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Journey to the Centre of the World
Preface
Samarkand, at the centre of the Great Silk Route and "the Centre of the World", may have succumbed to the ravages of progress, but it is still worth the journey - just to see its Registan.
Other things to experience or discover for yourself include Al-U-Din's Cave, The Snake Pit, the Harems. . . and the legends of the ancient trade route that runs from Beijing to Casablanca.
Even before you start, you may find exotic tales and extraordinary items of history as you approach Samarkand on the Khyber Pass route. For instance, in Lahore, not far from the Afghanistan border, you may see the ivory penthouse that Shah Jahan built for his bride - the beauty who was immortalised later in her indescribably beautiful tomb, the Taj Mahal. And, if you are attentive, you may learn an ugly secret: that below the ivory penthouse in Lahore, Shah Jahan buried his first-love - a dancing girl. Nothing strange about that - except that it is said he buried her alive in the great walls of Akbar's famous Fort.
When
you reach Samarkand, you'll hear stranger legends of love and death. Here are two morsels to taste before the long journey:
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Bibi's love-bite, and Hitler's haunt
The chief and favourite wife of Tamurlane the Terrible was a Chinese beauty named Bibi. She suffered a fatal love-bite from a handsome Persian architect, who had come to Samarkand to build the world's finest mosque.
In the end the building turned out to be one of the most massive in all Asia, with a colonnaded courtyard bigger than a football pitch and a main portal as high as four houses. But the traditional local version is that it was built on tears and tragedy.
The tale begins when Tamurlane sets off to sack India, and Bibi decides to construct, in his absence, a huge memorial to him. She plans that the projected mausoleum will be occupied by him and her - but only after many more years of love and marriage, you understand.
Construction of the huge project starts at a furious pace, then suddenly slows almost to a halt. A distressed Bibi asks why, and is told that the 'handsome Persian architect' is so in love with her that he cannot bear to finish his work and be parted from the sight of her. He desperately needs to touch her.
"Goodness, gracious me," says Bibi in Uzbek-Chinese. "Silly boy! Get on with it - the building I mean."
The handsome Persian architect persists in his love, but promises to complete the giant mausoleum 'for just one kiss'.
"Silly boy," says Bibi.
But then news comes that her husband has, in that year of 1399 of the Christian calendar, enjoyed a most successful campaign in India. The measure of his success is that he has managed to destroy Delhi totally and massacre a hundred thousand of its citizens. And now he is on his way home in triumph. Bibi becomes desperate.
"All right, silly boy. Just one kiss," she tells the handsome Persian architect. "But do hurry."
And so, when Tamurlane comes over the horizon at the head of his armies, his mausoleum stands complete in all its glory. The Khan rushes to greet Bibi, and detects a mark on her damask neck. It is the imprint of the lips of the handsome Persian architect.
"Fie" says Tamurlane the Terrible, muttering three-letter curses. "I'll have his lips devoured by ants and his scrotum made into a purse; his eye-balls put on knitting needles and his other parts dealt with less sympathetically."
The handsome Persian architect so dislikes the idea that he makes himself a pair of wings, and jumps from the top of the temple to beyond the walls of Samarkand. Tamurlane, slightly enraged, kills his chief, main, favourite wife - despite her innocent protests and despite news of the child she intends soon to bear him. He buries her in the mausoleum, which he names Bibi Khanym. And he lives unhappily in remorse for a short while longer.
Whether or not the Bibi Khanym was built in ten days by a desperate wife and a dilatory Persian architect is open to debate. Maybe it was just the "after one kiss" part of the building that was constructed so quickly. In any event the mausoleum has lasted 500 years and could last a thousand more.
A Hint of Hitler
Tamurlane the Terrible died in 1405 while leading his armies to sack China yet again. As he expired he whispered instructions about his tomb.
"Only a stone, with my name on it."
His court knew well his modest tastes.
The stone they found is believed to be the largest slab of carved jade on Earth. So large, so heavy, it is still there, and believe me, a gang of 40 thieves wouldn't be able to carry it ten metres. They say that after he was buried Tamurlane howled underneath it every night until, a year later, his son released all the foreign captives he had forgotten to kill. Then peace came to Gur Emir (the ruler's tomb).
Legend has it, however, that on the underside of the huge slab of jade that covered him was written: 'If this grave is disturbed, a more terrible ruler than I will come for you." (loosely translated). The threat was sufficient to leave him in peace for half a millennium. Then, on the night of 22 June 1941, a Russian archeologist, Mikhail Gerasimov, opened the coffin and read the warning inscription. . . as an assistant ran into the tomb to tell him that Kiev and Minsk were being bombed and that Hitler's armies had invaded Russia.
That's what you hear in Samarkand.
(A 12-part series on 'the Centre of the World' follows)
*The official history is no less dramatic, but you can learn that from guide books.
A reliable one is Cadogan's guide to Central Asia, by Giles Whittell
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