Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Tamerlane the Great now dominates the square where Karl Marx's statue once stood
By BBC Monitoring's Lewis Macleod
The current Uzbek leadership has eradicated most of the traces of the
former Soviet Union's domination.
For the next 35 years he led his mounted archers as far afield as
Moscow and Delhi. Persia and Turkey also fell to the great conqueror.
On his way to a showdown with the Ming Chinese Empire, Tamerlane
was taken ill and he died in 1405.
Mausoleum
On his death his son Shahrukh ruled the eastern part of Persia from
Herat while his grandson Ulug Beg ruled the rest of the empire from
Samarkand.
Ulug Beg was a scientist and an astronomer who upset the Sufi clergy
and died a violent death. He built an observatory that was a marvel of
the age and which was restored a few years ago.
The richly restored interior of Tamerlane's mausoleum is a new source of pride for
Uzbeks
Superb craftsmanship and materials have been used to glorify Timurid legacy
Observatory where Ulug Beg plotted the positions of around 1,000 stars has been
restored
Techniques for producing the characteristic blue colour of the ceramic tiling have
now been lost