One of the most memorable things I saw in Samarkand was a skull showing intentional distortion, presumably as a display of status, dating from the 7th–8th century. It was on display at the Afrasiab Museum – and was found at the ancient settlement of Afrasiab, once the location of ancient Samarkand. I confess, Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sprang to mind.
The magic of Samarkand was only slightly dented by the fact that our hotel bedroom looked onto radio antennae and a Chicken Express restaurant’s neon sign. The Hotel Emirkan was a gilder’s delight, with gold, or at least gilt, everywhere. But it also gave us our first taste of power cuts and water outages.
We got a chance to see something of the mountains when we went out to visit Timur’s intended tomb in Shakhribaz, his birthplace, though his body never arrived. Once again, life was a fascinating blur of mosques, madrasa, palaces, mausoleums and necropolises. Though, to Elaine’s displeasure, the Siyob bazaar remained stubbornly closed for repairs.
Still, the absolute highlight of the entire Samarkand visit, at least for me, was the one to the observatory founded by Ulugh Beg (1394–1449). He was a truly remarkable figure – a prince, astronomer, and mathematician who ruled over Samarkand in Central Asia. His story is a blend of science, power, and tragedy, the tale of a ruler more interested in the stars than in conquest.
He was a grandson of the legendary conqueror Timur, or Tamerlane, who established the vast Timurid Empire. After Timur’s death, Ulugh Beg’s father, Shāhrukh, ruled from Herat, while Ulugh Beg governed Samarkand, one of the empire’s most important cities.
Unlike his warlike ancestors, though, Ulugh Beg was passionate about learning and knowledge, especially astronomy, mathematics and philosophy. Under his rule, Samarkand became on the great intellectual centres of the Islamic world.
He founded the Ulugh Beg Madrasa (1417–1420), or university, in Samarkand’s Registan Square, where mathematics and astronomy were central to education – a rarity at the time.
And then, around 1420–1424, he also built a massive observatory, the Gurkhani Zij (aka Ulugh Beg Observatory) – one of the most advanced in the world before the invention of the telescope. (I will cover more of his story in my third Substack post, published on Friday.)
Sadly, Ulugh Beg’s devotion to science made him a poor politician and warlord. After his father’s death, rival princes and religious conservatives turned against him. His own son, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, rebelled – likely under the malign influence of clerics who viewed Ulugh Beg’s secular and scientific interests as impious, akin to black magic.
In 1449, he was captured and executed on his son’s orders while on pilgrimage to Mecca. No wonder so many of the emirs and khans whose images we saw as we travelled the old Silk Road cities looked so haggard and haunted. But his legacy liveds on. Even if his observatory was destroyed soon after his death, his star catalog spread through Persia, India, and eventually Europe.
I returned to London feeling as though I had been on a pilgrimage, something that I will explore in my fourth Substack piece, to be posted on Saturday, 1st November. Will drop the link in here when the post is live. But this trip sparked a line of thinking that has also given a radically new slant to the book I have been working on this past year. More on that, I hope, anon.
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