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Coordinates: 39°39′15″N, 66°57′35″E

Samarkand – Crossroads of Culture*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	Uzbekistan
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, ii, iv
Reference	603
Region†	Asia-Pacific
Inscription History
Inscription	2001  (25th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO.

Samarkand (Uzbek: Samarqand, Самарқанд, Tajik: Самарқанд, Russian: Самарканд, Persian: سمرقند), population 412,300 in 2005, is the second-largest city in Uzbekistan and the capital of Samarqand Province. Despite its status as the second city of Uzbekistan, the majority of the city's inhabitants are Persian-speaking Tajiks. The city is most noted for its central position on the Asian Silk Road between China and the west.

It is located at the altitude of 702 meters. In 2001, UNESCO inscribed the 2750-year-old city on the World Heritage List as Samarkand - Crossroads of Cultures.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 3 Major Sights 3.1 Registan 3.2 Bibi-Khanym Mosque 3.3 Shah-i-Zinda 3.4 Gur-e-Amir Mausoleum 3.5 Main Bazaar 3.6 The Ruins of Afrasiab 3.7 Ulugh Beg Observatory 3.8 State Museum 4 Notable People born in Samarkand 5 In fiction 6 Non-fiction 7 Trivia 8 Sister cities 8.1 Other sister cities 9 See also 10 References 11 Photo gallery 12 External links

Samarkand derives its name from the Old Persian asmara, "stone," "rock," and Sogdian kand, "fort," "town."^[1]

Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, prospering from its location on the trade route between China and Europe (Silk Road). At times Samarkand has been one of the greatest cities of Central Asia. Founded circa 700 BC it was already the capital of the Sogdian satrapy under the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia when Alexander the Great conquered it in 329 BC (see Afrasiab, Sogdiana). Although an Iranian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran since the times of Alexander and his generals till the Arab conquest.

Under Abbasid rule, the secret of papermaking was obtained from two Chinese prisoners from the Battle of Talas in 751, which led to the first paper mill in the Islamic world to be founded in Samarkand. The invention then spread to the rest of the Islamic world, and from there to Europe (either through Spain or through crusaders).

From the 6th to 13th centuries it grew larger and more populous than modern Samarkand^{[citation needed]} and was controlled by the Western Turks, Arabs (who converted the area to Islam), Persian Samanids, Kara-Khanid Turks, Seljuk Turks, Kara-Khitan, and Khorezmshah before being sacked by the Mongols in 1220 . A small part of the population survived, but Samarkand suffered at least another Mongol sack by Khan Baraq to get treasure he needed to pay an army with. The town took many decades to recover from these disasters.

In 1370, Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane, decided to make Samarkand the capital of his empire, which extended from India to Turkey. During the next 35 years he built a new city and populated it with artisans and craftsmen from all of the places he had conquered. Timur gained a reputation as a patron of the arts and Samarkand grew to become the centre of the region of Transoxiana. However, while Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Persian, Indian and Turkic cities were sacked and destroyed, and people were slaughtered.

In the 16th century, Shaybanids moved their capital to Bukhara and Samarkand went into decline. After an assault by the Persian king, Nadir Shah, the city was abandoned in the 18th century.^{[citation needed]}

The city came under Russian rule after the citadel had been taken by a force under Colonel Alexander Abramov in 1868 . Shortly thereafter the small Russian garrison of 500 men were themselves besieged. The assault that was led by Abdul Malik Tura, the rebellious elder son of the Bukharan Emir and Bek of Shahrisabz was beaten off with heavy losses. Abramov, now a general, became the first Governor of the Military Okrug which the Russians established along the course of the River Zeravshan, with Samarkand as the administrative centre. The city became later the capital of the Samarkand Oblast of Russian Turkestan and grew in importance still further when the Trans-Caspian railway reached the city in 1888 . It became the capital of the Uzbek SSR in 1925 before being replaced by Tashkent in 1930.

Main article: Registan

One of the most awesome sights in Central Asia, the Registan was the center of medieval Samarkand. It consists of three huge madrassas surrounding a huge square.

• Ulugh Beg Madrassa in the west was finished in 1420 during the rule of Ulugh Beg himself and contains mosaics with astronomical themes. About 100 students were taught the sciences, astronomy and philosophy in addition to theology.

• Sherdar Madrassa in the east was completed in 1636 by the Shaybanid Emir Yalangtush as a mirror image of Ulugh Beg Madrassa, except for the decoration featuring roaring lions.

• Tilla-Kari Madrassa in the middle was completed in 1660 and boasts gilded decoration and a pleasant courtyard.

Main article: Bibi-Khanym Mosque

Some argue that this gigantic ruined mosque was built by Timur's Mongol wife, Bibi-Khanym while Timur was away campaigning. According to one of the legends, the architect fell madly in love with her and refused to complete the job unless she agreed to kiss him. The kiss left a mark and the outraged Timur ordered both killed. There is no trustworthy source which mentions a wife of Timur who was known by the name 'Bibi-Khanym' (which literally means 'women's-woman or queen of all women' in Persian). Timur's senior wife, a powerful old woman called Saray-mulk-Khanum, in honour of whom the mosque was named, does not call to mind the beautiful heroine of charming fairy tale.

In any event, the mosque, with its main gate over 35 meters tall, is one of the largest and most grandiose buildings in Samarkand. It mostly collapsed in an earthquake in 1897 but it has now been restored by the USSR Government obliterating what was left of the original tilework.^{[citation needed]}

Main article: Shah-i-Zinda

The complex is based on the grave of Qusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad who brought Islam to this area. His shrine is one of the oldest buildings in Samarkand. The approach to the tomb is a vast necropolis built on the ruins of the ancient Sogdian city. The major tombs belonging to Timur and Ulugh Beg’s extended family and favourites are covered in beautiful majolica tile work. Many people consider it to be one of the most beautiful monuments in Samarkand.

Main article: Gur-e Amir

After the death of his grandson Muhammad-Sultan in 1403 Timur ordered the mausoleum built for him. With time, the Gur-e Amir became the family mausoleum of the Timurid dynasty.

Extending around and behind Bibi Khanym Mosque, things have been unchanged for centuries.

Northeast of the Main Bazaar is the 2.2 km² archaeological site of ancient Samarkand (Marakanda) or Afrasiab, mostly exposed to the elements. The Afrasiab Museum has some 7th century Sogdian frescos. Of note is the purported tomb of Daniel, the Old Testament prophet.　The restored building is a long, low structure with five domes, containing an immense 18-meter long sarcophagus. According to legend, Daniel’s body grows by half an inch per year, thus the long tomb.

Ulugh Beg was probably more famous as an astronomer than a ruler. His works on astronomy were known even in Europe. In the 1420s, he built an immense, 3-story tall astronomical sextant, one of the largest ever constructed, in order to measure the positions of the stars with unprecedented accuracy. The ruins were unearthed in 1908 .

This museum (which has not changed much since Soviet times) contains serious exhibitions on local archaeology, history, and folk crafts.

• Sipandi Samarkandi
• Utkur Zubaydullaev
• G'ayrat Ibragimov

• In Jinyong's wuxia novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1957), the Mongol conquest is mentioned in the story.

• In The Arabian Nights (ca. AD 900) King Schahzaman is king of Samarkand.

• Samarkand can appear as an archetype of romantic exoticism, notably in the work by James Elroy Flecker: The Golden Journey to Samarkand (1913).

• Samarcande (1988) is the title of a novel by Amin Maalouf, about Omar Khayyám's life.

• Samarkand is the name of a planet in the 2001 novel Gridlinked by Neal Asher. The protagonist travels there to investigate after its teleporter explodes with enough force to destroy most of the colony.

• Samarkand is one of the cities Audre Lorde describes visiting in her collection of essays and speeches, Sister Outsider.

• Samarqand is the center of the Islamic Renaissance in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt.

• In the science fiction setting of BattleTech, there is a human-populated world named New Samarkand.

• The Nightingale of Samarkand is a character in the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress.

• Angela Carter's short story The Kiss discusses the legend of Tamburlaine's mosque in Samarkand.

• In Islamic literature and discussions, Samarkand has taken on a semi-mythological status and is often cited as an ideal of Islamic philosophy and society, a place of justice, fairness, and righteous moderation.

• For part of the history espoused in Clive Barker's Galilee, the city of Samarkand is held as a shining light of humanity, and one of the characters longs to go there.

• The markets of Samrkand are referenced to more than once in the 1920 Edith Wharton novel The Age of Innocence.

• The Amulet of Samarkand is the first book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy written by Jonathan Stroud.

• Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, explores the metaphysical significance of the marketplace in a volume of poetry entitle, Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known, 2002.

• Robert E. Howard wrote a short story in 1932 for Oriental Stories titled "Lord of Samarkand."

• In the novel Fitzpatrick's War, by Theodore Judson, Samarkand is the site of the new capitol of a new global empire modeled after that of Alexander the Great.

• In the American film classic It's a Wonderful Life, the character George Bailey (played by James Stewart) shops for a suitcase, saying, "I want something for a thousand and one nights, with plenty of room for labels from Italy and Baghdad, Samarkand... a great big one."

• In Iris Murdoch's The Nice and The Good, Kate Gray wants to go to Samarkand for holiday but knows nothing about it.

• In the Technicolor movie The Golden Horde, the main character, played by David Farrar, defends Samarkand against the Horde. He utters the memorable line, "He who comes to destroy Samarkand shall himself be destroyed."

• In the Jonas Wergeland Trilogy by Jan Kjærstad Samarkand plays a significant role in the first volume The Seducer (Forføreren)

• The second novel in author Janeen Webb's young adult series, the Sinbad Chronicles, is called "The Silken Road to Samarkand".
• In Leon Uris' novel QBVII, San Francisco is referred to America's Samarkand, a city well-known as a cultural center.

• In The Travels of Marco Polo, where Polo records his journey along the Silk Roads, Samarkand is described as a "a very large and splendid city..." Here also is related the story of Christian church in Samarkand, which miraculously remained standing after a portion of its central supporting column was removed.

• See No Evil by Robert Baer is an autobiography about the author's experiences working for the CIA, at one point visiting Samarkand while serving in Tajikistan in the early 1990s.

• Robert D. Kaplan's 1996 political travelogue The Ends Of The Earth has him traversing through a number of places in Africa, Europe, and Asia. In that book, one of the countries is Uzbekistan, and Samarkand is one of the places in Uzbekistan he visits, along with a young translator whose namesake is Ulug Beg.

• Murder in Samarkand by Craig Murray is a book about the UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan's experiences in this role, until he resigned over human rights abused in the country in October 2004.

• In 1943 the SS Peter Cooper a United States Liberty ship was launched, and then renamed the SS Samarkand after being loaned to the British. In 1971 the ship was scrapped.
• The Bookshop Sketch featured in ITVs 'At Last the 1948 Show' refers to a fictional book called "Thirty Days In the Samarkand Desert with a Spoon", by A.E.J. Elliott. The sketch was used also in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, where the book was referred to as "Thirty Days in the Samarkand Desert with the Duchess of Kent" by A. E. J. Elliott, O.B.E.
• In Turkey, there is a monthly religious magazine called Semerkand, named after this city because Samarkand has long been a major centre for Islamic scholars.

These cities were major cities of Greater Khorasan:

• Balkh, Afghanistan
• Merv, Turkmenistan
• Bukhara, Uzbekistan
• Nishapur, Iran

• Lahore, Pakistan
• Lviv, Ukraine
• Istanbul, Turkey
• İzmir, Turkey

• Samarkand Airport

A sitting man enjoying the scene of the Registan	Façade of the Bibi-Khanym Mosque	Decorations inside Tilla-Kari Medressa	Decorations inside Gur-e Amir
Colour photograph of a Madrasa taken in Samarkand ca. 1912 by Prokudin-Gorskii.	Old man, photographed by Prokudin-Gorskii near Samarkand before 1915	Fields near Samarkand	Jewish Children with their teacher in Samarkand, before 1915
Marketplace in Samarkand, before 1915	Fabric merchant at the Samarkand market displays colorful silk, cotton, and wool fabrics; before 1915	Shah-e Zindah Tombs

• Tamerlane's Old Capital Samarkand Fetes 2,750 Years
• Samarkand Hit By Country's First Post-Andijon Protests
• Discover Samarkand
• The Golden Journey ('Road') to Samarkand
• Samarkand - Silk Road Seattle Project / Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington
• Photos of Samarkand and Uzbekistan
• Murder in Samarkand by Craig Murray
• The history of Samarkand, according to Columbia University's Encyclopedia Iranica
• Samarkand in modern and old photos
• Bukharian Jewish Global Portal -- Jews from Samarkand

v • d • e The architecture of Iran and historical Persia
Elements	Bazaars • The Persian Garden (hayāt) • Windcatchers • Shabestan • Kucheh • Talar • Iwan • Howz • Panjdari • Hashti • Andaruni • Biruni (persian architecture) • Dalan e Vorudi • Qanat • Kariz • Gonbad • Ab anbar • Yakhchal • Caravanserais • Robats • Burj • Khaneqah • Tekyeh • Sahn • Imamzadeh • mosques
Notable traditional cities	Architecture of Tehran • Kashan  • Qazvin • Yazd • Isfahan • Shiraz • Qom • Herat • Derbent • Bukhara • Samarkand • Merv • Mashad • Bam • Persepolis • Ctesiphon • Susa • Shahrisabz
History and theory	Traditional Persian residential architecture • Traditional water sources of Persian antiquity • Islamic architecture • Sassanid architecture • Pre-Parsi style • Parsi style • Parthian style • Khorasani style • Razi style • Azari style • Isfahani style
Lists	List of ab anbars of Qazvin • List of historical Iranian architects • List of mosques • Args, Castles, and Ghal'ehs • List of Ziyarat-gahs