Things to see and do Samarkand

Registan used to be the heart of Samarkand, and a compact and colourful crowd would gather around the many stalls that crowded the madrasas. The indefatigable Swiss traveller, Ella Maillard, had the good fortune, during her visit to Samarkand in 1932, to stay in the Tilla Kari Madrasa, whose cells were then used to accommodate visitors passing through. Less hospitable, the Chir Dor Madrasa served as a place of detention for basmatchi - Muslims who opposed Soviet rule - awaiting execution. Here, as around the Gur Emir, the houses have been demolished to make way for cleanliness. One could think of the decor of a deserted theatre: the three huge and superb madrasas Oulough Begh, Chir Dor and Tilla Kari border a large empty esplanade and, on the fourth side, slightly set back, rise bleachers that welcome visitors during the sound and light shows. In the 14th century, the six main arteries that started from the city gates intersected at this location, on a vast sandy square. Not that sand covered the whole square, but sand was thrown in abundance to absorb the blood spilled during public executions. Tamerlan wanted to facilitate trade and encourage merchants, who paid heavy taxes, to come to Samarkand. He had a street lined with shops built that ran through the city from one end to the other and a huge bazaar. Continuing his work, his wife, Tuman Aka, built a tim, a large domed covered market. During the reign of Ulugh Begh in the early 15th century, the Registan became the official seat of Samarkand. Its new status was accompanied by major works, the domed market was demolished and a madrasah, a khanaka, a caravanserai and a mosque were built. It was also a strategic place and, at the end of the 15th century, when the enemies were encircling Samarkand, Babur, the last of the Timurids, had set up his headquarters on top of the madrasah of Ulugh Begh, the real centre of the city.

To the west, the Ulugh Begh Madrasa is the oldest of the three. Built between 1417 and 1420, it is recognizable by its northern minaret, slightly inclined, as if it was struggling to support the sky, a role attributed to these two gigantic minarets, 33 m high, which flank the portal and never welcomed imams. The guides like to tell how, during the restoration, the Russians tried unsuccessfully to rotate the minaret on its base to put it back upright. The portal, decorated with a mosaic of fired bricks and bricks glazed in the colours of the sky, rises like a huge vessel towards the celestial vault. Spirals of majolica, star motifs with five or ten branches, a few rare touches of yellow or green... the eye is lost in this bewitching spatial geometry.

Both the wings and the minarets are entirely covered with girikh, geometric patterns. Inside, about fifty cells spread over two levels form a square courtyard. At the corners of the building, high courtyard rooms were topped by domes that have now been destroyed. When it was built in 1417, the Madrasa of Ulugh Begh was the largest university in Central Asia. More than a hundred students studied the Koran, but also astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and literature. Kazy-Zade-Rumi, the so-called "Plato of his time", came to teach astronomy. Ulugh Begh, an enlightened governor, mathematician, astronomer, poet and politician, also came to the madrasah courtyard to argue with the students. This opening towards non-religious matters caused his death, his own son, allied with religious fanatics, had him assassinated in 1449. "The owls had taken the place of the students in these cells, and instead of silk curtains, their doors were stretched with cobwebs. "The description dates from 1711.

At this time, the sumptuous Samarkand seems to be fast asleep. The market, which has taken over in the centre of the city and grafted itself onto the buildings, flooded the Registan square with rubbish; brought by the wind, the sand also rushed in and the ground level rose by more than two metres! In 1873, Eugène Schuyller pointed out the dilapidated state of the madrasah, which has only one floor left, as well as the optical illusion that makes the minarets appear leaning. It is in order to repair this "illusion" that in the 20th century the architects in charge of the restoration of monuments tried in vain to straighten the right-hand minaret. The back of the courtyard is occupied by a mosque.

To the east, facing the Oulough Begh Madrasa, the Chir Dor Madrasa was not erected until two centuries later. At the beginning of the 17th century, Yalangtush Bakhadur, vizier of Imam Kouli khan and governor of Samarkand, probably wanting to wake up the sleeping city and leave his mark on it, destroyed what was left of the caravanserai and the khanaka and had a madrasah built on the other side of the square, mirroring that of Ulugh Begh, between 1619 and 1635. Its fire-coloured lion tigers adorning a portal as bright as the sun respond to the starry vault of the madrasah of Uulough Begh: the power of the sun facing the infinity of space. Legend has it that the architect responsible for the construction of Chir Dor perished for violating the laws of Islam that prohibit figurative art.

It was this tiger-lion that gave the madrasa its name: Chir Dor means 'who carries the lion'. The width of the two buildings is identical, but the Chir Dor Madrasa, built on the foundations of the ancient khanaka, is slightly lower than the Ulugh Begh Madrasa. On each side of the portal, two fluted bulbous domes with aerial relief cap the study rooms. Many inscriptions decorate the portal and the drums of the domes: "You are the great warrior, Yalangtush Bakhadur, if we add the numbers of your name, we get the date of foundation. "And also: "He raised up a madrasah so that through him the earth was brought to the zenith of heaven. "Or again: "Never in the course of the centuries will the skilful acrobat of thought, by the rope of fantasy, reach the forbidden peaks of the minarets. »

Facing the stands, the Tilla Kari Madrasa, which is lower and has a longer façade than the two previous ones, closes off the north side of Registan Square. On its left, the blue dome of the mosque distinguishes the madrasa from its two neighbours. It is to this mosque that the madrasah owes its name: Tilla Kari means "covered with gold". One only has to admire the stunning decorations inside the dome to see that this nickname is entirely justified. The high portal and the two levels of cells are decorated with majolica, intertwined floral motifs and solar symbols that echo the tones of the Chir Dor Mosque. Yalangtush wanted to endow Samarkand with a Friday mosque worthy of his rank, that of Bibi Khanum being already in ruins. He had a large mosque built adjacent to the courtyard of a madrasah, so that he could accommodate the largest number of worshippers during public ceremonies. The madrasa was built on the site of the caravanserai built under the Timurids, the foundations of which are still preserved. The work lasted more than 10 years, from 1646 to 1659, and the mosque was indeed covered with gold. It is the youngest monument in the square and, undoubtedly, due to the imbalance created by the dome of the mosque at the corner of a 120 m façade, the most astonishing. Of the three madrasas, this one is the only one to have outward-facing cells, like the Mir-i-Arab madrasah in Bukhara. The walls, the dome and the mihrab are entirely decorated with red and gold floral motifs on an ultramarine blue background. The dome is particularly impressive, the concentric circles of gold leaf on a midnight blue background seem to catch the eye towards infinity. The ceiling is as flat as a table, but the trompe l'oeil decorations make it appear vaulted. Space has been set aside to display photographs taken before and during the restoration

The necropolis of the 'Living King', Shah-i-Zinda, is an alleyway that climbs up the hill of Afrosyab and once led to the ancient city gates. An unusual street on the edge of which was built, in the 11th century, the mausoleum of Qassim-ibn Abbas, a Muslim missionary and cousin of the Prophet Mohammed who arrived in Sogdiana in 676 with the first wave of Arab conquerors. Qassim-ibn Abbas was beheaded by the infidels while he was praying, and legend has it that he then seized his head and descended into a well leading to paradise where he presided over a "court of souls" surrounded by two assessors. The legend takes up the Zoroastrian myth of the judges of the Underworld: Solar Mithra, Srôsh and Rashn, or that of the "Living King" dating from before the Islamic conquest, and which tells how, after his death, the Afrosyab king continued to reign in the kingdom of the dead. The Arab conquerors and the missionaries of Islam thus appropriated many Zoroastrian, Manichean or Nestorian beliefs for the benefit of the heroes of the new religion. In the 11th and 12th centuries, many tombs and mausoleums were built near the saint's mausoleum and the great mosque next to it. When the Mongols took and destroyed the ancient city of Samarkand, only the tomb of Qassim-ibn Abbas (also called Kussam or Kutham) was spared. In the Timurid period, in the 14th and 15th centuries, noble families and family members of Tamerlan were built mausoleums near the tomb of Qassim-ibn Abbas, the Islamic belief that the proximity of a saint's tomb provides protection in the afterlife. These new constructions gave the street its current configuration.

The entrance portal, or pishtak, is flanked by the first chortak, a small passage surmounted by a dome supported by four arches (literally: 'chortak'), where the following inscription can be read: 'This majestic ensemble was built by Abd-al-Aziz khan, son of Ulugh Begh, son of Shakhrukh, son of Amir Timur in the year 838 AH. "» (1434-1435). In fact, it was Uulough Begh who was the real builder on behalf of his still young son.

At the foot of the forty steps of the "Stairway to Paradise" or "Fishermen's Stairway", there is a mosque with iwan and finely carved colonnades where believers come to listen to the prayers of the imam. This is where Qassim-ibn Abbas would have been beheaded.

The staircase leads to the mausoleum of Kazy Zadeh Roumi, on the left, built between 1420 and 1435 for the tutor of Ulugh Begh. Considered the Plato of his time, Kazy Zade Rumi would not actually be buried here: the skeleton discovered in the mausoleum was that of a woman, perhaps Tamerlan's nurse. It is the largest building in the complex. The prayer room and the mausoleum are surmounted by two very high domes. The staircase was built in the 18th century on the site of the ancient walls surrounding Samarkand in the pre-Mongolian period. It goes up to the second chortak, dating from the 19th century and erected on the site of the ancient wall of Afrosyab.

The first mausoleum to the right of the second chortak is that of Emir Hussein, also known as Tuglu Tekin, son of a Turkish man named Kara Kutkul and a famous Turkish commander whom Tamerlan took as his model while claiming to be of his descent. Tamerlan had the mausoleum built in 1376, when Tuglu Tekin had died a martyr's death in the 8th century.

Facing him, the mausoleum of Emir Zade (son of the Emir) dates from 1386 and is said to contain the remains of an unknown son of Tamerlan. Just above, on the same side, the mausoleum of Shadi Mulk Aka (1372) was built on the order of Tourkan Ata, Tamerlan's sister, to bury her daughter. The emperor, for whom his niece meant a great deal, had the following inscription engraved: "This is a tomb where a precious pearl was lost. "It is the oldest mausoleum in the complex, and also the oldest building in Timurid Samarkand.

Opposite, in the mausoleum of Chirin Bika Aka (1385), lies Tamerlan's second sister, under a dome with a 16-sided base. The facade is decorated with dark blue openwork mosaics. The interior decoration was made by an artist from Azerbaijan. Surprisingly, on the façade on either side of the portal, the inscriptions in Arabic are not suras from the Koran, but words of the Greek philosopher Socrates. It reads: "Socrates said: people are sad in all circumstances. »

On the same side, the octahedral mausoleum remains a mystery. Dating from the 15th century, it is considered a mausoleum, but no human debris has been found there. According to another hypothesis, it could be a minaret, but there is no evidence of this in its vast rotunda architecture. Little is also known about the next three mausoleums on the left side of the driveway. The third chortak opens on the northern and last part of the necropolis. On the left is the Tuman Aka Mosque, built in 1405, and the adjoining mausoleum, built in 1404, for Tuman Aka, Tamerlan's youngest wife. On a square base, the turquoise blue dome rests on a high cylindrical drum. If the mosaics of the portal may recall the mausoleum of Chirin Bika Aka, the originality of the decoration lies in the use of the colour purple, extremely rare at the time. The interior has been deliberately left white, which is also unusual, and the decorations are limited to a few landscape frescoes under the dome. Above the finely carved wooden door it reads: "The tomb is a door that everyone goes through. "In front of the Tuman Aka Mosque, the finely worked elm wood door, once enhanced with gold, silver and ivory, is the work of the Shiraz master Yusuf. Nicknamed the "Gateway to Paradise", it has been opening for more than 600 years to the kingdom of Qassim-ibn Abbas. Excavations have unearthed, on the right wall of the corridor, remains of the wall of the former 11th century mosque, whose minaret can be seen above and to the right. It also dates from the 11th century, which makes it the oldest monument of the complex, and the only one from that period in the Shah-i-Zinda. Passing the "Gate of Paradise", the corridor leads to the Qassim-ibn Abbas Mosque. The mihrab is decorated in mosaic, a technique that was used in Samarkand from the end of the 14th century and of which Central Asian craftsmen became virtuoso. The glazed earthenware mosaic pieces depict leaves, flower petals, thin branches or inscriptions, and are assembled without gaps. The next room is the ziaratkhana, or prayer room. Behind a wooden fence in the gurkhana is the tomb of Qassim-ibn Abbas, dating from the 11th century and entirely decorated with majolica. It says: "He who has died following Allah, is not dead: he is indeed alive. "Archaeologists have also researched this area and discovered a shaft 18 metres deep. The decorations in the room may appear to be original as they have been erased. In fact, they were fully restored in 1995, but the humidity level was such that all the work was spoiled in the following months. An air conditioner was installed to try to remedy the problem, but one only has to look at the corners of the walls and floor to realize the vanity of the attempt. To save what remains, it is strongly advised against leaning against the walls or even putting your fingers on them.

Coming out of the saint's tomb, immediately to the right and opposite the Tuman Aka Mausoleum is the Kutlug Aka Mausoleum, from 1360, which houses another of Tamerlan's women. Its portal is decorated with chiselled and glazed terracotta.

Closing the northern end of the necropolis, the Khodja Akhmad Mausoleum dates from 1350 and is the oldest mausoleum of Shah-i-Zinda after that of Qassim-ibn Abbas. Its portal was decorated with blue and white majolica by the Samarkand craftsman, Fakhr Ali.

Like another great conqueror, Genghis Khan, Tamerlan wanted to be buried soberly: "Just one stone and my name on it," he said, and his tomb had been prepared in a crypt in Shahrisabz, his hometown. But history decided otherwise. In 1401, Muhamad Sultan, Tamerlan's favourite grandson and his appointed successor, built a four-minaret architectural complex consisting of an inner courtyard bordered by four iwans and overlooked by a madrasah to the east and a khanaka to the west. The madrasa was dedicated to the education of the sons of noble families destined to work in the administration. In the khanaka, residence of the dervishes, there was also a domed mosque. Today, only the traces of the foundations bear witness to these constructions, but one can admire the still richly decorated portal on which is inscribed in Persian: "Built by the weak slave Mohamed, son of Mahmud, of Espahan". When, in 1403, Muhamad Sultan, still young, perished during a campaign in Persia, Tamerlan had this mausoleum built, the most beautiful there is, for the one in whom he had seen his successor. When the first dome was completed, Tamerlan decided it was too small, had it destroyed and ordered a new, larger dome to be built, which was completed in less than two weeks. Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo recounts how the workers worked there day and night, and describes Tamerlan, sick and bedridden, coming twice in person to supervise the work. In February 1405, Tamerlan in turn died and his body, embalmed with musk and camphor, was temporarily and secretly buried in the khanaka next to his grandson. It was not until four years later, when the battles of succession were settled, that the royal remains returned to their present residence in the crypt of the mausoleum. On this occasion, Tamerlan's spiritual master, Sheikh Mir-Said-Bereke, was also buried. He was later joined by other Timurids, including two of Tamerlan's sons, Shakhrukh and Miranshakh, and his grandson Ulugh Begh. The latter added a gallery through which the mausoleum is now accessed and began the construction of another mausoleum, of which only ruins remain, and a crypt that can be seen behind the Gur Emir. It was also Ulugh Begh who brought back from Mongolia the block of nephrite that covers Tamerlan's tomb, and who had the mortuary slabs surrounded by an openwork marble barrier. The real tombs lie in the crypt. Like all the constructions of Tamerlan, the Gur Emir is grandiose. The volumes, simple, are of imposing size. The outer dome is 32 m high and a 3 m high Sufi inscription surrounds its base: it reads: "Allah is the only God and Muhammad is his prophet. "On this drum rests a stretched dome, 12.50 m high and 15 m in diameter, entirely covered with blue glazed bricks that sixty-four ribs dotted with yellow and midnight-blue rhombuses seem to stretch towards the sky. The interior of the mausoleum is even more sumptuous: firstly, the translucent green of the onyx walls, once decorated with gold and lazurite, then the blue and gold Qur'anic inscriptions that surround the room, and finally the dome, which the geometric gold decorations on a soft blue background make "like the firmament", in the words of the historian Cheref-ad-Din.

For the traveller arriving by car from Tashkent, the huge blue dome of Bibi Khanum rising behind the compact and colourful crowd on their way to the market is one of the first images of Samarkand the Timurid. It was in 1399, on his return from his campaign in India where his troops had set fire to the temples of the Zoroastrian and Hindu infidels, that Tamerlan decided to build the Masjid-i-Jami mosque, known today as Bibi Khanum, daughter of the Emperor of China and Tamerlan's favourite woman. The best architects and craftsmen from Khorassan, Azerbaijan and India worked on the construction of what was to be the largest mosque in Central Asia. The best location in the capital was chosen and Tamerlan laid the foundation stone on the most auspicious day, the fourth day of Ramadan 801 (10 May 1399). Ninety-five elephants, which Tamerlan had brought back from his conquests in Hinduhistan, maneuvered huge blocks of stone needed for construction. According to Cherif id Din, there were four hundred and eighty five-metre high blocks! Entrusting the supervision of the grandiose project to his most faithful collaborators, Tamerlan set off on new conquests in Asia Minor, and did not return to Samarkand until July 1404. According to Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, a Castilian ambassador and keen observer who visited Samarkand in August 1404, Tamerlan's first wife was actually named Cano. She was the daughter of Chiacao, emperor of the province of Samarkand and former king of Persia and Damascus, and it was in honour of Cano's mother that the mosque was built. Clavijo recounts how, on his return from Asia Minor, Tamerlan considered the gate too low and had it demolished and then rebuilt. The workers who took turns day and night were treated rather harshly. Those who worked in the pits had meat thrown at them like dogs, sometimes adding coins so that they could continue their hard work without respite. According to the historian Sharaf ad-Din, upon his return in 1404, Tamerlan fell into a black fury because Bibi Khanum, who must have been a strong-willed woman, had a madrasah and mausoleum built for herself right in front of the mosque. As later archaeological excavations showed, Tamerlan's fury may have been due to the fact that the madrasah's portal was not built in parallel with the mosque's portal. Whatever was the real reason for the Iron Emir's anger, legend has taken hold of it and the following story is told: while Tamerlan was fighting far from his lands, Bibi Khanum decided to surprise him by erecting the highest mosque ever built. Asked to hurry up, the architect ends up getting a kiss from her in exchange for her promise to finish the work on time. The kiss was so torrid and so hot that Bibi Khanum still had a mark on his cheek when the emperor returned. This one went into a frenzy. The felon architect climbed to the top of one of the minarets and flew forever to Persia. Bibi Khanum was thrown from the top of another minaret, and Tamerlan gave the order that in his empire all women should wear the veil so that their faces would no longer tempt the men when the husbands were at war.

At the time of its construction, the complex included four marble-paved galleries, covered with 400 domes and supported by 400 marble columns, which surrounded a huge inner courtyard measuring 130 m by 102 m. Two 50 m high minarets stood on either side of the 35 m high entrance portal and the portal of the large prayer hall, which was 40 m high. Four other minarets were located at each outer corner of the courtyard. To the north and south, two smaller mosques, each decorated with a dome resting on a lavishly decorated cylindrical drum, looked towards the centre of the courtyard where the Qur'an of Osman, the second largest Qur'an in Islam, dating from the seventh century, which Tamerlan brought back from Damascus, rested on a marble lectern. It is said that the suras were written in such large letters that imams could read them from the top of the colonnade. It is also said that as soon as it was finished, the mosque was already beginning to deteriorate. The haste of the architects probably had something to do with it and the earthquakes, one of which had its epicentre in the very centre of the mosque, did the rest. Armin Vambery, the false dervish who managed to visit Samarkand in 1863, describes a very damaged monument which was used as a garage for carts. Ten years later, Eugene Schuyller also went to Samarkand and described the courtyard of the mosque, which had been transformed into a cotton market: the large marble lectern on which the Koran Osman was placed was still there. He also reported on the popular belief that, to cure back pain, one had to crawl between the nine short, thick pillars supporting the lectern. Another superstition was that infertile women would come there in the morning on an empty stomach in order to procreate. Even today, you can still see women crawling between these pillars... The restorers worked for more than forty years to rebuild the mosque to gradually restore it to its original shape. The three domes have reappeared, but those of the north and south mosques are already losing their blue ceramic decorations.