Why are all the mosques and other famous old buildings in Uzbekistan blue? Did they have an excess of blue rocks lying around? Did some medieval Uzbek king get conned into buying a hundred years’ worth of blue paint? Is there some local religious prohibition on using red, green, yellow, orange, and purple pigments?
Blue tiles, actually, on the historic buildings. Possibly no better reason than that Tamerlane (14th century) liked blue, and caused a lot of blue-domed buildings to be erected. Samarkand has been known as “The Blue City” for a long time.
The historic glaze was produced from the ashes of a native plant called “ishkor”. Given the blue color, I would guess there’s some cobalt salts in it.
Yes, for grand buildings with lots of color, you need lot of cheap pigment.
The local pigment gets into everything and becomes everyone’s favorite.
I’ve always thought the blue tiles in Central Asian architecture were inspired by the color of the stones turquoise and lapis lazuli, which are found in that region. This style also spread to Iran and Turkey. In Persian miniature painting, which influenced Central Asian art, the night sky is often colored dark blue with gold stars, which looks to me like an imitation of lapis lazuli, which is a deep blue with small gold inclusions. (The word azure comes from the Persian name for the stone, lazhuvard.)
Another symbolism of the color blue in Central Asia is from pre-Islamic Turkic religion. Blue was the sacred color of Tengri, the “Eternal Blue Sky.” The flag of Uzbekistan has a band of blue reminiscent of the color of those turquoise tiles, and the flag of Kazakhstan is light blue in commemoration of Kök Tengri, the blue sky.
I found this sample sentence in the Kyrgyz dictionary, to illustrate the meaning of Tengir ‘God’:
Kök asmandyn tüsü bolgonduktan any bajyrky ata-bababyz, aalam eesi dep tüshüngön, kök Tengirge syjyngan.
'Because the color of the sky is blue, our ancient forefathers understood it as the master of the universe and worshiped the blue Heaven.