100 years or so after Genghis Kahn rolled over the west extending his empire a new face appeared with the objective of becoming Kahn or ruler of the world. His name was Timor and his title was Amir, much lower than Kahn. Ultimately he ruled much of Central Asia. During one of his many campaigns he suffered an injury to a leg leaving him lame. He became known and hated in the west by the name Tamerlane – Timor the Lame. He based his kingdom from Samarkand and here we find buried his wives in a magnificent array of tombs
and himself and his grandson, Ulugbek, among others in yet another grand mausoleum, just across a small park from our hotel.
Mirzo Ulugbek was an astronomer and scientist who built a huge observatory to measure the length of the year – he got within 2 seconds of current understanding. He wrote a star atlas detailing 1180 stars as well. He also was destined to take over as Kahn after his grandfather, but his son had him beheaded so he could rule. The son’s rule lasted 40 days.
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| Mirzo Ulugbek |
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| Astrolabe |
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| The bottom third of the Observatory |
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| The actual surviving track used for observations
There is much more history in Samarkand and much of what we see today are reconstructions from the Soviet era. They were determined to preserve the local history while destroying the economy, go figure. We visited the Registan, central courtyard surrounded on three sides by Madrasas. It is hard to grasp the size of this space and these buildings.
Muslims do not generally make representations of people or animals. A close look at these figures from the top of the arch reveals that the animals are not representations of real animals and the “human” face is so distorted as to not violate the letter of the law.
Although I have written here about Samarkand, it is ion the past and tonight we wrap up two days in Tashkent with a farewell dinner to those who do not continue on to Dushanbe in Tajikistan tomorrow.
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