We awoke next morning to find ourselves in a grey desolate wilderness, as bare as the Hunger Desert. The lovely gardens full of fruit-trees characterising Tashkent extend for some distance round the city, and then comes a dull expanse of desert which, when seen through sheets of rain, is the acme of dreariness. When we reached the end of our railway journey we found, as usual, that the station was some miles away from our destination, Samarkand, and we drove through oceans of mud under a pelting rain to the Grand Hotel, a nice new house where the rooms looked out on to a little garden. To our relief our host and hostess had a limited acquaintance with the German language, so that we were able to make our wishes known, the main one being for thorough washing accommodation. We were taken to see a fine bath-room, and arranged to have the stove at once lighted, for it is something of a function to have a bath in Russia, and cannot be achieved under a couple of hours; our host was evidently very proud of possessing a bath-room, and we spent a happy afternoon getting rid of all traces of our eleven days and nights of travel.
Next morning a radiant sun following the rain showed us Samarkand in its most attractive guise. We drove through shady avenues, past fashionable shops towards the real city, and suddenly there burst upon our view a wonderful dome and lofty archway, jewelled with tiles of dazzling blue. It is the Gur Amir, the tomb of Tamerlane, the great Conqueror, the forerunner of the Mogul Emperors. In the midst of a thick cluster of trees the tomb rises erect, so that only the cupola is visible until you come close to it. It is enclosed by the care of the Russian authorities with an inconspicuous little wall, finished off with a metal coping along the top. Formerly the tomb was entered (according to regulation) from the south side, but most of the outer buildings have already fallen to pieces. The present entrance is on the north, and the façade is completely covered with tiles; it is a marvellous blaze of colour, composed of various shades of blue, varied with white and a little yellow, the whole effect being that of a blue mosaic. The decorations are varied; there are a large number of inscriptions, many of them from the Koran, in Persian characters of the fifteenth century. They certainly add rather than detract from the decorative character of the design. Passing through the entrance gate one comes into a grassy courtyard paved with black marble, in which are ancient mulberry trees, and the central building rises beyond them. The whole of this inner façade is also tiled. Among the inscriptions one was deciphered by Vambéry, which proved to be the architect’s signature: “This is the work of poor Abdullah, son of Mohammed, native of Ispahan.”
TAMERLANE’S TOMB (INTERIOR)
In the days of his glory Tamerlane determined to have erected for himself a mausoleum excelling in magnificence all the other buildings at Samarkand. For this purpose he selected the Persian architect, Abdullah, charging him to build a tomb worthy to enshrine his remains. The two original towers which flanked the cupola are both gone, one of them quite recently, and the great western archway is falling to pieces, but the immense Kûfic[5] characters (white on a blue ground) which form the frieze immediately below the cupola are still almost perfect. The style is not entirely Persian, but was probably modified by the influence of the architecture which the Persians found in Samarkand. On each side of the main building is a small chapel containing tombs of minor importance. Entering the tomb by a beautifully carved and inlaid door, we found ourselves in a little sanctuary, where the faithful come to pray, laying their foreheads against the walls. The height of the dome (measured from within) is about 74 feet. Despite a small window at each end containing alabaster tracery, the light is dim, and a religious hush seems to pervade the building. Not only Tamerlane but others also are buried here. Shortly after the building of the mausoleum, his teacher, Saïd Mir Berke, a venerable mullah (holy man), died, so Tamerlane showed his supreme reverence for him by having him buried in the Gur Amir, ordering that his own body should be placed (when he died) at the mullah’s feet. There are in addition several small tombstones surrounding the special slab (said to be of green jade) which marks Tamerlane’s resting-place. This precious monolith was sent for this purpose by a Mongolian princess ten years after his death to his successor, Nadir Shah, but was unfortunately broken in the transport. The two pieces have been fastened together, and it has been elaborately carved with Tamerlane’s name, titles, and ancestry, interspersed with passages from the Koran. Copies of these are for sale at the tomb. Monsieur Edouard Blanc, in an interesting article in the Revue des Deux Mondes (Feb. 15, 1893), says he examined this stone very carefully from the mineralogist’s point of view, and has no hesitation in declaring that it is not jade. Certainly there is no other known specimen of this stone anything like the size, for jade is only found in small pieces; but there are other stones frequently mistaken for jade, such as jadeite (hence its name), which is not nearly so valuable. Tamerlane’s known desire to have a tomb of jade is probably the reason why it is so called. The jade mines of Turkestan have been celebrated in China for at least 2000 years. Above the mullah’s tomb are two crossed bamboo poles bearing the Prophet’s green flag, and the standard, which consists of a horse’s mane and a gold button. The tombs are enclosed by a low alabaster-work balustrade, as seen on the left hand in the sketch.
But Tamerlane was so afraid lest cupidity should cause his tomb to be rifled that he ordered his body to be buried in a crypt below the other tomb, the existence of which was until quite recently unknown, except to a few initiated persons. The entrance, which was concealed by a paving stone, is now open to the gaze of all. We went down into it by a flight of steep stone steps and found a number of tombs, one of which was the hero’s, made of specially finely carved marble. We were invited to pay a small sum in order to place candles on it, so I presume our respectful attitude had won us the reputation of being good Moslems. The vaulted roof of this crypt was admirably designed brickwork, of which the rough sketch opposite may give an idea. It was a twelve-sided figure, and the whole of the interior was in excellent repair. It was dimly lighted by a torch, which our guide produced, and we were glad to escape promptly back to the upper air, where I sat down to sketch. Various worshippers came in and out to say their prayers, for the worship of saints is a marked characteristic of Mohammedanism, and there are many shrines in Samarkand. Every one seemed friendly and devout, except an obvious tourist with his guide, who certainly disturbed the serenity of the atmosphere.
Another day I sketched the outside of that wonderful mausoleum, and day by day as we studied the monuments which time has defaced, but which even in decay surpass all others in their potent effect upon the imagination, I dreamed of the genius which had left such an imperishable memory. Surely none of the other conquerors of the world was ever so strange a mixture as the great Mogul, compounded of ambition, lust of power, love of beauty, relentless cruelty, domestic affection, and zeal for “the Faith.”
Timur i Leng, the lame Timur, or Tamerlane (to use the vulgarised form of his name), was born at Shahr-i-Sabz, “the green city,” about fifty miles south of Samarkand, in 1336. His father, Teragai, had been the first ruler in the country converted to Islamism, and he brought up his son Tamerlane in the studious retirement which he himself loved. The young man was well versed in the knowledge of the Koran, but he was noted also for his good horsemanship and other manly pursuits. Tamerlane soon abandoned his father’s way of life and reverted to the earlier type of Genghiz Khan and Kubla Khan. The accounts of the Mongol raids sound like visions of the lowest hell, beside which Dante’s descriptions are colourless; these raids are inconceivable to the modern mind, and yet history shows that they were not the work of madmen, but that they are due to a strain of ferocious brutality in the Mongol blood. Where this happens to be combined with great power or genius, as in the case of Ivan the Terrible, or Tamerlane, the result is appalling.