Timur’s Tomb

September 12, 2016: Timur, aka Tamerlane, the ferocious conqueror from my last post, was born in Shakhrisabze, 100 miles from Samarkand across an arm of the Pamir-Alai mountains, but he made Samarkand the center of his empire. Archaeologists date the founding of the city to the sixth century BCE, and it was already both famous and fabled when Alexander the Great took possession in 329 BCE, saying “Everything I have heard about the beauty of the city is indeed true, except that it is much more beautiful than I imagined”. The city was to fall and rise again several times over the ensuing centuries, although in 630 CE the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuan Zang was as captivated as Alexander. (The scriptures he brought back from India were housed in the Big Wild Goose pagoda in Xi’an, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road.) At that time the inhabitants were Zoroastrian, but Muslim Arabs took the city in 712. Again, the city would rise, and fall, and then be annihilated by the Mongols.
Timur revived the city, and started the building program that would be continued by his grandson, the astronomer king Ulug Beg. Although Timur planned to be buried in his birthplace, he built a magnificent mausoleum, the Gur Emir, in Samarkand for his favorite grandson, Mohammad Sultan, beside the madrassa and khanaga Mohammad had already built. When Timur died unexpectedly on the way to China, he was buried in the Gur Emir, where he remains, alongside his tutor and sons and grandsons including Ulug Beg.

Samarkand, in its various incarnations, was a destination to dream of, and to reach, if at all, through hardship and danger. Although at the junction of major trade routes – to Iran, India and China – the “Golden Road” crossed deserts and mountains. It almost seemed like cheating to arrive from Tashkent by rail, in considerable comfort. The detailed itinerary for the MIR tour still assumed that we would arrive by road, and with only time for a short introductory tour before dinner. Since we actually arrived in the middle of the morning, we had plenty of time for more, and started at the exceedingly impressive Gur Emir.

The actual bodies in a mausoleum like this are in the crypt below ground, and the apparent tombs are markers. Timur’s marker is a six-foot long block of jade from Mongolia. Originally intact, it was damaged during a Persian invasion in 1740, but is still a remarkable sight. But it is eclipsed by the mausoleum itself, the outer tiled dome covering an octagonal chamber decorated with onyx, marble and gilding.
Suitably impressed by this introduction to Samarkand, we ate lunch in an attractive restaurant before dedicating the afternoon the piece de resistance, the Registan.

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Fergana to Samarkand via Tashkent

September 11-12, 2016: Early Sunday morning we got back in the cars for the return drive to Tashkent. With the sun now behind us, I found the trip much more enjoyable, although while I admired the mountains the cotton fields were monotonous. Abdu told us that we would not eat lunch until after we checked back into the Shoddy Palace, but I was relieved and appreciative that after I said that I didn’t think I could last that long we stopped on the road for borscht and kebabs. The next day we would take the new fast train to Samarkand, and I was looking forward to the experience. I was less pleased by the instruction to pack an overnight bag so that our big bags could go by coach. My day pack was not really big enough to double as an overnight case, and I had just spent a month managing my own luggage on trains in the UK. But I did as I was told.

This was the afternoon we should have visited the Applied Arts Museum, but since it was shut for the holiday we rode the metro instead. The metro stations are one of Tashkent’s tourist attractions, and the decorations were indeed worth seeing, although without the grandeur of Moscow’s. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. Instead I took quite a few photos of the martial statue of Timur on horseback, situated near the Hotel Uzbekistan. The hotel had been designed by Soviet architects and I found the lattice work facade intriguing. I wondered how the interplay of light and shadow looked from the inside.

But back to Timur, aka Tamerlane, the real reason we were in Amur Timur Maydoni, a rather empty plaza, from which Tashkent’s main streets radiated in all directions. While best known as a remarkably brutal conqueror and despoiler of cities in the mold of Chinggis Khan, he was also responsible for the revival and beautification of Samarkand. Born in 1336 he had become ruler of Transoxiana by 1370, and subsequently fought from Damascus to Moscow to Delhi, and was headed for China when he died in 1405. His particular signature was a pyramid of skulls, and as many as 17 million people may owe their deaths to him. While he must have been an astute general, his empire did not long outlast him.

The next morning my alarm went off at 5:45, and I was not best pleased after we arrived at the station and were all on board by 7:30, given that the train would not leave until 8:00. Uzbekistan’s new high speed trains used Spanish Talgo rolling stock, and we were in business class, the equivalent of Spanish Preferente, which I had experienced the year before. The seats were just as comfortable, but we traveled more slowly, and certainly less smoothly. The ride was too bumpy for me to write. We arrived at 10:05, and immediately headed for the Gur-Emir mausoleum and Timur’s sarcophagus, followed by a remarkable street of tombs and mausoleums. The mausoleums were stunning and deserve their own post.

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