Samarkand was one of the stops on my recent travels to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. [Read more about that here] With over half a million inhabitants, Samarkand is the capital of its region, the second largest city in Uzbekistan, and a center of historical Islamic scholarly study. While the actual date of its founding is a bit fuzzy, most people agree that it came into being during the 7th and 8th centuries BCE, taking full advantage of its location on the Silk Road between China, Persia, and Europe. It was an important city in the Persian Empire, and indeed the primary language is Tajik, a dialect of the Persian language (aka, Farsi). It was from Samarkand that we traveled across the nearby border into Tajikistan.
One of its most notable sites in Samarkand is Registan Square, which means “sandy” or “desert” in Farsi. The square is encased by three madrasahs, or schools, of different periods: the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (1417–1420), the Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619–1636), and the Tilya-Kori Madrasah (1646–1660). Today all three are used for tourism and educational purposes rather than actual schools, and it’s common to see shops and even small bazaars housed in the old buildings, all of which have undergone extensive restoration. The first madrasah (on the left) houses a wonderful museum of the scientific and historical heritage of Uzbekistan and the surrounding regions. I’ll have more on that in a following post. For the current post I wanted to show part of the light show we were lucky to see that evening.
The show traced the long and storied history of the region. The video shows only the first five minutes of what was a more than 20 minute program. There is a narrative that is hard to hear behind the music, but the lights and 3-D video displays are fascinating in themselves.
The Uzbekistan part of the trip started in the capital of Tashkent, went on to Samarkand (with the side trip to Tajikistan), then to the even more ancient city of Bukhara. The three cities were all accessible by a modern bullet train, making travel easy. We then flew from Bukhara back to Tashkent for an overnighter before flying again from Tashkent to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. More on those later.
Visiting parts of the Silk Road (I’ve been to other parts in the past) was a fascinating experience. I also had a quick tour of Istanbul on the way there. It’s nice to be back, but even while still on the trip plans were being made for another long trip next summer that will take me back to Africa (I was in Tanzania last year).
Stay tuned for more!
[Photo Credit: David J. Kent, 2023]
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
