• We are headed to the southeastern part of Uzbekistan to Samarkand,  a city known for its mosques and mausoleums. It was also an important part of the Silk Road which linked China with the Mediterranean. We are taking an express train (2.5 hours) rather than driving the estimated 5 hours by car. Samarkand is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia and has a current population of about 551,700. It is the third largest city in Uzbekistan.  The city was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC (when it was known as Maranda). It was later ruled by Iranian and Turkic rulers, only to later be conquered by Genghis Khan in 1220. It is noted as being a center for Islamic culture and for the presence of Timur and the Timurid Empire of the 14th century. More about Timur later.

Once in Samarkand we immediately drove to the first of several madrasas (madrasah), mosques and mausoleums we will be visiting today. They are starting to “run together”. By the way I forgot to mention we do not need a local guide here in Uzbekistan as Furkat is our official local guide because he lives near here.

We are pretty familiar with Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Marco Polo. On this trip we were introduced to another famous emperor in this region, Timur. Who is Timur (also known as Tamerlane)?  Amir Timur (1336-1405) was a famous warrior from this area. He was also known as Timur the Lame because of an injury that left him partially paralyzed. He was a furious warrior and never lost any of his 58 war campaigns. His empire ran from the Volga River in the west to India in the southwest. Central Asia was the heart of the empire. Samarkand was his capital. Under his rule Samarkand became the center of culture and science in Central Asia.

Our first stop in Samarkand was at the mausoleum (Gur-Emir which means the grave of the ruler, i.e. Timur) that contained the graves of Timur, his sons and grandsons. It was built in 1404! A unique aspect of the mausoleum is that Timur’s grave is placed (at his request)  next to the largest gravestone, that of his spiritual teacher, Mir Said Baraka. The other interesting feature is that while all the gravestones are marble, Timur’s gravestone is made of a solid piece of jade! Needless to say the mausoleum is quite magnificent.

From there we went to see the observatory complex built by his grandson Ulugbek (Mohammad ibn Shahrukh ibn Timur Mirza Ulugh Beg Guragan) who was born in 1394. As a teenager he became  interested in science and when he was 15 he was named emperor. He was more interested in science and math than politics and conquest. He created many madrasahs (Islamic schools) to encourage schooling. He was considered an extraordinary scientist and compared to Euclid and Ptolemy. He was such a great scientist that he was able to determine the length of a year to within one minute of the modern accepted value! Because of his lack of interest in politics ultimately a conspiracy arose and he was murdered in 1449 and his observatory (built in the 1420s) was destroyed. It has since been rebuilt.

It was then time for lunch where we had another famous Uzbek dish, shish kebab.

More touring in the afternoon. We went a short distance to the site of the ancient city of Afraisiab that dated back to the 5-3rd BCE. . In 1965 while building a road they discovered a building with frescoes, some of which they managed to preserve. The Afraisiab museum was created in 1970 to house these paintings along with some 22,000 artifacts found in the area, documenting the 2500 year history of Samarkand. We only spent a short amount of time in the museum as there was more to see before we rested!

Last stop of the day was at the Shakhi  Zinda necropolis where there are many individual mausoleums. There are over 20 mausoleums dating from the 11-19th century located here. One legend states that one even contains a cousin of the prophet Mohammad. Most date to the 13-14th century. We were given free time to wander through the complex and take all the pictures we wanted! Behind these mausoleums is a hill that is filled with thousands of burial stones of more common people.

By 4:30 we were walking down a small street to get to our hotel as the bus could not negotiate the narrow street. Hmmmm… turns out we were headed to the Kosh Haviuz Boutique Hotel in the old town portion of Samarkand and it turned out to be simply a delight! It was small with 32 rooms facing a lovely interior courtyard with a rooftop hot tub and bar.

The evening dinner was also a delight as we walked those same narrow streets, finally arriving at a small restaurant that had a rooftop eating area, overlooking buildings in the old part of town. It was  real treat!

Steps for the day: 11,239!