Isbijab

Isbijab, also known as Sayram, stood on the northern edge of Transoxiana where irrigated settlements met the steppe. Medieval writers knew it as the “White City”, and its markets and fortified religious establishments made it an important centre on the routes toward the Turkic lands. Local tradition associates Sayram with the Sufi teacher Ahmad Yasawi and with the graves of his family. The city became a focus of sacred stories as well as commerce.

The name Isbijab continued in historical writing under the Timurids and the Uzbek rulers, although Sayram was already widely used. In the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries its crafts, markets and shrines served the surrounding country under changing rulers, including the Kazakh khans. Local histories preserved accounts of the saints buried here and of the town's place on the frontier of the Islamic world.