Getting tired of pictures of mosques, mausoleums and madrasas yet? This is the mausoleum of Tamarlane, a cruel but successful ruler from Uzbekistan.
The most impressive collection of mausoleums is also located in Samarkand - in an area called "Mausoleum Avenue". The last mausoleum supposedly contains the remains of the first cousin of the prophet Mohammed. Rulers & rich people liked to be buried nears saints and holy people, since they figure that God will come for the saints and not forget to scoop up others buried near by.
One of the last mosques we visited in Samarkand was the Bibi Khanym mosque, created by the eldest wife of Tamarlane as a surprise for him while he was busy conquering India. The architect of the mosque asked for a kiss from Bibi as payment for his work. Tamarlane was so pissed off after hearing that he declared that all women in his empire must cover their faces with a veil in public in the future to prevent tempting men. The mosque was mostly destroyed in an earthquake 150 years ago. When it was rebuilt, the front portal was made only 30m high, instead of the original 52m (about 15 stories high). Apparently, Tamarlane's palace in his home town was originally 75 m (20 stories) high, but the architectural technology hundreds of years ago was not advanced enough to support the design of such as structure, and it fell down less than a hundred years after being built.
Words in Uzbekistan re kind of funny. For one thing, everybody pronounces Steve's name correctly - must be the slavic influence. At a war memorial in Tashkent, Steve found plenty of Fedin and Fedun names on the list of those who fell in battle, but no Fedynas.
The other funny name is "baba". Our guide asked where Steve learned to read cyrillic & speak Russian, and he explained how his ancestors came from Ukraine, particularly his baba. Every time he said baba, the guide giggled - it turns out that that word in both Uzbek & local colloquial Russian is a rude term that means "old slut" or basically a very old women who dresses like a very young woman in order to capture very young men!
The ceiling of his mausoleum was finished with 5kg of pure gold. Go ahead, do the math - that's over a quarter of a million bucks just on decorating. Tamarlane's bones were dug up by a Russian archeologist at the beginning of the last century, in spite of the dire warning on his crypt that bad news would follow anybody who disturbed his grave. Apparently, the day after the Russian dug up the bones, the Germans declared war on Russia.
Another site that we visited was an archaeological dig of the solar observatory of Tamarlane's grandson. He was able to calculate the length of the year to within 8 seconds, and plotted the location of over 1000 stars. His works were referenced by astronomers for the next 500 years. He was better known as an astronomer than as a ruler, as he was murdered by one of his sons who then destroyed his observatory.
The picture above was of the track used to observe the location of the sun. The picture below is a reconstruction of what the 7 story tall building would have originally looked like.
One of the last mosques we visited in Samarkand was the Bibi Khanym mosque, created by the eldest wife of Tamarlane as a surprise for him while he was busy conquering India. The architect of the mosque asked for a kiss from Bibi as payment for his work. Tamarlane was so pissed off after hearing that he declared that all women in his empire must cover their faces with a veil in public in the future to prevent tempting men. The mosque was mostly destroyed in an earthquake 150 years ago. When it was rebuilt, the front portal was made only 30m high, instead of the original 52m (about 15 stories high). Apparently, Tamarlane's palace in his home town was originally 75 m (20 stories) high, but the architectural technology hundreds of years ago was not advanced enough to support the design of such as structure, and it fell down less than a hundred years after being built.
Words in Uzbekistan re kind of funny. For one thing, everybody pronounces Steve's name correctly - must be the slavic influence. At a war memorial in Tashkent, Steve found plenty of Fedin and Fedun names on the list of those who fell in battle, but no Fedynas.
The other funny name is "baba". Our guide asked where Steve learned to read cyrillic & speak Russian, and he explained how his ancestors came from Ukraine, particularly his baba. Every time he said baba, the guide giggled - it turns out that that word in both Uzbek & local colloquial Russian is a rude term that means "old slut" or basically a very old women who dresses like a very young woman in order to capture very young men!
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