'istoria Samarkand

2009 08 02 – Day 37 – Samarkand

Samarkand is an ancient city whose status and wealth was founded on its vital location on the Silk Road between China and Europe. The historical significance of the Silk Road in the history of the world and East-West trade of goods and ideas was the main reason I'd decided on an overland route to China that went through Central Asia rather than the more popular Trans-Siberian/Trans-Mongolian route and despite my interest in visiting Mongolia.
All the time I'd spent with Ruslan. I'd made sure I'd still have time to visit 'istoria Samarkand. Tours of family, friends, village and wedding complete, world history could now take priority and Ruslan and his friends gave me their tour of some of the main historical sights.

Ancient Samarkand was a renowned regional academic centre, attracting would-be scholars from far and wide. The Registan, defined and dominated by three madrasahs (Muslim clergy academies), is the historic centre of old Samarkand.

When I visited a stage was being erected for some big event in a few days time. Ruslan and his friends kindly paid for a local guide to show us around... it was pretty amusing to see her disbelief at our claims of being able to communicate with each other effectively enough to have spent days in each others company, despite our extremely limited common language.

The student digs. Places were limited by the number of rooms.


I don't think the students were really as small these doors suggest. I believe the intention was to have people bow their heads on the way in.


The Shah-i-Zinda necropolis. Legend has it that Kusam ibn Abbas, the cousin of the prophet Muhammad, was buried here.


Samarkand was the captical of the great 14th Central Asian leader Tamerlane, aka Timur, whose empire at some point reached from Delhi to Baghdad and up to the Ural river, a huge swathe of modern day Central Asia and the Middle East. Timur is something of a national icon in Uzbekistan and statues of him are everywhere. Samarkand is home to his mausoleum Gūr-e Amīr