My guide book showed a Jewish Cemetery and Synagogue on the town map. I was curious to explore these places and was surprised to know that Jews had settled this far east (as we are never taught anything about Central Asia). I was told my hotel is actually in the Jewish Quarter and these places were not far. My hotel itself was a converted Jewish merchants home.

Jews had always played an important role in the success of all Islamic Empires and were welcomed and held positions of high office. The Turkish Sultan had even sent ships to rescue the Jews from Spain after the reconquest by the Spanish and expulsion of all non Christians.

The Jewish Synagogue had been constructed when a widow allowed her home to be demolished to make way for the pond at Lyab-i-Hauz Square (see previous entry). The Synagogue is not an actual tourist site and not part of the tour but I asked my guide to show me where it was.

I didnt know if we would be allowed in but after the guide spoke to the person inside he was happy to welcome me in and switched all the lights on. He also said it was ok to take photographs.

He showed me photographs of when Hillary Clinton and Madelaine Albright had visited, which I wouldnt have paid attention to since the writing was all Russian.

They did in fact have some souvenir items for sale such as traditional music so they do have visitors here. My driver Anvar had told me that many Jews had immigrated to Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union and many Israelis now return to visit Uzbekistan to revisit family homes and trace their history.

As the curator and another person there seemed to be pensioners I wondered if all the young people had left and only the old people that didnt want to leave their family homes stayed behind? They explained they used to have a population of 25,000 but now only 52 families remain.

They do however have a mixed population of all ages and they also had a school which we visited next.

The school had classes going on so we didnt nose around too much inside. My guide was then done for the day so after thanking and tipping him he explained how to get to the Jewish Cemetery which was very close to the hotel.

The cemetery was very easy to reach about two blocks south of my hotel on the narrow dusty streets of the old town. It was easy to miss before as it had a ceramic dome common all over town but upon closer view it had a Star of David atop the dome.

I wasnt sure if it was ok to go in but there was no guard or attendant. The graveyard was very big and stretched across the horizon.

There were two types of graves, modern recent ones, and older more eroded ones. There was also a building possibly for funeral services but I didnt go and look at it.

Some graves had Hebrew writing, other Russian Cyrillic style so it was hard to read the gravestones. They were however of different ages as you could tell from the ages of the stones.

Unusually it was a mostly concrete cemetery so I wonder how they dig to add new graves, although they are still adding new graves.

Too often I see comments posted on the internet that "Muslims want to kill all the Jews" yet here we have evidence of a very large Jewish community living under Islamic rule going back for generations.

They continue to live in a modern independent Islamic country which has ties with Israel, and are openly continuing their faith and traditions with the Synagogue and School I'd just visited. I didnt see any kind of vandalism and the place was well kept and tidy.

People should try to look past media and political propaganda/stereotyping, educate, and see things for themselves. Iran also has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel with about 25,000 Persian Jews living in Tehran and a permanent Member of Parliament. This is never mentioned in western media that always claims Iran "wants to kill all the Jews". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Je ws#Islamic_Republic_.281979.E2.80.93pre sent.29

Visiting the Jewish community was an unexpected surprise and not how we imagine Uzbekistan. I was looking forward to visiting Russian Orthodox Churches as well so this was an added extra to show the diversity of life in Central Asia.

(See also Samarkand Jewish History Museum http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-e ntries/londone7/23/1363724752/tpod.html )