In the town and suburbs of Samarkand are many fine buildings and gardens of Tīmur Beg and Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā.[362]
In the citadel,[363] Tīmūr Beg erected a very fine building, the great four-storeyed kiosque, known as the Gūk Sarāī.[364] In the walled-town, again, near the Iron Gate, he built a Friday Mosque[365] of stone (sangīn); on this worked many stone-cutters, brought from Hindūstān. Round its frontal arch is inscribed in letters large enough to be read two miles away, the Qu’rān verse, Wa az yerfa‘ Ibrāhīm al Qawā‘id alī akhara.[366] This also is a very fine building. Again, he laid out two gardens, on the east of the town, one, the more distant, the Bāgh-i-bulandī,[367] the other and nearer, the Bāgh-i-dilkushā.[368] From Dilkushā to the Turquoise Gate, he planted an Avenue of White Poplar,[369] and in the garden itself erected a great kiosque, painted inside Fol. 46.with pictures of his battles in Hindūstān. He made another garden, known as the Naqsh-i-jahān (World’s Picture), on the skirt of Kohik, above the Qarā-sū or, as people also call it, the Āb-i-raḥmat (Water-of-mercy) of Kān-i-gil.[370] It had gone to ruin when I saw it, nothing remaining of it except its name. His also are the Bāgh-i-chanār,[371] near the walls and below the town on the south,[372] also the Bāgh-i-shamāl (North Garden) and the Bāgh-i-bihisht (Garden of Paradise). His own tomb and those of his descendants who have ruled in Samarkand, are in a College, built at the exit (chāqār) of the walled-town, by Muḥammad Sult̤ān Mīrzā, the son of Tīmūr Beg’s son, Jahāngīr Mīrzā.[373]
Amongst Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā’s buildings inside the town are a College and a monastery (Khānqāh). The dome of the monastery is very large, few so large are shown in the world. Near these two buildings, he constructed an excellent Hot Bath (ḥammām) known as the Mīrzā’s Bath; he had the pavements in this made of all sorts of stone (? mosaic); such another bath is not known in Khurāsān or in Samarkand.[374] Again;—to the south of the College is his mosque, known as the Fol. 46b.Masjid-i-maqat̤a‘ (Carved Mosque) because its ceiling and its walls are all covered with islīmī[375] and Chinese pictures formed of segments of wood.[376] There is great discrepancy between the qibla of this mosque and that of the College; that of the mosque seems to have been fixed by astronomical observation.
Another of Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā’s fine buildings is an observatory, that is, an instrument for writing Astronomical Tables.[377] This stands three storeys high, on the skirt of the Kohik upland. By its means the Mīrzā worked out the Kūrkānī Tables, now used all over the world. Less work is done with any others. Before these were made, people used the Aīl-khānī Tables, put together at Marāgha, by Khwāja Naṣīr Tūsī,[378] in the time of Hulākū Khān. Hulākū Khān it is, people call Aīl-khānī.[379]
(Author’s note.) Not more than seven or eight observatories seem to have been constructed in the world. Māmūm Khalīfa[380] (Caliph) made one with which the Mamūmī Tables were written. Batalmūs (Ptolemy) constructed another. Another was made, in Hindūstān, in the time of Rājā Vikramāditya Hīndū, in Ujjain and Dhar, that is, the Mālwa country, now known as Māndū. The Hindūs of Hindūstān use the Tables of this Observatory. They were put together 1,584 years ago.[381]Fol. 47. Compared with others, they are somewhat defective.
Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā again, made the garden known as the Bāgh-i-maidān (Garden of the Plain), on the skirt of the Kohik upland. In the middle of it he erected a fine building they call Chihil Sitūn (Forty Pillars). On both storeys are pillars, all of stone (tāshdīn).[382] Four turrets, like minarets, stand on its four corner-towers, the way up into them being through the towers. Everywhere there are stone pillars, some fluted, some twisted, some many-sided. On the four sides of the upper storey are open galleries enclosing a four-doored hall (chār-dara); their pillars also are all of stone. The raised floor of the building is all paved with stone.
He made a smaller garden, out beyond Chihil Sitūn and towards Kohik, also having a building in it. In the open gallery of this building he placed a great stone throne, some 14 or 15 yards (qārī) long, some 8 yards wide and perhaps 1 yard high. They brought a stone so large by a very long road.[383] There is a crack in the middle of it which people say must have come after it was brought here. In the same Fol. 47b.garden he also built a four-doored hall, know as the Chīnī-khāna (Porcelain House) because its īzāra[384] are all of porcelain; he sent to China for the porcelain used in it. Inside the walls again, is an old building of his, known as the Masjid-i-laqlaqa (Mosque of the Echo). If anyone stamps on the ground under the middle of the dome of this mosque, the sound echoes back from the whole dome; it is a curious matter of which none know the secret.
In the time also of Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā the great and lesser begs laid out many gardens, large and small.[385] For beauty, and air, and view, few will have equalled Darwesh Muḥammad Tarkhān’s Chār-bāgh (Four Gardens).[386] It lies overlooking the whole of Qulba Meadow, on the slope below the Bāgh-i-maidān. Moreover it is arranged symmetrically, terrace above terrace, and is planted with beautiful nārwān[387] and cypresses and white poplar. A most agreeable sojourning place, its one defect is the want of a large stream.
Samarkand is a wonderfully beautified town. One of its specialities, perhaps found in few other places,[388] is that the different trades are not mixed up together in it but each has its own bāzār, a good sort of plan. Its bakers and its cooks are good. The best paper in the world is made there; the water for the paper-mortars[389] all comes from Kān-i-gil,[390] a meadow on the banks of the Qarā-sū (Blackwater) or Āb-i-raḥmat (WaterFol. 48. of Mercy). Another article of Samarkand trade, carried to all sides and quarters, is cramoisy velvet.