17/3/2025 Bukhara uzbekistan madrasa Ulugh beg Once, madrasas were the public centers of knowledge: religion, philosophy, logic, languages, and calligraphy. In Bukhara, many of these schools were restored as early as the 1960s, during the Soviet era, and after independence from Russia in 1991, they found new lives: some became shops, others galleries or artisan workshops, while still preserving their link to the past. Today, beside these centuries-old structures, a shop displays digital clocks showing different time zones—a striking contrast that tells the story of dialogue between past and modernity