Political and Economic Hub Connecting East and West
We travel not for trafficking alone,
By hotter winds, our fiery hearts are fanned,
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
THE BRITISH POET AND PLAYWRIGHT JAMES ELROY FLECKER’S FAMOUS STANZAS evoke a sense of place both mystic and exotic, an ancient city of conquerors and commerce, marked by grandeur and intrigue. Samarkand, in present-day Uzbekistan, is all that and more, as I found when I visited the city. There is compelling evidence that Samarkand is one of the oldest settlements in the world, with excavations showing that irrigation works supported a small sedentary population in the prehistoric era. By 700 BCE the city was an influential city-state and had emerged as a key trading hub along the ancient Silk Road, its economic success bestowed by advantages of its geographic location. Today Samarkand is home to approximately six hundred thousand inhabitants and is one of Uzbekistan’s major cities.
In 1995 I was a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Uzbekistan. Several of my students at Tashkent State Economics University were from Samarkand, and on a long weekend they invited me to visit their fabled city. Arriving by car from the east, we left the highway and crossed the defile of a large irrigation canal when suddenly the domes of the ancient necropolis, the Shahi Zinda, broke into view. After a few more moments the antiquity and past glory of Central Asia spilled out before me in a startling panorama of both ancient and modern. Hulking, pollution-spewing trucks from the Soviet era lumbered past the edifice of the Bibi Khanym mosque, a massive structure built in the 1300s that was nearly destroyed in an earthquake at the end of the nineteenth century but was undergoing restoration funded by UNESCO when I first saw it. The Bibi Khanym, along with almost all of the great monuments still extant in Samarkand, were the contributions of Timur, or Tamerlane (1370–1405) along with several generations of his successors, typically referred to as the Timurids. It was this dynasty that made Samarkand, at least for much of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, arguably the most important city in Asia. Six hundred years later the urban landscape of modern Samarkand still reflects the passions and ambitions of Timur and his successors. The mystery and allure I encountered on my first visit there has continued to draw me back, and each journey has only deepened my attraction for this magnificent city.
That first encounter with Samarkand only served to make me crave additional opportunities to explore and learn about the city. Several years later I returned to teach at Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages, and I was reminded of both the geographical and historical reach of the Timurids. The shadow of Timur, both literally and figuratively, may be found throughout the old city. At the intersection adjacent to the institute an enormous bronze statue of a seated Timur, built since Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991, glares out over the landscape, while just three hundred yards away, directly in view from the classrooms filled with students, Timur himself lies interred under the Gur-i-Amir, a mausoleum crowned by a magnificent turquoise dome. Legend holds that an inscription at the entrance to the crypt warned of misfortune, death, and destruction to any who disturbed the great warlord’s eternal slumber. Local guides are quick to point out that on June 22, 1941, the day after Soviet scholars opened the sarcophagus that holds the conqueror’s remains, Germany attacked the USSR, ultimately resulting in twenty million deaths in the Soviet Union. Despite his curse, the new Uzbek regime has adopted Timur as a national icon and Samarkand as a showcase city, reminding all of a glorious heritage that heralds an equally glorious future, at least according to the current governmental slogans. If past is indeed prologue, then Samarkand stands to take its place in the ranks of the world’s great urban places once again.
Samarkand was almost completely destroyed in the 1200s, but within 150 years would not only recover but would emerge as the capital of one of history’s greatest conquerors and his descendants. This rebirth made the city into a political center and commercial magnet that influenced the history and development of Central Asia as well as that of Russia, the Middle East, and South Asia. Samarkand was the hub connecting East and West, a conduit for the transfer of goods, ideas and people.
SAMARKAND AND THE WORLD:
A Magnet for Merchants and Conquerors
The American communist and journalist Anna Louise Strong, a visitor to Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s, accurately noted that “it is the geography of Samarkand that has fixed her destiny.” Samarkand, both ancient and modern, has been given life by the waters of the Zeravshan River, a stream that begins in the mountains lying to the east. For centuries the river has provided the basis for agriculture, and the region near Samarkand long has enjoyed a reputation for verdant orchards, vineyards, and wheat fields. A second gift of geography was the city’s position astride trade routes running between China and the Middle East, servicing caravans bound to both the East and the West. Attracting merchants, traders, and pilgrims from every corner of Eurasia, Samarkand was a cosmopolitan, sophisticated “global city” long before the full extent of the globe was known. A magnet for world conquerors, including the likes of Alexander and Genghis Khan, Samarkand’s greatest glory was achieved as the capital of the empire of Amir Timur, or Tamerlane as he is more commonly known in the English-speaking world.
At the start of the thirteenth century the cities lying along the ancient Silk Road in Central Asia were thriving. The caravan traffic and the business it generated had made Samarkand, Bukhara, and other oasis settlements prosperous in Transoxiana, a Greek name meaning the “land beyond the Oxus River” (a stream known today as the Amu Darya).
Samarkand’s Destruction and Rebirth (1220–1660)
By 1220 these cities and others would be smoldering ruins, devastated by history’s most prolific conqueror, the leader of the Mongol hordes, Genghis Khan. The Mongol army arrived from the east, where it had already subdued two Chinese states and the Khitan Empire as it expanded along the Silk Road, a trading route that had linked China to the West for centuries. The fury of the great Khan was ignited in 1218 by the miscalculation of Ala al-Din Muhammad, the ruler of the Khwarazm empire, an oasis state lying to the west of Samarkand. That year one of Ala al-Din’s governors, ruling the eastern city of Otrar, executed the members of a caravan sent by the Mongol leader. The response was fast and furious: Mongol armies swept across the region, laying siege to the major cities and destroying all in their path. After capturing its sister-city of Bukhara, the Mongols surrounded Samarkand. For almost a week the city resisted the attack, but eventually the defenders capitulated, and the Mongol warriors were turned loose on both the inhabitants and the city itself, pillaging and burning for days.
The destruction had lasting effect. More than a century later the great Muslim traveler Ibn Batutta would pass through the city, as he also did the cities of Mecca and Kilwa, and though he found much to admire, he also noted the many ruined buildings that remained from the Mongol horde’s devastation. Ironically, only a few decades after Batutta’s visit another great conqueror and a descendant of Genghis Khan would remake Samarkand into not only the greatest city in Central Asia but also arguably one of the most impressive urban places in the entire world.
The City of Timur
The small city of Shahrisabz, once known as Kesh, today lies about two hours’ journey by car from Samarkand. There, only three years after Ibn Battuta visited Samarkand in 1333, a boy was born into the Barlas clan, the family of local rulers who claimed to be related to Genghis Khan’s second son Chagatay. Called “Timur,” a name meaning “iron” in the local Turkic dialect, the lad grew into a formidable soldier and was battle hardened by his early twenties. Wounded by an arrow in the right leg early in his career, he walked with a pronounced limp and acquired in some quarters the less-than-flattering nickname “Timur the Lame,” which became corrupted into Tamerlane, the name he is still commonly known by in Western sources. Gradually gaining experience and building up his forces, by about the age of thirty-three Amir (“Prince”) Timur, as he is known today in Uzbekistan, had amassed a sizable realm covering much of Transoxiana. A devout Muslim, he set about building an empire that incorporated lands from both the Islamic and non-Islamic realms. Conquest and expansion were the hallmarks of Timur’s ambition, and he spent his adult life pushing the boundaries of his dominion toward the four points of the compass. In fact, when almost seventy years of age, Timur mounted a campaign against China, determined to join the western lands of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) to his already-massive imperial state, but he died of a fever before reaching Chinese territory. Timur made Samarkand the capital of his budding empire, determined to make the city the centerpiece of a vast realm that, at its greatest height, stretched from Baghdad to India and from the Persian Gulf to the steppes of Russia.
Not only did Samarkand function as the political capital of Timur’s vast empire, but its location astraddle major trade routes connecting China to the Middle East meant that the city once again became a bustling hub of commerce, with goods from every corner of China, India, Persia, and Russia filling the markets. Spices, silk, musk, glass, slaves, and other rare and expensive goods might all be found in the bazaars of the city. The Spanish ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo, upon his arrival in Samarkand in 1404, estimated that the city exceeded Seville’s in population, which at that time was one of the most populous cities in Spain. The best estimates of historians put Samarkand’s population at about 150,000 in 1400, meaning the city was more populous than London at the time and contained only a slightly smaller number of inhabitants than contemporary Paris. Samarkand had become the center of the unified economic space represented by Timur’s empire, and the city’s status from several centuries earlier as one of the leading trade centers on the Silk Road was reestablished and, indeed, greatly enhanced. (See Map 11.1.)
But the greatest impact on Samarkand of the Timurids, as historians have dubbed the dynasty Amir Timur established, was the complete remaking of the urban profile of the city. Samarkand had not recovered from the destruction the Mongols wrought in the previous century, and there were few large structures remaining. The dynasty accomplished remaking the city by commissioning grand structures that surpassed any previously seen in Central Asia. Timur considered himself a patron of the arts, and his conquests provided two essential factors that enabled him to recast the city: wealth and skilled artisans. As Timur’s holdings expanded into India, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire, he typically looted the wealth from other cities or demanded tribute in the form of precious jewels, gold, or other valuable commodities. With his coffers filled with this booty, the emperor could then engage in spectacular building projects not only in Samarkand but also in many cities throughout the region.
One of Timur’s first projects was to rebuild and extend the walls of the city, which had not been completely restored since the Mongols’ siege more than a century and a half earlier. But Timur was also fond of open spaces and nature, so he built spacious, verdant gardens around the city in which he often held festivals and entertained visitors. There he held court under enormous tents that could contain his entire retinue of several thousand people, including numerous wives, and surrounded by groves of fruit and nut trees. Many of these retreats were enclosed by gates and walls and were given specific names such as the “Enchanting Garden,” and scholars have established that a considerable portion of the city’s landscape consisted of such green space, making Samarkand famous as a city of orchards and gardens.
Map 11.1. Timurid Empire, ca. 1405
Amir Timur’s empire stretched from Delhi to Baghdad, and from the Caucasus Mountains to the Indian Ocean. This realm, lying at the crossroads of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, provided the stage for cultural and economic exchange between all these regions. The legacy of this interaction remains evident in India, Russia, and Central Asia, where examples of Timurid architecture continue to astonish visitors six centuries later.
Timur also orchestrated the construction of monumental edifices and structures, many of which have survived the ensuing six centuries, to some extent or another, and were worked on by a veritable army of skilled workers, architects, and artisans from every corner of Eurasia. By the late 1300s there were thousands of such men in Samarkand who had been brought from Damascus, Baghdad, Shiraz, and other locations across western Asia. These immigrants possessed abilities, techniques, and artistic secrets that heretofore had not been prominently featured in Central Asia architecture. The art of glazing tiles, for example, was imported to Central Asia along with construction techniques and architectural skill that allowed enormous free-standing domes to be built. Such knowledge had been perfected in the Middle East but now contributed to the urban spaces of Central Asia.
Timur also gathered hundreds of scholars and artists, offering them financial support and access to his growing libraries, or kitabkhanas, institutions of learning and art that he had borrowed from the Persian Empire. Collectively, the scholars and craftsmen would transform urban landscapes across much of the continent, and the forms and styles they introduced are still followed today in the states of Central Asia.
In 1398 Timur set out on an expedition to conquer India, a land that not only held great riches but was also populated by large numbers of Hindus, whom the pious Muslim Timur considered infidels. Hinduism, an ancient faith, had held sway in northern India for over one thousand years, although the Delhi Sultanate, a state ruled by Muslims, controlled the region. Timur crushed the armies sent against him, capturing Delhi and other cities, and amassed an enormous amount of booty, including thousands of gemstones. Many of these rubies, sapphires, and other precious stones were transported back to Samarkand to embellish a massive mosque, Bibi Khanym, built to honor one of his wives while he was away from the city. As the story goes, the builder was so smitten with the beautiful woman that he demanded a kiss before he completed the construction, and his peck was so ardent that it left an impression on her cheek. When Timur returned and found the offending mark, he executed the impetuous admirer and thereafter ordered all the women of his empire to adopt the veil in order to avoid tempting men with their charms. There is not a shred of truth to the story, as it is well known the mosque was built over the course of five years, and Timur himself personally oversaw at least some of the construction, but the legend reinforces the almost-mythological status that Timur still holds in Central Asia.
After its completion in 1404, the Bibi Khanym mosque stood as one of the world’s largest mosques. The façade marking the entryway, a huge portal containing an arched gateway called an iwan in the Muslim world, reached a height of approximately 100 feet. Inside was a large courtyard leading to another enormous edifice that contained the entrance to the mosque itself. Minarets and domes surrounded the courtyard, along with a ribbed dome in blue tiles that would closely resemble the dome on the Gur-i-Amir, Timur’s final resting place, located about a mile away. The mosque itself featured a larger, brilliant blue dome rising to almost 120 feet. The walls of the mosque and most of the other structures were adorned with quotations from the Quran, Islam’s most important scripture, in the stylized Arabic script known as geometric Kufic, presented using glazed bricks and tiles.
In the decades immediately after its completion the Bibi Khanym was a dazzling and incomparable sight and an apt representation of Amir Timur’s ambition and ego. Yet few builders in Central Asia had experience erecting a structure so immense, and unfortunately the techniques employed to set the foundations of the massive walls were flawed. These shortcomings in the construction resulted in a deterioration of parts of the mosque in only a couple centuries, a process aided and accelerated by the region’s frequent earthquakes. In the late nineteenth century a powerful quake brought most of the main mosque down as well as the surrounding minarets and smaller domes. For almost a century the Bibi Khanym crumbled until an effort at reclamation was initiated during the late Soviet period. In the 1990s UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, in conjunction with the government of Uzbekistan, began funding the restoration of the mosque, and today the magnificent building has regained its former grandeur.
Before the rise of Timur the art of making majolica tiles was apparently unknown in Central Asia. These ceramic tiles are manufactured by applying a glaze to a ceramic tile, painting or coloring the tile, and then firing it, thereby fixing the glaze and color onto the tile. Carried from the Middle East by Timur’s captives, the skill of manufacturing turquoise and blue tiles enabled craftsmen to cover the massive domes that were raised over many structures Timur commissioned, including the Bibi Khanym and Timur’s own resting place, the Gur-i-Amir. The art was used not only in Samarkand but also across Timur’s realm in Central Asia.
In Samarkand Timur also expanded the Shahi Zinda, a necropolis that legend claims holds the remains of a cousin of the Prophet Muhammed, Qusim ibn Abbas, one of the Arab leaders who brought Islam to Central Asia in the eighth century. The name of the cemetery may be translated as “Tomb of the Living King,” a reference to the legend surrounding the crypt of Qusim. According to the story, Qusim was praying when he was attacked and beheaded. But, miraculously, he simply picked up his head and jumped down a well, over which his mausoleum was built, centuries before Timur was born. Ibn Battuta described how the local Muslims venerated the location, and certainly, by Timur’s reign the tomb had become a place of pilgrimage for local believers.
Timur’s place of burial, the Gur-i-Amir, became a family crypt, coming to house the remains of the first three Timurid rulers, his son and immediate successor, Shahrukh, and another grandson, Ulug Beg, as well as another son and two of Timur’s teachers. The interior of the classic ribbed dome, a style unknown in Central Asia before the rise of Timur, was originally covered in hammered gold leaf. The Gur-i-Amir not only stands as one of the most beautiful and important mausoleums in Central Asia, but it is also considered the model for many of the structures built by the Mogul rulers of India (who were descendants of Timur), including what is arguably the world’s most famous building, the Taj Mahal (completed in 1648). The classic “onion dome” architecture may be observed in both structures along with other similarities regarding the design and function of the buildings. Some scholars contend that the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, a Christian church built in the 1500s, were also derived from Islamic architectural styles borrowed from Central Asia.
Ulug Beg: Scholar and Builder
Timur was succeeded by his son, Shahrukh, who, perhaps, to escape the shadow of his father, moved the capital of the empire to the city of Herat, now located in northwestern Afghanistan. Although Shahrukh is buried in the Gur-i-Amir with his father, he spent little time in Samarkand, and early in his reign commissioned his young son Ulug Beg to rule the province of Transoxiana from the former capital. Shahrukh therefore had little direct impact on Samarkand, but his decision to award the city to his son had important consequences for the city as well as for the scientific and intellectual world of the Middle Ages.
Ulug Beg, the third of the Timurid line to rule Samarkand, had a far different character from that of his father and certainly from his grandfather. He ruled the entire Timurid Empire for only two years, but under his father he served as governor of Samarkand for nearly forty years, from 1411 to 1447. Much more a scholar than a general, Ulug Beg changed the urban landscape of his capital city almost to the same degree that his grandfather Timur had, but the buildings and structures he constructed were not monuments and mausoleums. Instead, his focus was on education and learning, and his legacy in the urban development of Samarkand mirrors these interests. Ulug Beg began the construction of Samarkand’s most famous landmark, the Registan. A square bordered on three sides by medressehs, or Islamic schools, “Registan” means “place of sand.” At one time the square may have been covered in sand, as it was the location for public executions, which were usually performed by beheading the condemned. Ulug Beg had the first medresseh built there in 1420, and a number of historians believe that he himself taught mathematics at the school.
Flanked by two towering minarets, the façade of the medresseh is inlaid with Arabic calligraphy and the colorful tiles his grandfather made famous. An inscription on the building reads, “It is the responsibility of every believer to seek knowledge.” Ulug Beg attracted numerous mathematicians and other scholars from Perisa and other corners of the Middle East to train and study at his school in Samarkand. The structure would withstand dozens of earthquakes over the centuries without collapsing. During the lifetime of Ulug Beg, only his medresseh would grace the Registan, but his successors over the next two centuries would build two more magnificent edifices to enclose the square on three sides. In the interim Ulug Beg’s medresseh would train hundreds of scholars from across the Islamic world for the next four centuries, a fitting monument to a ruler who valued knowledge more than power and wealth. Ali Kushji, perhaps Ulug Beg’s most accomplished student, had a major impact on the study of astronomy in both the Muslim world as well as Europe.
However, Ulug Beg’s greatest scholarly contribution remained underground and out of sight for almost four hundred years. Ulug Beg was not only a mathematician but also one of the most accomplished astronomers of the Middle Ages. His observatory, situated on the outskirts of Samarkand, was the most advanced facility of its day and eclipsed the technology available to European astronomers. Ulug Beg’s observatory contained a gigantic sextant nearly two hundred feet long, which had an astrolabe mounted on it, allowing the astronomer to slide along the curve of the sextant, taking observations. His measurements of the positions of many celestial bodies, including many stars, the moon, and the sun, were amazingly accurate and more precise than those taken by European astronomers at the time. His data contributed to the study of the stars for centuries.
Ulug Beg made Samarkand not just a city of conquerors but also a center of scholarship and learning. Alas, he was a better scholar than administrator, so he failed to discover a plot his own son organized. Toppled from power in 1449, Ulug Beg was executed by his son, who seized the throne, though the Timurid Dynasty would soon end.
The last of the Timurid Dynasty to rule from Samarkand was Babur, a prince who came to power in 1495. Babur was ambitious and sought to recreate the glory of the early Timurid period, but he faced a capable and shrewd rival, Shabany Khan, the leader of a seminomadic tribe called the Uzbeks. By 1510 Babur’s dream of resurrecting the empire of his great-grandfather Timur had been dashed. Forced further southward into modern Afghanistan, Babur turned his imperial ambitions toward the lands of India, which was laden with resources and treasure. There he founded the Mogul Dynasty, an imperial epoch that would rival that of his great forebear. But Samarkand and much of Central Asia now belonged to a new ruling elite, who later historians would identify as the Shaybanids after the warlord who closed the door on Babur’s efforts to reclaim the grandeur of his ancestors. By 1600 Shaybanid control of the region had been replaced by the Ashtarkhanids, who ruled primarily from Bukhara, an ancient Silk Road city lying to the west of Samarkand, and Samarkand’s political influence waned.
Some Ashtarkhanid rulers followed in the path of their Timurid predecessors and glorified the city by adding still more spectacular buildings to its skyline and embellishing the existing architecture. In the early 1600s, almost a century and a half after Ulug Beg had erected the medresseh that bears his name, the khan Alchin Yalantush Bahadir ordered the construction of two medressehs to enclose the open space of the Registan. The first, Sher Dor (“With Lions”) differed radically from Ulug Beh’s medresseh in that it featured two stylized lions above the front portal, accompanied by two suns with human faces. The structure openly ignores the Islamic prohibition against the depiction of animate figures. Some scholars claim that the suns represent Zoroastrian symbols, which, if true, would certainly indicate the persistence of a faith largely eliminated in Central Asia more than six hundred years before. The second, Tilla Kari (“Gold Covered”) contains a huge domed mosque featuring an interior ceiling covered in hammered gold leaf. A stunning kaleidoscope of color and pattern, the Tilla Kari was the last great addition to the urban landscape of premodern Samarkand, and its construction marked the end of four hundred years of expansion and spectacular building on a scale that has seldom been equaled and never surpassed in any other city.
GLOBAL ENCOUNTERS AND CONNECTIONS:
Samarkand’s Confluence of Cultures
The Timurids built Samarkand into one of the great cosmopolitan centers of the medieval period by bringing people, goods, and ideas from abroad and incorporating these influences into the profile of the city. The designers and builders who were brought by force from Damascus, Shiraz, and other cities of the Middle East quickly transformed Samarkand into a city of glorious, towering Islamic architecture. Their influence may be found elsewhere in the region as well, such as in the spectacular mausoleum Timur had built at Turkistan, today in southern Kazakhstan.
Commerce also thrived in the city because of Samarkand’s traditional position as a major Silk Road center, an advantage enhanced by its role as an imperial capital for much of the Timurid period. Located in the heart of Asia along numerous established trade routes, commodities from every corner of the Eurasian land mass flowed to the city’s markets. The city attracted traders from as far away as Russia, China, and India. These visitors not only engaged in business but also exchanged information and world views. From the middle of the fourteenth century to the early decades of the fifteenth century no other city in the world drew a greater variety of visitors from so many corners of the globe.
By 1700 Central Asia was politically fragmented and economically adrift, as the importance of the Silk Road trade had sharply declined. The region’s great cities—Samarkand among them—lost both their economic relevance and cosmopolitan nature as global trade that now traveled via the world’s oceans bypassed them. Europe had arisen as the global center of trade and technology, and Samarkand and its environs were too distant and inaccessible to attract European traders and settlers. For several centuries the rest of the world almost forgot Timur’s incomparable city.
Modern Samarkand has recovered much of its past glory. After suffering numerous earthquakes and almost total abandonment in the early 1800s, the city began to recover in the late nineteenth century, and for a few years in the early twentieth century even served as the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. During the Soviet period there was limited interest in restoring the city’s great monuments, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union the government of Uzbekistan has devoted considerable resources to reconstructing the architecture of the Timurids and their successors. Samarkand now finds itself at a curious crossroads of rebuilding its past in an effort to secure its future. The potential for tourism to drive economic development in the city and its region remains largely unfulfilled, due in no small part to its distance from Europe, North America, and Japan; its lack of infrastructure and adequate facilities; and its poor management and advertising in the tourism sector. But these challenges are gradually being overcome, and those who take the golden road to Samarkand today will be rewarded with a vision of exotic grandeur that cannot be encountered anywhere else. Six hundred years ago Amir Timur and those who followed him built a city like no other in the world. Their matchless achievements continue to awe and inspire those who “travel not for trafficking alone.”
Although records exist from throughout Samarkand’s history, little is available in English, particularly for the time period this chapter covers. The following presents a diplomat’s firsthand impressions of the city in the early fifteenth century.
Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo was a Spanish diplomat sent by King Henry III of Sevilla (Spain) to the court of Amir Timur in 1403. It took more than a year before Clavijo and his entourage arrived in Samarkand, and they stayed in the capital for only about three months. Even in this short period, however, Clavijo and his companions were able to observe a great deal about life in Timur’s city. The following passages are from a diary Clavijo kept while traveling, but it was not published for over a century and a half after his death in 1412. His observations provide a unique window into life in Samarkand as well as the personality of Timur.
•What aspects of Samarkand appear to impress de Clavijo the most? Why does he find these qualities so admirable?
•De Clavijo finds some similarities between Samarkand and his home region of central Spain. What are these, and why does he take pains to mention them in his narrative?
Now that I have related those things which befell the ambassadors in this city of Samarcand, I will give an account of that city and its territory, and of the things which the lord has done to ennoble it.
The city of Samarcand is situated in a plain, and surrounded by an earthen wall. It is a little larger than the city of Seville, but, outside the city, there are a great number of houses, joined together in many parts, so as to form suburbs. The city is surrounded on all sides by many gardens and vineyards, which extend in some directions a league and a half, in others two leagues, the city being in the middle. In these houses and gardens there is a large population, and there are people selling bread, meat, and many other things; so that the suburbs are much more thickly inhabited than the city within the walls. Amongst these gardens, which are outside the city, there are great and noble houses, and here the lord has several palaces. The nobles of the city have their houses amongst these gardens, and they are so extensive that, when a man approaches the city, he sees nothing but a mass of very high trees. Many streams of water flow through the city, and through these gardens, and among these gardens there are many cotton plantations, and melon grounds, and the melons of this land are good and plentiful; and at Christmas time there is a wonderful quantity of melons and grapes. Every day so many camels come in, laden with melons, that it is a wonder how the people can eat them all. They preserve them from year to year in the villages, in the same way as figs, taking off their skins, cutting them in large slices, and drying them in the sun.
Outside the city there are great plains, which are covered with populous villages, peopled by the captives which the lord caused to be taken from the countries which he conquered. The land is very plentiful in all things, as well as bread and wine, fruit, meat, and birds; and the sheep are very large, and have long tails, some weighing twenty pounds, and they are so abundant in the market that, even when the lord was there with all his host, a pair was worth only a ducat. Other things are so plentiful, that for a meri, which is half a rial, they sell a fanega and half of barley, and the quantity of bread and rice is infinite.
The city is so large, and so abundantly supplied, that it is wonderful; and the name of Samarcand or Cimes-quinte is derived from the two words cimes (great), and quinte (a town). The Supplies of this city do not consist of food alone, but of silks, satins, gauzes, taffetas, velvets, and other things. The lord had so strong a desire to ennoble this city, that he brought captives to increase its population, from every land which he conquered, especially all those who were skillful in any art. From Damascus, he brought weavers of silk, and men who made bows, glass, and earthenware, so that, of those articles, Samarcand produces the best in the world. From Turkey he brought archers, masons, and silversmiths. He also brought men skilled in making engines of war: and he sowed hemp and flax, which had never before been seen in the land.
There was so great a number of people brought to this city, from all parts, both men and women, that they are said to have amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand persons, of many nations, Turks, Arabs, and Moors, Christian Armenians, Greek Catholics, and Jacobites, and those who baptize with fire in the face, who are Christians with peculiar opinions. There was such a multitude of these people that the city was not large enough to hold them, and it was wonderful what a number lived under the trees, and in caves outside.
The city is also very rich in merchandize which comes from other parts. Russia and Tartary send linen and skins; China sends silks, which are the best in the world, (more especially the satins), and musk, which is found in no other part of the world, rubies and diamonds, pearls and rhubarb, and many other things. The merchandize which comes from China is the best and most precious which comes to this city, and they say that the people of China are the most skilful [sic] workmen in the world. They say themselves that they have two eyes, the Franks one, and that the Moors are blind, so that they have the advantage of every other nation in the world. From India come spices, such as nutmegs, cloves, mace, cinnamon, ginger, and many others which do not reach Alexandria.
Source: Ruy González de Clavijo, Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy González de Clavijo to the Court of Timour, at Samarcand, A.D. 1403–6 (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1859), 169–171.
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Zaimeche, Salah. “Samarkand,” Foundation for Science, Technology, and Civilisation, 2005, www.muslimheritage.com/uploads/Samarkand.pdf.
