The Amazing Restoration of Samarkand’s Historic Buildings

While a certain extremist group has been systemically destroying precious ancient monuments in the middle-east, one Islamic city in Central Asia has been carefully restoring and preserving its own. The city is Samarkand, Uzbekistan's third largest city, and one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia. Found in the 8th or 9th century BCE, Samarkand has a long and tumultuous history starting from the time when Alexander the Great passed through it in the 4th century BCE. Since then the city has been seized and ruled by Persians, Greeks, Turks, Mongols, Chinese and Russians. The Chinese scholar-travellers Faxian and Xuanzang, the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta, and Marco Polo all wrote about the city. In the 13th century, Genghis Khan laid the city to waste. It was Timur, the founder and ruler of the Timurid Empire, who had the city rebuilt. The Bibi-Khanym mosque before restoration (left) and after restoration in 1974 (right). Photo credit: RFERL.org After Timur made Samarkand his capital, he brought the best artisans and craftsmen he could find from across his vast empire and set about rebuilding the city in great earnest. The brutality with which Timur proceeded with this task is described in Wikipedia : Timur’s commitment to the arts is evident in the way he was ruthless with his enemies but merciful towards those with special artistic abilities. He spared the lives of artists, craftmen and architects so that he could bring them to improve and beautify his capital. He was also directly involved in his construction projects and his visions often exceeded the technical abilities of his workers. Furthermore, the city was in a state of constant construction and Timur would often request buildings to be done and redone quickly if he was unsatisfied with the results Once during the construction of the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, Timur had arranged cooked meat to be brought and thrown at the workers in the foundation so that work could continue day and night.