Old Samarkand

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In 1881 the great French novelist Gustave Flaubert published his Dictionary of Accepted Ideas. If we were somehow granted permission to add just one item to this revered classic, it should be “Samarkand: a name that makes you dream.”

One of the most glorious stops on the Silk Road, which connected China and the Mediterranean (and everything in between), Samarkand lies in present-day Uzbekistan, in the valley of the Zerafshan River. In 1371 A.D. the conqueror Tamerlane (or Timur) chose the site as his capital.^a During the following three centuries, under the rule of Tamerlane and his successors (his descendants, the Timurids, 028followed by the Uzbek dynasties of the Shaibanids and Janids), Samarkand underwent a tremendous architectural boom. Mosques and madrasas (Muslim teaching institutions) covered with mosaics and topped with blue cupolas arose from the rugged terrain, as did magnificent gardens. Indeed, the turquoise domes and ornamented buildings from this period are what generally come to mind when the name “Samarkand” is invoked.

This city, however, is really the “second Samarkand.” It was built after an even more ancient city—the first Samarkand—was destroyed by invading Mongols under Genghis Khan in 1220 A.D. The site of the first Samarkand, on a plateau just to the northeast of the present-day city, is now called Afrasiab, or, more precisely, the Castle of Afrasiab, after an evil king in the Persian epic tradition.^b Remains of the ancient city are still visible, including the platform of its great citadel, concentric city walls, pools and water channels.

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Archaeological work on the plateau has been carried out continually since the Russian conquest of Uzbekistan in 1868, though the “archaeologists” of the early days were mainly Russian officers and adventurers. Since 1989 excavations have been conducted by the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission (MAFOUZ), which I have directed along with Mukhammadjon Isamiddinov of the Samarkand Institute of Archaeology. These excavations have revealed a rich and turbulent history going back hundreds of years before the arrival of Tamerlane. The first Samarkand was a glorious city, irresistible to one foreign conqueror after another.

The earliest significant evidence of occupation at Samarkand/Afrasiab is a massive wall that can be tentatively dated between 650 and 550 B.C., as we know from pottery found near the structure. At one time, the wall enclosed the entire plateau, about 540 acres. This 20-foot-thick wall was made of coarse mudbricks shaped like loaves of bread. Each brick bears a geometric mark made by a person’s finger; the marks probably identify the work gangs that built the wall.

That such gangs were levied suggests the existence of a political authority able to coordinate large projects, though we do not know who exercised that authority. It is possible, however, that the wall is our earliest glimpse of a people who would occupy Samarkand/Afrasiab for hundreds of years, controlling traffic along the Silk Road and submitting—not always peaceably—to one outside power after another: the Sogdians.

Though their origins remain obscure, we know that the Sogdians were culturally Iranian. Settling a territory that covered parts of present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, they spoke an Iranian language and practiced a form of Zoroastrianism, a religion that arose in Central Asia in the early first millennium B.C. and became the state religion of Iran under the Achaemenid dynasty (559–331 B.C.). The first mention of the Sogdians comes from the Behistun Inscription, commissioned by the Achaemenid king Darius in the late sixth century B.C. This trilingual cuneiform inscription (with text in Babylonian Akkadian, Persian and Elamite), carved on a mountain face in northwestern Iran, lists “Sogdiana” as one of the 23 lands ruled by the burgeoning Persian Empire. The Sogdians, who built their principal city at Samarkand, would become known along the Silk Road—from China to Persia—as highly skilled traders, artists, weavers and diplomats. Over the centuries, they remained at Samarkand, carrying on business and absorbing influences from all over the world, while their conquerors came and went.

The Achaemenid king Cyrus had taken control of Samarkand by 540 B.C., and it had become an important administrative center of the Achaemenid Empire by the late sixth century B.C. (as we know from the Behistun Inscription). The citadel 030situated in the northern part of the town was then erected on a platform built of earth blocks, and the whole circuit wall of the plateau was rebuilt. The irrigation systems constructed along the Zerafshan River were also probably completed in that period.

Not until Alexander the Great’s expedition to Central Asia did Samarkand enter the pages of recorded history in any detail. The ancient historians Arrian (86–160 A.D.) and Curtius Rufus (who wrote in the first century A.D.) tell how Alexander took the city (known to him as Maracanda, a Greek adaptation of the name “Samarkand”) by force in 329 B.C. Alexander’s conquest inaugurated two centuries of Hellenistic rule in Samarkand.

According to the same historians, Alexander occupied a royal palace next to the citadel while in residence at Samarkand. In this palace occurred one of the more sinister episodes of the Macedonian king’s reign: During one of his famed drinking parties, he became engaged in a heated argument with his life-long companion Cleitus, whom the enraged Alexander then dispatched with a spear.

MAFOUZ is now bringing to light walls that probably belonged to this palace, and previous archaeological missions discovered evidence of the Greek army’s presence at Samarkand. For example, the Greeks rebuilt the decaying city wall with mudbricks—the same material the earlier inhabitants of the city had used to construct the perimeter walls as well as all the other structures. The square mudbricks used by the Greeks were laid with such care that the wall stood firm until the 11th century A.D.: Only at that time was it thought to reinforce the mudbricks.

During the last couple of excavation seasons, another Greek structure has been uncovered: a large granary, situated in the center of the acropolis, that was destroyed in a fire apparently in the mid-third century B.C. It consists of a double row of 031rectangular rooms (38 feet by 18 feet), each having its own exit to the outside; at one end of the granary was a broad ramp down which grain bags were rolled. The fire, which roasted heaps of millet and barley, was probably set by accident, since it appears that the authorities of Samarkand tried to put it out: The beams of the granary’s flat roof were sawed off to collapse the roof and—they hoped—suffocate the fire. The effort apparently failed, since the fire spread throughout the building.

We have also recovered what is probably a weapon used in Alexander’s expedition. In September 2002, a MAFOUZ survey party found a stone ball, about 5 inches in diameter, some 100 miles south of Samarkand. This ball is of a type used by ancient Greeks in catapults.

The ball was found in a mountain defile known as the Iron Gates, which was fortified during various periods. This site perfectly matches a description given by Curtius Rufus, who describes Alexander’s attempt to seize the strongholds held by the Sogdian rebel Sisimithres:

[Sisimithres], having armed his subjects, had blocked the narrowest part of the entrance to the region with a strong fortification. Nearby flowed a 032torrential river, which a crag in its rear protected; through this the natives had made artificially a road; but whereas at either entrance a cave receives light, the inner parts are dark unless a light has been carried in … Alexander, bringing up his battering rams, shattered the fortifications which had been artificially added, and laid down many of the defenders with slings and arrows [History of Alexander 8.2.20–22].

The “torrential river” in Curtius Rufus’s account may well be the Shurob River, which flows through the Iron Gates, and one of the weapons used to take down the “defenders” may have been our stone ball. If so, it is the only weapon from Alexander’s army ever recovered.

It is difficult to decide how extensive was the cultural impact of the two centuries of Greek occupation at Samarkand. Greek writing, for example, was most likely used in the city, but the only examples we have of it are two short inscriptions giving personal names, one inscribed on a vase and the other on a knucklebone used for playing dice. Nonetheless, the Greek heroes and gods seem to have exerted a lasting influence on the people of Samarkand. In the sixth century A.D., long after the end of Greek political power in the region, local artisans were still producing terracotta statues that bear an unmistakable resemblance to Western depictions of Heracles and Athena, though they were most probably assimilated with Iranian deities.

Around the mid-second century B.C., Samarkand was conquered by new invaders called the Sarmatians, who left bronze arrow heads on the ruins of the Samarkand granary—a kind of ancient calling card. A nomadic tribe of Iranian descent, the Sarmatians had became a feared and dominant force on the steppes of Central Asia by around 400 B.C.^c

In May 2000 archaeologists Claude Rapin and Mukhammadjon Isamiddinov made a spectacular discovery at Koktepa, 20 miles north of Samarkand: the undisturbed grave of a Sarmatian princess, dating to the first century A.D. The young lady had been buried alone. Her body and clothing had long ago decomposed, but her many golden ornaments were still in situ, indicating the pattern of her dress. A diadem of gold leaf suggested her royal or priestly rank.

The Koktepa princess’s burial gives us an idea of the rich exchange of cultures that took place at cities along the Silk Road. The princess’s hair was ornamented with glass beads produced in Syria or Phoenicia, indicating that Roman trade had spread into the region, if only indirectly. A purse near her belt contained a Chinese mirror made of silver alloy, decorated with four winged dragons—a typical object from the Late Han Dynasty (24–220 A.D.). This mirror suggests that the princess or her ancestors had been in diplomatic contact with China, which was then attempting to buy off distant nomadic peoples and turn them against other nomads closer to China’s borders.

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Sarmatian control of Central Asia ended around 200 A.D., leaving Samarkand and Sogdiana to the Sogdians—who had survived through the periods of Persian, Greek as well as Sarmatian rule. Although a series of kings ruled in Sogdiana, they never established anything like a centralized dynasty; instead, during much of the first millennium A.D., Central Asia remained divided among a number of city-states. The Sogdians would gain their greatest renown not as rulers but as intrepid merchants upon the Silk Road, controllers of the trade routes from Byzantium to China.

Sogdian merchants ventured further and further east as they realized the potential of Chinese markets, and in the process they established permanent communities in all the main trading towns along the way. In Chinese art of the early Tang period (seventh-eighth centuries A.D.), for example, numerous terracotta figurines depict Sogdian merchants in their various guises: as caravaners, as wine merchants, as grooms presenting their stallions, as trainers of hawks and cheetahs. Chinese artists frequently depicted the Sogdians in their characteristic costume (hooded cap, long-sleeved caftan, trousers, bootlets), designed to keep the merchants comfortable during long journeys upon windswept deserts. In some of these works of art, the faces of the Sogdians are depicted in amusing caricature (deep-set eyes, long noses, thick lips), suggesting the greed and mischief of merchants.

These Chinese satires contrast sharply with the noble manner in which Sogdians depicted themselves, in paintings 034executed in Central Asia. One splendid cycle of paintings, commissioned around 660 A.D by the Sogdian king Varkhuman for his private residence in Samarkand, celebrates both the power of the king and the importance of the Chinese alliance he had recently concluded. In one of these tableaux, Chinese envoys bring silk to Samarkand, in the form of cocoons (unspun silk), hanks (lengths of thread) and rolls (woven cloth)—a clever way of showing that China controlled, or claimed to control, all three stages of the production of the prized material. Another scene shows the Chinese emperor, oversized (like Varkhuman himself in another scene); he is hunting panthers. Nearby the Chinese empress sails in a pleasure boat, accompanied by musicians, while monsters swim in the water.

Just half a century later, the brilliant Sogdian civilization that had controlled 035Central Asia, culturally speaking (much as Greece’s cultural influence over Rome continued long after it became a Roman vassal), was coming unraveled. The loosely organized Sogdian city-states could not defend themselves against invading Arab armies sent by the Umayyad dynasty, whose caliphs ruled from Damascus. After several attacks, Samarkand was besieged and captured in 712 A.D. Chinese chronicles have preserved a letter in which Ghurak, the king of Samarkand at the time, pleads for help:

The Arabs placed against the walls three hundred catapults; in three places they dug big saps; they wanted to destroy our town and our kingdom. I humbly ask as an Imperial Bounty for the sending of a certain quantity of soldiers to assist me in my hardships. As for those Arabs, they are doomed to be powerful during a bare total of one hundred years; this year this total is exhausted.

The king’s prophecy would prove false; after the Umayyads lost power in 749 A.D., the Abbasids—the second dynasty of the Islamic empire, which ruled from the newly formed city of Baghdad—assumed control of Samarkand.

On the acropolis where the Sogdians, Persians, Greeks, Sarmatians and Sogdians (again) had built their official structures, each of two Arab governors in office between 740 and 755 A.D. built a large palace; the earliest one of these probably occupied the spot where a Zoroastrian temple had stood. Between about 765 and 820 A.D., this palace progressively shrunk, giving way to the great city mosque erected next to it. Eventually, this mosque was leveled, and many of the objects it contained were gathered together and buried in rubbish pits. One of them was excavated in 2000, and the discarded objects it contained provide an excellent glimpse into some of the kinds of activities that took place in the palace in the period just before its destruction. Sherds inscribed with writing exercises indicate the existence of a palace school for the scribes needed by the new administration. More surprising, given the proximity of the mosque, are the numerous finds related to drinking, music and pleasure: some glass carafes and goblets, a bronze mirror, a cosmetics grinder, a flute and the earliest set of chess pieces ever discovered in an archaeological context. During the late eighth and early ninth centuries A.D. the Abbasid aristocracy at Samarkand seems to have enjoyed the good life.

Of course, a life of leisure was not without its scandals and affairs. The Persian historian Balami tells the story of one Rafi ibn Layth, a grandson of an Arab governor who had built one of Samarkand’s two palaces:

Rafi ibn Layth, a distinguished officer of the Samarkand garrison, of pleasant looks, was very fond of women and 036wine and spent his time in amusements. He had a love affair with a certain woman, the wife of Yahya ibn Ashath, who at that time was away at the court of the caliph Harun al-Rashid [the caliph of the Arabian Nights, who resided in Baghdad]. Following Rafi’s advice, this woman apostatized, therefore breaking her marriage; then she returned to Islam, and after the legal time Rafi married her. The husband complained to Harun al-Rashid. The latter wrote to the governor, ordering him to punish Rafi, to put him in jail, to blacken his face and to have him paraded in town, in this state, seated on a donkey, in order to set an example, then to force him to separate from his wife. Rafi escaped from prison, went to Balkh, and made people beg the governor for pardon. He granted it and sent him back to Samarkand. But as he could not publicly take back his wife, Rafi took the lead of the adventurers of Samarkand and captured the town; then he took back his wife.

In the end, Harun al-Rashid had to advance to Samarkand in 810 A.D. to suppress the rebellion himself. He died during the campaign.

Life became far less indulgent at Samarkand with the introduction of Samanid rule in the mid-ninth century A.D. The Samanids originated from the local landed gentry, and during the roughly 150 years that they ruled, Samarkand, Bukhara and other cities in Central Asia became important centers of Muslim learning. The Samanids developed an irrigation system for the region, and they demanded a stricter adherence to Islamic law.

At the turn of the 11th century A.D., a Turkish dynasty came to power in Samarkand: the Karakhanids, who made the city a part of a vast empire that stretched across Central Asia, even into China. The Karakhanids ruled with an iron hand. Their monuments are of a severe, awe-inspiring character, for instance the 150-foot-tall Great Minaret, called Minor-i kalyan, which still dominates the landscape at Bukhara. At Samarkand evidence of Karakhanid architecture is rare. In the 2000 season, however, Yuri Karev, a young Russian archaeologist working with MAFOUZ, stumbled upon the remains of several pavilions overlooking the valley to the north. The pavilions were an extension of the Karakhanid palace that stood at the top of the citadel. They had been built cheaply, with slender, half-timbered walls. On the inside, however, the pavilions were covered with extremely delicate paintings showing a large variety of subjects: hunting dogs, dancers, a kneeling Turkish guard presenting an arrow to a ruler, birds set on a background of flowers and Persian calligraphy. These were the first examples of Karakhanid painting ever discovered.

How do we explain this discrepancy between the Karakhanids’ flimsy, clumsy structures and their intricate, sophisticated paintings? Perhaps the Karakhanid aristocrats were content with ephemera, part of the ancestral heritage of tent-dwellers. Or maybe they lived in accordance with the spirit of their contemporary, the Persian poet Omar Khayyam (c. 1050–1123 A.D.), who speaks of the ultimate fragility of human works:

Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.

Indeed, as the 12th century went along, the rhythm of change grew more frenzied at Samarkand. In March 1220, Mukhammad ibn Tekesh, the smug ruler of the new Iranian dynasty of the Khwarazmshahs, who had briefly made Samarkand the capital of his inflated empire, had no choice but to leave the town, which was threatened by the fierce, invading Mongols, led by Genghis Khan. The majority of the Khwarazmshahs’ garrison deserted on the third day of the Mongols’ siege. The Persian historian Juvaini recounts the battle and tells of the heroism of a man named Alp Khan:

Alp Khan … made a show of valor and intrepidity: issuing forth from the citadel with a thousand desperate men, he fought his way through the center of the Mongol army and joined up with the Sultan. During the space between the two prayers, the Mongols took the gates and entered the citadel. A thousand brave and valiant men withdrew to the cathedral mosque and commenced a fierce battle using both naphtha [flammable liquids] and quarrels [square-headed arrows]. The army of Chingiz-Khan [Genghis Khan] likewise employed pots of naphtha: and the Friday mosque and all that were in it were burnt with the fire of this world and washed with the water of the Hereafter. [From The History of the World-Conqueror by ‘Ala-ad-Din ‘Ata-Malik Juvaini.]

Archaeologists excavating the mosque have found the ashes of this fire and the skeletons of the last defenders, still wearing their armor. Next to the northern gate of Samarkand, the one that Alp Khan’s party had taken during their night sally, the complete furnishings of a harness have been discovered: 240 small plates of gilded silver, each bearing a hammered floral motif. Though the site of Afrasiab has always been (and still is) continually searched by treasure hunters, these precious ornaments, buried in haste by a 037companion of Alp Khan, waited for 770 years, almost in the open, before MAFOUZ archaeologist Mukhammadjon Isamiddinov become curious enough to turn over a brick.

The Mongols devastated the first Samarkand, and the site was soon deserted. Just how complete the destruction was can be imagined by reading an account from Ibn Battuta, the famed Moroccan traveler who visited Samarkand—what he called “one of the greatest and finest of cities, and most perfect of them in beauty”—in the early 1330s. “There were formerly great palaces on [the Zerafshan River’s] bank,” he writes in The Travels of Ibn Battuta, “and constructions which bear witness to the lofty aspirations of the townsfolk, but most of this is obliterated, and most of the city itself has also fallen into ruin. It has no city wall, and no gates, and there are no gardens inside it.”

It would take Tamerlane’s splendid architectural vision to build the city once more, in the location we see today, his turquoise domes and glittering facades rising over the landscape of so many conquerors.

In 1881 the great French novelist Gustave Flaubert published his Dictionary of Accepted Ideas. If we were somehow granted permission to add just one item to this revered classic, it should be “Samarkand: a name that makes you dream.” One of the most glorious stops on the Silk Road, which connected China and the Mediterranean (and everything in between), Samarkand lies in present-day Uzbekistan, in the valley of the Zerafshan River. In 1371 A.D. the conqueror Tamerlane (or Timur) chose the site as his capital.a During the following three centuries, under the rule of Tamerlane and his successors […]