manned by ghāzīs (volunteer fighters for the faith) recruited from Bukhara and Samarkand.

The ruler of Sayram apparently also exercised some authority within the steppes, since Moqaddasi mentions that the "king of the Turkmen" at nearby rdū habitually sent presents to Asfījāb.

[22] In 1220, the Taoist monk Qiu Chuji left his home town of Shandong in northern China and traveled to Persia to present himself before Genghis Khan.

[26] Sayram's neighbor to the west was not so lucky, the doomed city of Otrar, also called Utrar or Farab, and the birthplace of Al-Farabi, which was utterly destroyed by the Mongol leader.

[22] ‘Abd al-Razzāq wrote that in 1410 the fortress of Sayram was besieged by Moghul forces, and by the end of the 15th century was given to Yunus Khan of Moghulistan, where his son was reigning in 1496.

During the Ming dynasty, envoy Chen Cheng was sent by the Yongle Emperor to the Timurid khanate and subsequently dedicated one chapter of his book A Record of the Barbarian Countries in the Western Region to Sayram.

[29] Toward the end of the Timurid power, in the middle of the 15th century, Sayram was raided regularly (along with Turkestan) by the Moghul amir Mir Haqq-Berdi Bekichek.

[31] Manṣūr Khān led an Uzbek force against the Kazakhs in 1522 in response to their raids from the region of Sayram into the Farghana.

The rise of the collection of Oirat clans into what became known as the Zunghar Khanate in the 1600s saw much of what is now southern Kazakhstan leave the control of the Kazakh Khans.

They were found to be prosperous by I. I. Geier, a local Russian journalist/historian writing in the first decade of the 20th century, though Sayram was still noted for its superior wheat, horse market, historical background, and many tombs.

At that time, the majority of modern-day Kazakhstan, including the steppe regions, were part of the separate Kirgizistan ASSR.

After this period of border drawing and redrawing, Sayram eventually became part of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

The population of over 40,000 is roughly 95% Uzbek, 3% Kazakh, and 1% Russian, with the remainder being Uzbek-speaking Azeris, Chechens and Tajiks.

There are no apartments in the city proper, and no buildings more than two stories high, allowing the skyline to be dominated by the domes of local minarets, mosques, and mausoleums, some more than 1,000 years old.

Sayram is reachable via a ten- to fifteen-minute bus, taxi, or marshrutka ride from Shymkent, which is host to an airport that also receives domestic flights from Kazakhstan's international hubs Almaty and Nur-Sultan.

As Muhammad's death drew near, he asked his followers who would take the stone of his holy date, a carrier of all Islamic knowledge, and give it to the next generation.

Hundreds of years later, as he passed through the small town of Isfijab, Arslan Baba [his title of respect][39] was stopped on the road by a young boy.

[40] Their order was known for its disdain for hypocrisy and also the inclusion of certain historic Central Eurasian traditions identified with Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism.

Their mausoleums are both major sites of pilgrimage today, drawing pilgrims from all over Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and the surrounding area.