Timur's Booty

The sun sets over Samarkand's Registan, Uzbekistan.

It’s not hard to see why the authors of the 1001 Nights had Scheherazade spin her tales from a palace in this city on the Silk Road, alive with people from different lands; it was a wonderland of Islamic architecture, and a great centre of learning. All these aspects are still well alive in this vast clearing, once the main city square, market, and caravanserai.

Gengis Khan laid waste to Samarkand in the 13th century. In the 14th century Timur (Tamerlane) rebuilt it into a city the likes of which had never been seen before, which he visited in the seasonal intermissions of his continual empire building wars. Crucially, he also kept bringing back with him the finest artisans he found (voluntarily or otherwise). Durable glazes and inlaid mosaics had begun to allow for more intricate ceramic work, and Timur had the ambition, resources and workforce to use them on an unprecedented scale. He had newly-built edifices torn down and rebuilt to grander dimensions. By the time he died in 1405, his gardens, palaces, mosques and mausoleums defined Samarkand and the style of buildings to follow.

The three grand structures now seen around Registan square were originally madrasas – Islamic schools – built after his death, but resulting of the coming together of craftsmen and builders from across the empire in that late 14th century. The first of them was built by Timur’s grandson Ulugh Beg starting in 1417. He was an astronomer and mathematician who invited scholars to work and teach at Samarkand, making it the intellectual capital of the region (the portal of Beg’s madrasa has a depiction of stars against the sky). The two other major structures – the Tilya-Kori and Sher-Dor – were built in the 17th century to match Beg’s.

They are now the preserve of locals, tourists, shopkeepers, police and, of course, photographers who buzz around the area dizzy by the material on offer!

The Uzbekistan series in:

https://500px.com/edtsousa/galleries/uzbekistan-1