crossed with dried fields and their cracked beds have not held water for centuries.
The oasis of Otrar is not one single site, but rather it is a large oasis containing a series of towns and cities. Each hill formed in the place of ancient settlements has, at present its own name: Altyntobe, Dzhalpak-tobe, Kuyuk-Mardan-tobe and Pchakchi-tobe. In earlier times, they had different names that are now forgotten and only the names of the three towns known in manuscript sources may be identified at the present ruins.
In the 9th to the 10th centuries, various sources refer to Otrar as one of the Ispidjab towns. This is probably related to the fact that the city first submitted to the Caliphate and then to the Samanids. As before, Otrar remained the center of the district which occupied a space of "about one day’s journey in all directions“, which is many times mentioned by the chroniclers. The town is also known to have minted its own coinage. Otrar was the cultural center where Abu Nasr al-Farabi was born, and Aristan-Bab, an important representative of Islamic culture and teacher of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, preached here.
There are records that portray the determination of earlier names of the town. It is thought that a group of coins collected in Otrar and some towns of the oasis date back to the time of these records. There is a generic symbol of the Turgeshi in the form of a bow on the face-side of such coins and the image of a lion on the reverse side. On a second type of coin, there is the sign X on the reverse side and these coins may originate from the mint of a local ruler. There is a suggestion that the coins of the second type were minted by rulers of the Turkish State of Kangu Tarban, the population of which were the Kangars, descendants of the ancient Kangui who founded the state with its center on the Syr Darya, then called the Kang River. Kangui existed from the 1st century B.C. until the 5th century A.D. First, Bityan town was the
