 Diana Driscoll here who is with us this evening to give a talk on the Golden Road to Samarkand. We are very happy to have this series of lectures and for such very imminent people to come and lecture to us about the embroidered tales and woven dreams exhibition, which I hope many of you have seen. The lecture Golden Road to Samarkand is about the Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. They will focus on the external architecture of these two cities developed from sun-dried buildings, I love the illiteration, to the fantastic tile work which we will see on the outside and inside of these buildings. Why they were built? Who built them? And why have they survived to this day? I'll ask Diana to explain all this to you and just carry on with the next bit. Diana read her degree at SOAS, all the best people do. BA in Acadian and Hebrew, ancient Middle East with special subjects in history, religion and languages, my God. What could you have been thinking about? And later on Emmy in the history art and architecture of Islam. She was deputy director at SOAS from 1980 to 1992 and then moved to a post as director of education for the British Council in Hong Kong. I cheer British Council on having such good taste. It was here that she discovered the Silk Road and made many journeys into China which complemented her travels and studies in the Middle East, India and Iran. She is now an independent researcher in the Asia department of the British Museum and volunteers with her talks and lectures on special subjects of the Silk Road and we have stolen her for this evening. She covers 3,000 years of history and almost 7,000 miles of trade from Morocco to China. Don't you ever stop? Besides giving regular gallery talks on the Silk Road at the BM, she is a lecturer for the Royal Academy, Coxson Kings, art tours and regularly accompanies groups to Uzbekistan, Morocco, Mughal India and Iran. So without further ado may I request you to put your hands together for Diana Driscoll. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? Well if you live long enough you've got a longer CV let's face it. I'm very thrilled to be here tonight because Marion had another speaker who unfortunately had to leave and go back to the States for a visit. And so this lecture is dedicated to her and her husband who passed away just last August. And I hope I do them proud because they are very much Silk Road travellers. Now Marion has the most exquisite exhibition we saw upstairs and this is only a third of her collection, a third. And she started collecting from the early age of 14. She didn't even realize she was a collector, she just started accumulating things. And the wonderful thing about the exhibition is on the walls of the exhibition there are some murals. And in the murals we see people, buildings, merchants, there's a caravan, there's a souk, there's a mosque, there's a madrasa. And this is what I'd like to talk about now is the beautiful clothing she's collected to talk about the buildings that are in the murals behind. So the next time you go up to the exhibition, look at the walls. The Silk Road. Now many of us know about the Silk Road. We've heard about it for centuries now and it is the great, great roads, network of roads, the first global highway. Globalization started in the first century BC and is not going to discontinue next week, Mr Trump. We started it off in Shian in China and it went all the way to Byzantium, to Rome, to Greece, down into India, up into Siberia. And on the Silk Road there were caravans, everybody loves a caravan. Everybody wants to be on a camel. And these caravans that went all the way through these various sort of 5,000 miles of road from Shian to Rome carried commodities. And this lovely lady on your left is a Tang dynasty doll. And she lives in the Met and she's wearing wonderful, wonderful fabrics from Uzbekistan. She's wearing silks. She's wearing woven fabrics. She's wearing pearls from the Persian Gulf. There's porcelain. There's spices. There are tangibles and intangibles that went on the Silk Road. But where the Silk Road actually started and went to was through a very, very difficult area. It was an area that was dangerous. It was risk takers. The merchants who were there were not your everyday people. They were people who had to know languages along the way. They had to be able to negotiate who was going to protect the caravans. Here is an aerial view of what is in the north. To the north of the Silk Road was the Eurasian steppe, the steppe lands. And the steppe lands were vast, vast bands of grassland. Very much like the American prairies or the Argentinian grasslands. And they were to the north. That's the purple section you see. Above that is the Siberian forests. And that's where the furs came from. But underneath that purple area is some yellow spaces. And those are the great deserts that go from Sian all the way to Uzbekistan and beyond, the Central Asia. And these four deserts were the Gobi, the Taklamakan, the Kizalcum and the Keralcum. And the inhabitants of the steppe land were also nomadic peoples. And they were horsemen. And these horsemen were known by various names. And they were filled with, they were either protecting the caravans or sometimes they were attacking the caravans. And they didn't have actually very good press by the Greeks and the Romans and the Chinese and the Persians. They didn't quite like the people of the steppe, these great horsemen. And the great steppe peoples, some of them were known as Scythians or Huns or Turks or Mongolians. All these peoples lived in the steppe lands. They spoke different languages. And they had, and their names have resonated during the centuries. Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, that spread terror in the peoples of the pastoral cities below. And let us not forget that some of them were women, women warriors such as Queen Tomeras, who supposedly was a Scythian queen and took out Cyrus the Great. And here we have a wonderful 15th century manuscript of Tomeras. And she's putting Cyrus' head in a vat of 15th century French Bordeaux. But I'd like you to note the tile work in the background. She is in front of some wonderful tiles. So here we're going to now head into where the steppe land to the cities themselves. So where the steppe meets the desert, where these vast oasis, and these gradually, these oasis became settled. And they became larger, they became wealthier, and they formed a series of trails that went from the Mediterranean through Iran through India to China. And the noblest of these cities was in Uzbekistan. Because Uzbekistan was the centre, the heart of the Silk Road Trail, and it was in Central Asia. Uzbekistan, excessively hot in summer, pleasant spring and autumn, climatically it's a challenged area. The glaciers of the high Pamirs and the Hindu Kush and the Tian Shan mountains feed to great rivers. And the great rivers we know from the Greeks are called the auxis and the jaktars. And there's also two great deserts, further west, the Kerakum and the Kizzelkum. And many people have travelled through these areas through the centuries. And we're going to meet a few of them today. And the first one we're going to look at is someone that you may know about. And his name is Alexander the Great. And Alexander the Great, with his troops, had to traverse through across the auxis river, which looks very big in this picture, but it's just almost a stream today, unfortunately. But Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great came to a city called Afrosyab. And he said, everything I've heard about this beauty, the beauty of this city is indeed true, except it's much more beautiful than I imagined. He even married a princess named Roxana. And we think this probably was inhabited by a group of people called Sogdians. Now you may never have heard of a Sogdian. Don't worry, many of us never did, because it's only been in the last 50 years, thanks to the work of Nicholas and Ursula Sims-Williams, who have given us insight into who are these people called Sogdians. Now here we have on this overhead the city of Afrosyab, probably reconstructed highly, but that's right. It did have ramparts, it had a centre, it had temples, it had buildings. It was filled with merchants. Here's another city not very far away called Panjikent, which is a citadel a little bit later. Panjikent is also occupied by a group of people called Sogdians. And these Sogdians were the first middlemen of the Silk Road. We first heard about them probably about the first century BC, first century AD. They sort of come out of the mists of history. Little footprints, though, had been left all over the place. Footprints in China, in the Taklamakan Desert, into Uzbekistan. They were sort of, they were never an empire. They were a group of city-states, very much like the Venetian city-states. And suddenly, as we found out about them, they disappeared, because the Arabs, who came in 722. But in Panjikent, archaeologists have unearthed some of the aristocratic houses. And there's wonderful frescoes on the walls of these houses. Brightly coloured, fantastic groups of people. We're finding archaeologists are finding more and more letters and tablets that refer to the Sogdians. They were basically, they were basically accountants. And they were the middlemen of the Silk Road. One of the Chinese chroniclers tells us what he thinks about the Sogdians. And this is what he said. All the inhabitants of Samarkand are brought up to be traders. Mothers give their infants sugar to eat and put paste on the palms of their hands. In the hope that when they are grown, they will talk sweetly and that precious objects will stick to their hands. These people are skillful merchants. When a boy reaches the age of five, they begin to teach him to read and to write and to be able to study business. He's never permitted out of Samarkand or Panjikent or other places until they're 20. And then they're ready with at least four or five languages each to be the merchants. So as a result, these merchants were highly cultivated and they wore wonderful, wonderful fabrics just as Merion has collected. I don't think she has any of the Sogdian fabrics. But here they are sitting at a banquet. Look at their hairstyles. Look at their beards. Look at what they're wearing. Look at what they're sitting on. Look at all these wonderful things that tell us about the Sogdians. And who are they? Where do they come from? Well, we don't know. But on the walls of their homes, we have these fabulous murals. And here we have visitors coming on their camels. And they're sitting on wonderful camel cloth in fantastic woven fabrics. And they're wearing jewels. They're wearing pearls from the Persian Gulf. And they're wearing silks and satins from China. But the one thing about the Sogdians we do know is that they were religiously tolerant. And so we have Zoroastrians and the historian Christians. Judaism, Manichaeism, Buddhism and finally Islam came. So the Sogdians knew very much what they were doing. They were into wealth and their God was money. They did try to oppose the Arabs for almost 100 years and finally they lost. And they have sort of disappeared, as I said. But Samarkand, as a city, that sort of started with the Sogdians, sort of re-emerged after a couple hundred years. We do know about it from about the 14th century through two rather famous writers. One of them was a Moroccan, Ibn Battuta, who traveled all the way from Morocco to China. And he said that is one of the largest and most beautiful cities in the world. And of course there's our Venetian merchant Marco Polo. And he even bounced through here also. But what we really know about Samarkand is through Amor Timur. And this is the man himself. Timur in the 14th century has transformed this city into one of the great cities of Silk Road. He was a nomadic chieftan. He was of Turkic, probably Mongol ancestry. And there's no doubt, there's no doubt that he had aspiration to be a world leader of a world empire. And he wanted to follow in the footsteps of Genghis Khan. But he was not a Mongolian. But what he wanted to do is for street credibility, he married Mongolian princesses. He married not one, he married four. That's what you call making sure all your options are covered. He wanted to make sure that the people who followed him knew that he was part of the noble lineage. And he called himself a Guregin, a royal son-in-law. But his name, the title he took was Amir, which is basically a warlord. He never took the title of Khan. I think he probably wanted that to be given to him. Anyway, from the age of 25 to his death at 70, he transforms the whole army of his tribes. His small tribe has now become a huge army. And they're all beholding to him. And they overrun on numerous occasions a land mass equal to that of Genghis Khan. The great cities of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, India, and even Russia fell at an alarming rate. And because of this, he brought, of course, enslaved artists and artisans from all these cities to bring them to his country. And the first place that he lived when he was a nomadic warrior was here in these wonderful tents. And you'll notice the wonderful fabrics on these tents and how people are dressed in beautiful fabrics. He knew how to live. He knew how to be entertained. He wanted to be cultured. He wanted also to show the world that he was appointed by God on earth to be the leader. And so he built a palace. And his palace is now very close to Samarkand, and it's called the Aksari. And this is his first building. And what he wanted to do, he wanted to let people know that his monumental personality was also as monumental as his buildings. And this is his palace, his first building, built in about 1379. And it's unparallel in size and in decoration. The towers alone, those towers, look at the people below, they're teeny. The towers are 215 feet high. The arch, 130 feet. The span of that arch was 30 feet wide. And what you're looking at is a brick building. Eastern Islamic architecture are brick buildings. They don't build in stone. It's brick. And what you do with brick, you can decorate it. And you can decorate brick with tiles. And that's what he did. Large surfaces can be covered with bricks that are glazed. They can be glazed on one side, and they can form zigzag patterns. And that's what we see going up those brick towers. Zigzag patterns, one side of the brick is glazed. It's protecting the building. It's using color and it's using the dusty color of the brick complementing each other as an art form. The other sort of tiles he developed about this time was smaller tiles, sort of like bricks about 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters. And there's one tile. And they would have an outline in that tile. And it's sort of a greasy substance. And they were afraid that all the different pigments, when they glazed them, would melt together. So they separated them with this sort of inky substance called manganese. And when they fired these, they didn't melt together. Second form of tile. The third form of tile that he develops is called mosaic tiles. It's like a puzzle. When you fire a tile, it shrinks. And so what they wanted to do was make huge pictures of puzzles with their tiles. So I would do a whole batch of blue, a whole batch of turquoise, a whole batch of white, and then you cut them. And you put them together like a puzzle. And that is called mosaic tiles. And also on this building, he used another type of tile, which was a really deep lapis lazuli background. And on it he put gold leaf. Magnificent. A Spanish envoy named Roy Gazales de Clavejo came to Timor's Court in about 1398. And he stayed about four or five years. And he must have done nothing except write about the glamour and the courts of Timor. And he wrote about this building. And he said, the walls were paneled with gold and blue tiles. The ceiling was entirely covered with gold work. Room upon room upon room of marvelous tile work. Chambers. Banqueting halls. Gardens and pools. A brick building of extraordinary beauty. And all set within a huge garden. Because Timor loved his gardens. Matter of fact, in Samarkand alone, there are eight gardens that we know of. None of them exist today. Hesh, this was where he was born. Unfortunately, this was not going to be his capital. He needed to build a capital. So he moves on to Samarkand. And he brings all his artists with him. And he's going to build the biggest, most spectacular, colossal capital in the known world. And so it was. Five miles of walls. Six different gates going in. And the names of the gates reflected his captured cities. We have Damascus and Cairo and Delhi, et cetera. He brings here in this manuscript that we found at John Hopkins. This fantastic manuscript. And there we are building, building Samarkand. And we go back to Covejo. And Covejo tells us that Timor's palaces were hung with fine silks and tapestries. And the important gardens, eight that we know of, had wild, drinky parties. And a party was not good unless everyone got pissed as a newt. He demolished streets and we built them within 20 days. And he said the tumult was such that it seemed as if all the devils in hell were working here. And here we have in this manuscript the city being built. We have our elephants bringing marble. We have tile cutters. We have mosaic tile makers. We have the, in the right hand, the left hand corner, the man with the red with the stick. He's the man who's beating everybody to get their work done. We have woodworkers, tile workers, cement mixers. Everybody in these manuscripts looks different. Every face is different. Every piece of clothing is different. So he's showing us all his artists and artisans from around the captured world. And there they are. And so the city swelled with theologians, historians, scholars, architects, masons, painters, calligraphers, bookmakers, tile glazers, silk weavers, glass blowers, silversmiths, goldsmiths. And armors. And Timur personally, personally overlooked all the architecture. And if anybody said it couldn't be done, off with their head. He built this fantastic mosque. The Bibby Canum Mosque. Probably one of the largest buildings in Samarkand today. It is the largest building. Timur wanted a mosque like no other. So he had the best slave artisans. The best potters. The best of everything. 95 elephants came from India to bring the marble. Just look at this building. It is like an ocean liner. It's massive. And not only is it a massive building because the mosque is over there on the right. It's the entry that's on the left. And all you need in a mosque is one minaret for called prayer. But now we have eight minarets. The minaret has now become a piece of decorative art. It has become part of the building. It's not only minarets and tiles, but we now have domes. Wonderful domes rising up. And under the domes, there are these drums. The towers themselves, before this building, looks just like his palace. The Ark Sarai. Do we get it? Is it part of a palace mosque? God, I'm doing it. The towers here on each side, 115 feet high. The arch 60 feet wide. Eight minarets, 160 feet high. And as you walk through this entry hall, on your right and left are these amazing tiles. A brick building with tiles and the colors. White, turquoise blue and cobalt blue. Predominantly timred colors. A little bit of green, a little bit of yellow to complement. But that's a timred color pellet. Double domes, with high domes going higher and higher. And that's what he wanted. By the time you got to the mosque, you went through that main door into this great courtyard. There'd be a gallery around the sides, and you'd go through to the mosque and look at those amazing towers on the mosque. Octagons, not round, not square octagons. And as your eye travels up those two towers, it's almost as if you're looking at a series of carpets. It's fabrics. It's taking all that wonderful tile work and moving it from fabrics to buildings to wood to leather. Decorating a building. And as it rises up, again that great dome in the center, 130 feet high, 130 feet high. And the kufig writing around the drum is 10 feet high. He's using kufig writing, Arabic script, almost like a plastic art form. So not only we have tiles, but he's also using Arabic script as a decorative form. And it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. The next building that comes up about this time is called the Gour Imir. And this is Timur's tomb. But unfortunately it wasn't supposed to be his tomb. It was really the tomb of his favorite grandson who died suddenly. And it was really rather, I think, a labor of love. This is the son grandson he loved. And so it's not big and colossal. It's not overwhelming, monumentality, like his own personality. It's basically a labor of love. And we have an inscription, which I can't read, but I've been able to make out the name. And I think it's the name of the architect. Mahmood al-Isfahani. Isfahani. So he has, bringing from Persia, some great, great architects and tile makers. And this tiny little mausoleum is probably has one of those beautiful, beautiful tile work I've ever come across. And the entrance, as we say, is small. And as you see, the rest of the building, there we go into, and underneath the double dome is where that's where the centre tufts are inside the building. And it's that wonderful dome. We now have a dome that's ribbed. There are 64 ribs around. And each one of those ribs have mosaic tiles. Mosaic tiles. That must have taken, I mean, it took three years to build, but how many men worked on just doing that dome. And again, the great drum underneath, pushing up that dome so that as you come into the city, you see domes. And there is the dome. And again, foot high, cwfig riding on the bottom. God is immortal, and so he is. And internally is just as overwhelming as externally, because he used gold and blues and colours to make sure that this was a monument of remembrance to a lovely young man. And it wasn't just Timor building buildings. Some of his princesses and some of his ladies also built buildings. And here we have the shot in Zinda. The shot in Zinda is a necropolis. It's a tiny little place. It has tiny little mausoleums of exquisite beauty. And you can actually see the tile work as you go through the shot in Zinda and look at individual buildings on the way up. There are 26 tombs here. And each tomb has geometric tile work on it. Melon-shaped domes, turquoise, royal blue, gold mosaics, filigreed columns. They sparkle as you go up. And as you walk up, you see building upon building of fantastic tile work, domes inside, outside. Wonderful ideas that people took. They put cwfig writing into ribbons and made ribbons around the whole pistach of that frontal portal. There are stalactites that hang and drip full of wonderful mosaic tiles. And all around the band there is again the use of Arabic writing as a decorative form. And it's like columns of ribbons, each one different. And you put it together and you think, this could be a complete mishmash, but it is not. Somehow it works. Somehow the great tile makers who tiled it inside and out made it work. And of course you can't leave Samarkand without going to the Registrate. Now, the Registrate. People look at this and think it's a noblist... Lord Cersen said this is a noblist square in the world. Actually, when Timor was here, it was six roads that crossed. And it was a great bazaar. It was a great marketplace. Because Timor knew that in order to build his buildings, he needed money. If he needed money, he's going to make sure those caravans still ran through the Silk Road. He needed the money. When he died, his great-grandson Ulubag, the great astronomer, took down the marketplace and built instead a madrasa in Islamic school, a mosque, and a conica for visiting holymen, like a hostel. And we have the very early building here, which is Ulubag, the building on the left. That's the earliest building. It's a bit lower. It's the first. And then later on, in the 17th century, it was taken down, and two other madrasas were built. And one of them, you'll see downstairs on the wall, in the gallery with Miriam's collection. And these are monochrome tileworks that were expanded about this time. And I'll just show this one, the 17th century. The longer we have just blue and turquoise and white, other colors are coming in. And we still have the ribbed dome. But we have different... other things are happening. We have these figures on the outside. The figures on the outside are interesting, because people are saying we're not supposed to put figures on the outside of a religious building, in Islamic religious buildings, you can if it's not a mosque. And of course, the artists here were from Persia, so they were Shia. And the Shia could have human faces on the outside of buildings. So this was a madrasa, and there's our human face looking out at us. Let's move on. Let's look at another city. Let's look at Bukhara. Now, Persians, Turks and Uzbeks. Bukhara. Now, many people think of Bukhara as quite far from Samarkand. Well, it is. It's six days by camel. It's a bit quicker by coach. You can make it in a day. But like Samarkand, Bukhara was a city that had a mudbrick wall 15 miles around, and it was also inhabited by Saugdians. And we know there were Saugdians there because the Saugdians were Zoroastrians and Buddhists, and they were very tolerant of different religions, and they left artifacts that were dug up in Bukhara. Now, it's quite interesting because many historians think that maybe Bukhara's name was actually a Buddhist name. Maybe it was from Bihara, Bihara, which was a Buddhist monastery. And those of you who know something about Samarkand and in the south in Afghanistan, there were lots of Buddhist monasteries all over this area. Very wealthy they were, too. Very wealthy indeed. And the very first Arab general came into Bukhara supposedly, he wrote and said, I burned down the Zoroastrian fire temple and I built a mosque. 1936, suddenly, a building is discovered in Bukhara. Now, if you look at this building, it looks a bit odd because to your right is another entrance. And that's where they had the entrance to what they thought was a 16th century mosque. But 1936, they dug down and they found there was another entrance. And when they went into that building, they found there was scorch, scorched earth in the corner. It was where we think was a Zoroastrian temple that was burnt down. So on the Zoroastrian temple was built the first mosque, Mudbrick. Mudbrick. A little tiny bit of turquoise tile. But it's covered. Those pillars are covered with symbols that are both Zoroastrian and Buddhist. So they're using symbols as a decorative art form. So when you go there, you can have a quick look inside and you will see things that look like the Zoroastrian distinctly. Things like this, these symbols here are very much Zoroastrian symbols. Up here, circles, like chaatries you find in the Buddhist monasteries. Lots of things are mixed together as art form. And there we have it, the very first building that was found. But this is the gem. This is my favorite building in all of Central Asia. And it is called the Samannid Mauslium. A little bit of history. Bukhara, two great periods. First period was 10th century. Second period was about 15th century. Nothing much in between. 10th century. A Persian dynasty. A Persian dynasty is up into Uzbekistan. And they take over quite a huge area. Huge area. And they are accountants. They are bookkeepers. They want to ensure that the traders and the manufacturers of goods are excellent. They look after taxes. So they want to make sure that taxes are moderate and that people will trade through the area. They maintained all the old Sogdian links to China, Byzantium, India, and up into Russia. They ensured that the commodities that they dealt with were of high value and they were portable. Refined tin, lead and copper, precious metals, sophisticated window glass, fine knives, elegant ceramics, silks, fine fabrics, and world-class paper. They were 10th century. And this is considered a Mauslium of the greatest of the Samanas named Ishmael Samani. And it's breathtaking. It's a jewel. It's a cube. It has a low dome. And it's brick. Basket brick work. It has four tiny domelets, as I call them, that are very Sasanian. They all come from Persia. This is the Persian dynasty that is here. And it's covered with Sogdian ideas and covered with Zoroastrian symbols and Buddhist symbols. So somehow all this is being used in art form. Triangles, angels' wings, chatries, bricks used in such a decorative way that every time you see this building at a different time of the day it looks different. All those little galleries at the top, those four columns, all done with mud, with burnt brick. This is burnt brick. And that little tiny entrance hall that we see there, that little door that goes in, is going to be blown up later on to become a pistach. Those Persian artists and architects are going to take that front and they're going to push it up, as far as they can. Go up and up and turn into some of the great buildings that we saw in Samarkand. And this is the Samanids. And inside is just as exquisite as the outside. And you have to spend time here because this brick building is filled with beauty. Arches and a little tiny dome that's going to be pushed up and up and up and before we know it it will become the great domes of Samarkand. But the Samanids were also great patrons of culture. And they gathered some of the best minds in Central Asia. And they were scientists and mathematicians. And names that we call today, sometimes you read books and say the Arabs, well they weren't Arab. They were Central Asians. Ibn Sina. Ibn Sina was there. And he came from Central Asia, the great doctor. And he went into Ishmael Samani's palace and said there was room upon room upon room of books. And he said I read every book. Books I had never seen before. Books we have never seen before. He told us about them in great chests. One room was literature, one room was science, one room was astronomy, one room was astrology. Room upon room upon room of books collected by Ishmael Samani. And many of the other Arabs are also known from this part of the world. That was the Samanids, 10th century. And I said there were two periods. The second period are the Shabanids. Now many people don't know the word Shabanid, but if you go to Uzbekistan and if you have a guide, he'll keep talking about Abdul Khan. Everyone calls him Abdul Khan. Well, he was a Shabanid. He was not a Timurid. Matter of fact, the Shabanids were another Turkic group that literally kicked out Timur's ancestors south and later into India. And Timur's ancestors in India, Barbor, 15th century, was kicked out. And he ended up in Agra. Not very happy. Didn't like India very much. And later on historians called them the Mughals. The Mughals. They would have turned over into grave by being called Mughals. Because to them, the Mughal was considered Barbarians. Disgusting, illiterate, uncouth. And here they are called Mughals today. My goodness, wouldn't we like to change history? So the Shabanids come in in the 16th century. They're Turkic speakers. They're nomadic. And we call them today Uzbecs. And they literally, literally said, kicked out Timur's descendants into India. But they built some fantastic buildings. You may have been a Barbarian. You may be a little bit illiterate, but you know how to do things well. Because it's nothing like a nomadic people to learn completely quickly how to become cultured. And so they did. And Abdulhan is a familiar name you'll hear when you go to Uzbekistan. And he pitched up here in the Ark. The Ark, the 18th century. But on this spot, there were many people who ruled Bukhara. Since we know probably 8th century AD, there was always somebody here at the Ark. Even the Bolsheviks tried to get rid of the Ark, but it didn't work. They just put a statue of Lenin on the side. Anyway, they cut the Ark. They couldn't rip it down. But the Ark is there. The Shabanids knew they needed trade. They wanted to build a building. They wanted to gather merchants. They wanted to make the place zing. They wanted to become a cultured nomadic tribal group. Or a medic group. And Abdulhan unites all the Uzbek clans and he makes Bukhara his capital. And the Ark, of course, is the center of power. And again, it's all to do with trade. This is trade. This is part of the global highway. He knew he had to build the city up a bit. So he put in ponds, canals, places where people get waters. They could have drinking water in their areas. We have this great duck pond. I wonder how much an MP paid for that one. The streets were widened. They were made into streets where the caravans could come to. And all along the side of these streets there were caravans. There were hostels for the merchants. There were bazaars that he built. All brick. Brick buildings. So that your jewelers, your hat makers, your money changers would have a place they could do business. They would be protected. They would be in a nice, semi-comfortable atmosphere. He made sure that they were cultivated and invited people to come here. Persian craftsmen and artisans came to Bukhara with the Shebanids. But they were not like Timor. They didn't go conquering people. They actually had to pay for it. So it's quite expensive. When you go to Bukhara though, you'll see this great complex called the Poi Calan. There are three buildings here. Three buildings are from three different periods. The first building is the minaret in the middle. Now look at that minaret because that minaret is built of brick. It's a brick building and it's not Shebanid. This is really quite early. This building goes back to the 11th century. It survived Genghis Khan. As the Samanid mausoleum survived because it just disappeared in the sand. So this minaret survived. And it's a fantastic brick building. It rises up, it was built in 1127. It rises up 170 feet. And it's decorated with bands of geometrical freezes. And each band is different. And there are Zoroastrian symbols. There are Buddhist symbols. All kinds. There's a little bit of Arabic writing up there saying who built the minaret. And you go all the way to the top and there's a little bit of tile. Turquoise tile, way, way up the top. Just below the lantern. The very first use of tile on an external building in Central Asia. Now we think these minarets. Just to go back and take a look. Those minarets may have had wooden lanterns at the top. And the minarets may have been used as a signal for the caravans coming from the desert. It makes sense. It also makes sense they probably burnt down quite a bit. So they started building the lanterns in brick. And if you look at minarets throughout the Islamic world they're all different. There's probably like 30 different types of minarets. We do a couple lectures just on minarets. But the minarets of Central Asia are pretty distinct. They almost stand separate from the mosque. And usually there's a stairway that goes from the minaret into the mosque. That's the first building in this great complex. For the next two buildings are Shebanid buildings. And this is where the city starts taking shape. Because what they did here is to make sure that these buildings were here to promote the Shebanid culture. So the building to your right is the mosque. The building to the left is a madrasa. And in between we have the wonderful 12th century minaret. This was the city that was taking place. There were 150 madrasas built. There were 200 district mosques. Minarets, conicas for holy men and caravans arise. The Shebanids invited Persian workers who were Shia to come and do wonders with their buildings. And they did. They brought beautiful, beautiful tiles. They raised up that front, that pistach. They put tiles all over it. They brought more colors. They brought this great space. The four awans are coming in. The dome is rising again. The blue at the top. And everything is rising up. You look at that madrasa across the way. We've got two double domes. Two little domes there. And that pistach is going up. And it's almost like a riot of color. All done in mosaic tiles. It cost a fortune to build that madrasa. And look at the drum. The drum no longer just has cuffic letters. It now has almost like it's looking at someone's home of art forms. Each section is a different form of tile work. Lots work. All around the top of that drum is wonderful Arabic writing. All done in mosaic tiles. Tiny little pieces glued together. All weaving together. Facing each other. Other riots of color coming out of that. Ceilings. Ceilings were decorated. These people were bringing all different types of motifs. Flowers, dragons, birds. Tericottas and sized. Ornaments, spherical designs, alabaster. Carved wooden ceilings. And all this was coming because of trade. And it was a flowering of really decorative and miniature art here in Samarkand. Bukhara in Uzbekistan. And to this day, there's a school in Bukhara that teaches young men how to paint miniatures. Something to buy when you're there. It's all fueled by Russian trade. And it's under these people. It was in this time here in Bukhara. We have the last building you're going to see. It's this lovely building which has on the front some interesting sort of Chinese Persian motifs. This dragon, this dragon that's sort of going up to the sun heaven. With these lovely sort of arabesque vines going up the side. Notice the entry. It's rather large. And the question is what was it built to be? Many people think that maybe it was first started to be as a caravancerai. So it looks like a caravancerai inside. Big space in the middle and places you can stay. The merchants can stay around. And that possibly later the builder decided that he should make a madrasa. Because building madrasas and mosques when you're in later life means that you're probably going to get entering to heaven quite quickly. So anyway, it was enclosed a bit more and made into a madrasa school. And so this is the legacy that they left behind. Which was art and architecture. Brick buildings. And the next time you go to another timid country. The Mughal India. And you look at the Taj Mahal. What are you looking at? Here is the proof that we have the base of a timid building. A little bit, a lot of Indian influence. But that's art. And nothing else is completely new. Thank you. Shall we take some questions? That was wonderful. I've got one last slide for Marian. Because this is the great collector, right? Oh, that's me. Don Mora. There you are. That's beautiful. I think that is Marian Bukari. I've signed some fabrics in a souk about 150 years ago. Thank you very much. I think you're reincarnated. Does anyone have any questions? Can we take some questions? Yes. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. At the same time that all of this was happening in Uzbekistan today. Yes. A lot of stuff were happening also in other parts in this region. In Iran you had this happen. Oh, absolutely. Yes. I'm curious. We like to sometimes think about this as a renaissance period. For this particular region in the same way that renaissance in Europe brought about changes. Is here regional play in terms of all of this wonderful architecture? What do you think? Where does it start first? No, not first. What drove this regional? What made them do this? Yes. Okay. That's a good question. Very good question. And it's all speculation. Maybe it's because you live in a desert. Maybe you live in a desert and you want something beautiful around you. So you make colors. That could be part of it. Maybe the desert will throw up ideas of color on buildings. Timur built because he wanted monumentality. He wanted to show that he was the best thing and the greatest leader and the biggest empire of the world. So people build buildings and put their names on buildings because they want people to remember them. And I think that's probably just another idea. Why did they do this? The other big T we have today also builds big buildings, doesn't he? They're pretty ugly though. They're not very exciting. And where does it all come from? People always ask that. Where does this start? Ideas are always flowing all over. They see ideas, Byzantium, Romans, Greeks. Everyone had ideas. Everyone wanted to show something. To be cultured. To be cultured meant you had beautiful buildings. You had beautiful gods. You had beautiful fabrics. That made you cultured. You had literature. You had writing. And that's what it's all about. It really is. Any other questions that we have? I heard a story about one of Timur's wives who allegedly built a mosque, or ordered a mosque to be built. And the architect fell in love with her and kissed her and left a mark on her face. And then they all met a sticky end. Is there any truth in that story? No, no, no. It's a great story. There's a lovely story. But that makes these buildings rather interesting. What is true is across from the baby Hanum mosque, one of his wives did build another building. Yeah, yeah, there was another building. And he was really concerned that it might have been bigger than his. So he wanted the architect to go higher. So the baby Hanum is so big that as soon as it was built it started crumbling. As a matter of fact, it was a year after his death. Yes, Suzanne. Hi. Here's our expert. Thank you. I apologize for going back to the previous question if I may. Okay. And I think what was the point here, and I think you agree with me on this one, is that there is indeed a continuous tradition that is very much more at an architecture, all of which is not Timur himself, but all these people you noted so eloquently, that he gathered and brought to Samarra and so forth, that many of these people are actually trained, have built in say central Iran, or northwestern Iran, or eastern Anatolia, or Mesopotamia and Syria and so forth. So in other words, there is already a tradition of architecture and the arts, to which he harks back and brings forward. And then of course, there is a development within the tomorrow world, which by the way, I think you also agree with me on this one, includes all of Iran essentially. Oh sure. So this is in a way what we nowadays call Persianate world, which is really the languages, the language, Persian languages, the high point and so forth. So it's, I think that's the point that this is perhaps very much related to a competition with the past, to which he's an heir actually, or he conquers it, if you will. But that would be a really perhaps a more reasonable way to think about it than thinking that they just desired to do something because there was nothing in the desert. That's just a, and I know you do this sort of history anyhow. So I just thought that. It's sort of, as I always thought too, it's like building a cathedral in Europe. Everyone would come. All your artists would come because jobs were going and the names Isfahanee or Tabrizie and that, maybe it was just names, but I'm sure they were all over. They were coming from all over. Some brought and some not brought. Right. We have one more, one more, one more, one or two more questions. We don't want to be here too too late. Get a cup of tea afterwards. Thank you. Wonderful talk. Really enjoyed it. I was just wondering about the minaret at Poe Calan. And do you think that that might be a symbol of or resonate with the Tower of Babel? So you have this structure that's reaching towards heaven. And I wondered what other analysis or functions apart from the signals for the caravans? Tower of Babel, long ziggurats, going up to heaven. How far can you go? Religious buildings, the lighthouses in the desert. I think people like building up, building higher and higher. I think they just like it. It just happens. But there's all big buildings all over the place. Let's have just one more so that we can... Oh, you've got two more. That's it. Okay. Then people can have a cup of tea. Okay. Thank you very much for the lecture. I am a student at SOAS here. And I am from Samarkand myself. So it was lovely to hear about it. And my family is a very proud Samarkandie. And I just wanted to highlight that currently Samarkand itself and for history it was a cosmopolitan city. And currently it has a rich Tajik Uzbek population. And I think calling it just Uzbek and Uzbekistan kind of limits that unfortunate national division that is currently happening in Central Asia. And there is a strong Tajik community, just Ireland, without any national interest. And it used to be just one big space where people just go from place to place. I know, such a beautiful cosmopolitan. There's nothing like national boundaries to really ruin everything. Indeed. And I just wanted to ask really quickly about the 21st century, the current renovation works that are happening in Samarkand itself. I heard a lot of criticism. Robert Hillenbrand came a couple of years ago saying that it's really something very painful to watch. How they're trying to add this extra grandiose to something that is grandiose by itself. And I was wondering what you thought about the current renovation project. Well, renovating buildings has always been a controversial in all over the world. And the point is this part of the world they didn't have what we have, which is constantly keeping our buildings going. If we didn't have people constantly working on the Tower of London or on a cathedral, they'd probably crumble. So it crumbled. Earthquakes, you know, storms, things happened to buildings. And people didn't have the money to maintain them. But they're trying hard. And that's all right. They're trying. They are talking about, I don't know what will happen now, but they're going to rebuild the whole Ark Sarai. They're going to rebuild the whole Ark Sarai. I don't know if that's such a great idea. But anyway, we'll see what happens. Leaving what they have is fabulous. Fabulous. Okay? One more question. That's it. Thank you very much. Thanks for a wonderful speech and the pictures are fabulous as well. Just one question, really. I felt when I saw some of those internal designs, those honeycomb structures, it reminded me very much of Alhambra in Spain. And I was just wondering how... I mean, is it just a coincidence or might the designs have travelled somewhere from Central Asia all the way? Oh, yes. I mean, designs, Alhambra, these delag types, those mochanas, definitely coming from... coming from the Le Levant through North Africa. The ideas travel quickly. Just because we have internet today, we didn't think people could travel very quickly then. They travelled hugely quickly. Ideas always went with caravans. So, yes. Ideas. Great ideas and used differently. Right. Thank you very much and see you in Simon Khan. Can I just ask all of you to join me in thanking Diana Driscoll for such a brilliant talk and such an engaging one. And so can we give her a hand and then let's all go and have some tea and discuss it further.