Samarkand

[Note: these pages on Samarkand and some of its important architectural monuments are "work in progress" and represent in effect a first draft of what I hope will be expanded and improved as time permits. So far, the pages contain an introductory overview (immediately below), material on the Bibi Khanum Mosque, the Shah-i Zinde mausoleum complex, and Ulugh Beg and his observatory, and an update with photos taken in July 1999. Date of latest revision, November 7, 1999.]

Samarkand

If it is said that a paradise is to be seen in this world,
then the paradise of this world is Samarkand.
--quoted by 'Ata-Malik Juvaini (Boyle transl.)

Samarkand is one of the oldest and most important cities amongst the many in the historic region of Central Asia known as Transoxiana. Located in the Zarafshan River valley, the city enjoys the benefits of abundant natural resources and occupies as well a key place on the trade routes of Central Asia. The Zarafshan is fed by the snow melt from mountains to the south and east (shown here from the air) and flows into the Oxus (Amu Darya). To travel upstream just above the fertile valley floor (photo, right), brings one to the historic city of Panjikent. Downstream is Bukhara. Those who ruled Samarkand developed a complex network of irrigation channels, as shown in this map. As we know from the authors of historic accounts, its surroundings also provided pastureland, something that is evident even today if we look south from the highlands to the east of the city.

While settlement in the region goes well back into pre-historic times, by the seventh century before the Common Era (BCE or B. C.), the town seems to have housed a substantial center of craft production and already boased an extensive irrigation system. Alexander the Great knew it as Maracanda; at the time of his conquest in 329 BCE, the city had strong fortifications and a circumference of some ten kilometers. Alexander's conquests introduced into Central Asia Classical Greek culture. The Greek legacy lived on in the various "Graeco-Bactrian" kingdoms of the area and the Kushan Empire of the first centuries of the Common Era whose territories extended well down into what is today Pakistan and India. The region was influenced as well by the culture and religions coming from Iran; it seems likely that the local inhabitants became, among other things, adherents of Zoroastrianism.

Samarkand is part of a region that historically was known as Sogdia, and whose ethnically Iranian merchants for centuries seem to have played a key role in the commerce along the Silk Road. As early as Han times, when the Chinese first recorded their impressions of Inner Asia, the Sogdians had a reputation as being talented merchants. Sogdian colonies were established in places such as Dunhuang, one of the important nodes in the trade route; Sogdian inscriptions on the rocks in the valleys of northern Pakistan testify to their activity on the routes south into India. We know that some of the exotic products popular in T'ang China were imported from Samarkand. During the eighth century, the Sogdians seem to have exercised considerable influence over the Uighurs, neighbors of T'ang China in the northwest, among other things persuading them to convert to Manichaeism. When the Arabs invaded Central Asia in the early eighth century, the last of the Sogdian rulers of the many small states in the Zarafshan Valley fled upriver from Panjikent (a city whose palaces were decorated with elegant murals) to a fortress on Mt. Mug, where archaeologists have unearthed a treasure trove of Sogdian documents attesting to the sophistication of the administration and legal system.

In Samarkand itself, even after the Arab conquest, the center of the city continued to be located on the hill known as Afrasiab, seen here as a dusty mound in the distance as one looks west toward the modern city. As reconstructed by a modern artist, the central fortified area of the city may have looked as shown here on the right (apparently the view represents it several centuries before the Arab conquest). Excavations have uncovered the foundations and lower parts of the walls of what appears to have been the palace of the pre-muslim Sogdian rulers. As in Panjikent, the walls were covered with brilliant murals, whose fragments shown here seem to illustrate either a diplomatic procession or some important religious ceremony. The robes of the important personages reflect the influence of Sasanian (Iranian) designs. It is possible that the figure at the head of the procession is the Sogdian ruler.

Firm muslim control in the region was not established before the middle of the eighth century (CE), and a century after that, Samarkand came under the control first of the Samanid and then the Karakhanid states. The Samanids, who were of Iranian origin, established Bukhara as their capital, and it was under their rule (to about the end of the ninth century) that the cities of Transoxiana became major centers of Muslim learning. A group of Samanid memorial stones can be seen today on a platform just in back of the Registan. Like most successful rulers of the city, the Samanids invested in the irrigation system. A reconstruction of the possible appearance of one of the major aqueducts into the city can be seen on the left. Unfortunately, little remains of the architecture from this period in Samarkand. Fragments of a Karakhanid-era minaret and mausoleum may be seen in the oldest of the shrines of the Shah-i Zinde (see the photographs and discussion there).

The Persian chronicler Juvaini's encomium to Samarkand and other Central Asian cities reflects his dismay at the destruction wrought by the Mongols when Chingis Khan invaded the area in 1220. Only fragments of the walls remained, such as these (on the right in the picture), which formed the southern boundary of the city near the mausoleum complex of Shah-i Zinde.

Many of the Central Asian cities quickly recovered from the Mongol invasion. According to Juvayni, no admirer of the Mongols, Bukhara was one, although by the early 1330s the famous Arab traveler Ibn Battuta noted "at the present time its mosques, colleges and bazaars are in ruins, all but a few"--the result apparently of subsequent wars. Ibn Battuta also visited Samarkand, "one of the greatest and finest of cities, and most perfect of them in beauty," where he similarly noted that "there were formerly great palaces on [the river's] bank, and constructions which bear witness to the lofty aspirations of the townsfolk, but most of this is obliterated, and most of the city itself has also fallen into ruin. It has no city wall, and no gates, and there are gardens inside it." The real rebuilding of Samarkand as a great city had to await the decision by Timur (Tamerlane) to make it his capital beginning in the 1370s. The Spanish ambassador to Tamerlane's court, Clavijo, describes how Tamerlane "gave orders...that a street should be built to pass right through Samarqand, which should have shops opened on either side of it in which every kind of merchandise should be sold, and this new street was to go from one side of the city through to the other side, traversing the heart of the township." He wanted results immediately and those assigned to the task, with their lives at stake, "began at speed, causing all the houses to be thrown down along the line that his Highness had indicated for the passage of the new street. No heed was paid to the complaint of persons to whom the property here might belong, and those whose houses thus were demolished suddenly had to quit with no warning, carrying away with them their goods and chattels as best they might. No sooner had all the houses been thrown down than the master builders came and laid out the broad new street, erecting shops on the one side and opposite, placing before each a high stone bench that was topped with white slabs. Each shop had two chambers, front and back, and the street way was arched over with a domed roof in which were windows to let the light through...At intervals down the street were erected water fountains." The main axis of the Timurid city stretched southwest from Afrasiab, passing the Bibi Khanum Mosque and Mausoleum complexes, then the Registan, and ending near the Gur-i Mir Mausoleum. The development of this urban center continued apace under Tamerlane's grandson Ulughbeg, who ruled the city for much of the first half of the fifteenth century until he was assassinated in 1449. Ulugh Beg is well known for his scientific investigations, supported by the Observatory he built on the hills to the east of Afrasiab and the madrasa (school) he erected on the Registan.

The major architectural ensembles of Samarkand, notably those from the Timurid period, will be explored on separate web pages. The first three, on the Shah-i Zinde, Ulugh Beg and his observatory, and the Bibi Khanum Mosque, are already available.

For a good survey of Timurid history, see the University of Calgary History Department's pages from its "Islamic World to 1600."

Historic photos of Samarkand and other cities in Uzbekistan can be found on the UNESCO Virtual Memory of Central Asia pages.

For a documented overview of "Timurid Architecture in Samarkand" but one not illustrated with many photos, see Mark Dickens' Oxus Central Asia Site.

Return to Waugh's Central Asia.