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Published On: Sep 04, 2005 12:36 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Sep 04, 2005 12:36 PM
Samarqand
To the city of Timur Lenk (lame
Timur, Tamurlane)
20 April and 21
April
We got going reasonably early and drove the four hours to Samarqand--a bit cramped but ok. Our driver, Jamshid, son of Toxir, the branch manager of JP Morgan here, was patient with our questions. He had decent English, and makes and effort to figure out our Turkish. He is a degree student in economics, but very "saf" as they say in Turkish. Innocent, naive. Particularly on matters of religion he has odd perspectives that I can't quite sort out. He wondered if I agreed with what he had read about the Arabic script that, since it has no predecessors (not true) it is actually the writing of aliens. I couldn't agree. There were lots of similar questions about Islam--deferential but from left field. What IS the correct shade of Islamic green, for instance?
Anyway, amazingly, here I am in Samarqand. Timur was basically a sheep-rustler from a good family in the near-by valley of Keshk. Here is a picture of the Kesh valley.
He
consolidated his hold on the valley by the time he was 25, and in the next 10
years he conquered all of the central Islamic lands, then over the next 20 years
conquered the rest of the known world--China, the Ottomans etc.. He died at 70,
his heirs squabbled, and except for the Moghuls in India (who were Timurids).
His capital was Samarqand, about which we have lots of accounts from resentful
Muslims (he would conquer a city, and if it resisted he would lay it waste
except for the artisans whom he would march off to Samarqand; if they didn't
resist, he wouldn't destroy the city, but would still take it's artisans), and
gobsmacked Europeans.
So, Timur has his capital in Samarqand, and was determined that it display his wealth and power. Architecturally, this meant both scale--he was constantly berating his architects for not making things big enough--and detail--amazingly intricate and expensive programs of tile decoration, calligraphy, stucco carving, and every other medium known to Islamicate art and architecture. I have never seen anything to equal the size and detail of these buildings. I want to say, it's just big and vulgar--Stalinist grandiosity. But I have to say that there is a delicacy and exquisite quality to the decoration that suggests that his architects and tilemakers, at least, were not just vulgar clods like Albert Speer, but real men of taste, at last turned loose and given all the money to work with that they can handle. The style continued for another 200 years, into the 1600s. You might liked this efflorescence to the Florentine Renaissance: a continuation with, but dramatic break from the inherited. The effects are felt in Islamic art until the early 20th century (in Khiva)
Here are some examples. The exterior of the Ulughbeg Madrassa.
The
details of the entry.
There was one particularly wonderful place, a mortuary compound sprawling down
the hill from the tomb of a saint alleged to have been the Prophet's cousin, one
Qutham. He was said to have had a miraculously preserved body (a la Lourdes) and
so was called Shah-i Zand, the living saint. This set of tombs served as a kind
of laboratory for tile work, calligraphy, and ornament that just left me amazed.
There is nothing like it in the world.
Then there is the Sher Dor, a 16th-century madrassa with this striking entrance
(followed by
detail)
(The constellation of Leo with the Sun rising behind it.)
Timur's Cathedral Mosque for his wife
Bibi Khanum is striking at least in scale:
Here
is his palace in the old home-town, Sabzi-shahr (formerly Keshk, but for all the
gardens and orchards he added, renamed, "Green-city") (For scale, note the
people on top of the entrance).
Finally, the masoeum built for Timur's son in which Timur himself was interred.
In the 1940's the Soviets exhumed him and reconstructed his face (generically, I
have to say); then they reburied him. Here is the Guri-Mir, and inside, Timur's
cenotaph. It is supposed to be dark green jade, but looks black to me.
All-in-all, an amazing time in an amazing place. I saw lots of things I won't bore you all with here, but I feel amazed and pleased that I've made it to Samarqand, home of Timur. Now on to Bukhara!
We got going reasonably early and drove the four hours to Samarqand--a bit cramped but ok. Our driver, Jamshid, son of Toxir, the branch manager of JP Morgan here, was patient with our questions. He had decent English, and makes and effort to figure out our Turkish. He is a degree student in economics, but very "saf" as they say in Turkish. Innocent, naive. Particularly on matters of religion he has odd perspectives that I can't quite sort out. He wondered if I agreed with what he had read about the Arabic script that, since it has no predecessors (not true) it is actually the writing of aliens. I couldn't agree. There were lots of similar questions about Islam--deferential but from left field. What IS the correct shade of Islamic green, for instance?
Anyway, amazingly, here I am in Samarqand. Timur was basically a sheep-rustler from a good family in the near-by valley of Keshk. Here is a picture of the Kesh valley.
He
consolidated his hold on the valley by the time he was 25, and in the next 10
years he conquered all of the central Islamic lands, then over the next 20 years
conquered the rest of the known world--China, the Ottomans etc.. He died at 70,
his heirs squabbled, and except for the Moghuls in India (who were Timurids).
His capital was Samarqand, about which we have lots of accounts from resentful
Muslims (he would conquer a city, and if it resisted he would lay it waste
except for the artisans whom he would march off to Samarqand; if they didn't
resist, he wouldn't destroy the city, but would still take it's artisans), and
gobsmacked Europeans. So, Timur has his capital in Samarqand, and was determined that it display his wealth and power. Architecturally, this meant both scale--he was constantly berating his architects for not making things big enough--and detail--amazingly intricate and expensive programs of tile decoration, calligraphy, stucco carving, and every other medium known to Islamicate art and architecture. I have never seen anything to equal the size and detail of these buildings. I want to say, it's just big and vulgar--Stalinist grandiosity. But I have to say that there is a delicacy and exquisite quality to the decoration that suggests that his architects and tilemakers, at least, were not just vulgar clods like Albert Speer, but real men of taste, at last turned loose and given all the money to work with that they can handle. The style continued for another 200 years, into the 1600s. You might liked this efflorescence to the Florentine Renaissance: a continuation with, but dramatic break from the inherited. The effects are felt in Islamic art until the early 20th century (in Khiva)
Here are some examples. The exterior of the Ulughbeg Madrassa.
The
details of the entry.
There was one particularly wonderful place, a mortuary compound sprawling down
the hill from the tomb of a saint alleged to have been the Prophet's cousin, one
Qutham. He was said to have had a miraculously preserved body (a la Lourdes) and
so was called Shah-i Zand, the living saint. This set of tombs served as a kind
of laboratory for tile work, calligraphy, and ornament that just left me amazed.
There is nothing like it in the world.
Then there is the Sher Dor, a 16th-century madrassa with this striking entrance
(followed by
detail)
(The constellation of Leo with the Sun rising behind it.)
Timur's Cathedral Mosque for his wife
Bibi Khanum is striking at least in scale:
Here
is his palace in the old home-town, Sabzi-shahr (formerly Keshk, but for all the
gardens and orchards he added, renamed, "Green-city") (For scale, note the
people on top of the entrance).
Finally, the masoeum built for Timur's son in which Timur himself was interred.
In the 1940's the Soviets exhumed him and reconstructed his face (generically, I
have to say); then they reburied him. Here is the Guri-Mir, and inside, Timur's
cenotaph. It is supposed to be dark green jade, but looks black to me.
All-in-all, an amazing time in an amazing place. I saw lots of things I won't bore you all with here, but I feel amazed and pleased that I've made it to Samarqand, home of Timur. Now on to Bukhara!
Posted: Tue - April 20, 2004 at 06:47 AM