A Roman Column

	Delicately decorated woman's tomb at Shahe-e-Zinda.

A CENTRAL ASIAN JOURNEY

The Other Samarkands

Neeman Sobhan

Once upon a millennium there was a city called Markanda. Actually, that was Samarkand's Greek name given by Alexander the king of Macedon when he conquered this capital of the Sogdian Satrapy of the ancient and sprawling Persian Achemenid empire of Cyrus and Darius, replacing Zoroastrianism with Hellenistic concepts in the region.

We are talking about 329 B.C or BCE (Before Common Era if one wishes to be neutral). I have no problem with the old system of designating world events by the birth and death of Christ. I am used to reading the past as A.D or B.C. However, in Samarkand, what is harder to get used to, are the numbers that precede these qualifiers. Talking of 700 or 600 B.C (when thisone of the oldest existing city in the world, was first established as Afrasiab), to 1800 A.D (when, having flourished through a variety of empires and been destroyed and rebuilt by other dynasties, it was finally abandoned to be a prop on the stage of history), that's a lot of centuries!

Visiting this area is trying to swim in the River of Time. It is all swirling there, the ancient past, the remote past, the medieval past, and the recent past. Suddenly tiny voices bubble forth from the bottom. Names, titles, terms learnt a lifetime ago in history books call out: The Parthians, the Scythians, the Assyrians, the Akkadians, the Sassanids, the Safavids, Ghaznavids, Ghor, Iran-Turan, the Seljuks, the Abbasids, the Ottomans, the Seleucids, Sumerians, Mongols, Bactria, the Levant, Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), Babylon, Transoxiana, the Avesta, Satrapy, and more.

	Part of wall mural from Afrasiab.

Figures in miniature paintings; mythic characters from fiction, poetry and songs; heroes of epics and legends, all shimmer forth: Afrasiyab fighting Siyahvush, the rider of the black stallion after training under Rostam in Ferdousi's Shahnama or Book of Kings, or the fictitious Sassanid king Shehryar and his fair storyteller Shehrazade from the Alif Layla or A Hundred and One nights, or relics from half standing Zoraostrian temples, bent Hellenistic coins, or shards of pre-Islamic pottery, or a page of Abbassid-era document, or a link from the chain-mail of Turkish armour, or a rag of Chinese tapestry.

It's a Disneyworld for history buffs. We had started our journey thinking to see the Samarkand of Amir Temur and on arriving, realised that we had pulled at a thread in the fabric that has knit this city through many ages, unraveling the following timeline (which showed us that what is actually left to admire in its most preserved and accessible form is only the most recent):

8-7 B.C to 6 A.D
Known as Afrasiab within Sogdian satrapy of Aechmedian Empire (Persian). Confirmed archeological sites discovered from 500 B.C.

See in Afrasiab Museum.: Mural paintings of this time, and oldest surviving chessmen.

4 B.C
Alexander refers to Samarkand as fair Marakanda, which he conquers and destroys!

2 B.C
Sogdiana and its capital Samarkand now part of the Graeco-Bactrian Empire. Later it enters the confederation of Kanguy princedoms.

First Millenium AD
Samarkand now one of the strongest princedoms of Sogd, and important stop on the caravan trade on the Great Silk Road from the 4th to 8th centuries.

7-8 A.D
Arabs conquer Samarkand, convert much of Central Asia to Islam.

9-10 A.D
Under Samanids (Persians)

11-12 A.D
Under Karakhanids, Ghaznavids (Turkic) Seljuks and Karaki-Tai

13 A.D
Under the Khwarazm Shahs (Persian)

1220
Chengez Khan conquers and destroys Samarkand.

14-15 A.D
Temur and Ulugh Beg reconstruct Samarkand.

16 A.D
Shaybanids (Uzbeks) conquer, then transfer capital to Bokhara

18 A.D
Samarkand abandoned

1868-1991
Tsarist Russia occupies and links Samarkand to Russia through Trans-Caspian railway.(Thanks to Russian archeologists, restoration of Samarkand. Though many best relics are now in St. Petersburg at the Hermitage).

Faced with such a fascinating calendar, my suggestion to others would be to visit the Afrasiab Museum to see the murals and other Sogdian and pre-Arab relics, and for the rest to pick a few monuments and ruins from other centuries.

The Shah-e-Zinda complex.

Given our own time limit, we went straight to the Shah-e-Zinda complex, which for me became the most memorable site in Samarkand, consisting of a series of gorgeously decorated and by now reconstructed mausoleums, tombs and crypts. Contrary to the impression one would get from its designation as a necropolis, it is the most colourful spot in Samarkand, a flowering forest of buildings all in different shades of blue: turquoise, azure, lapis dark, blue-green and greenish blue, embroidered with other colours. Each building is a jewel in a long open corridor reached by a flight of stairs from the portal at street level. It is a magnificent place to stroll down gazing at some twenty buildings dating from 9th to the 14th century. The prettiest tombs were the ones of women, such as Temur's sisters and neices. Photos fail to do justice; only the eyes record.

The name Shah-i-Zinda (meaning "the living king") refers to the grave of Qusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the prophet Muhammad, who supposedly was the first to introduce Islam to Central Asia in 676 A.D. Under the Abbasids the legend grew that on being beheaded, he took his head and went into a deep well, where he's still living now! Ibn-e-Battuta, the famous traveler said that the shrine was so venerated that it was not destroyed even by Chengez Khan.

Talking about shrines, we plan to see next, outside Samarkand in a beautiful spot next to a gurgling book, the supposed tomb of Prophet Daniel (Khodja Danyar) and on our way to Bokhara, the tomb of Imam Bokhari, famous for compiling the Hadith, referred as Bokhari Sharif. More on these, next time.

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