ALL I NEED IS MY PASSPORT

May 2026

The Registan is most likely the most photographed site in Uzbekistan, and is, without a doubt, the most famous in Samarkand.

The Registan is a public square. It consists of three madrasas. The Ulugh Beg Madrasa of the Timurid period, the Sherdar Madrasa, and the Tilakari Madrasa, which was built much later.

People also gathered on the Registan to hear royal proclamations, heralded by blasts on enormous copper pipes called dzharchis, and for public executions.

The Ulugh Beg Madrasa was built between 1417 and 1421. It was an important teaching center of the Timurid Empire, training some of the most outstanding scholars of its time, both religious and secular. It is the oldest building in Registan, the only one from the 15th century, and the only survivor of a wider architectural ensemble, which included several mosques, caravanserais, a bazaar, and a khanaqah (inn of Sufis).

Sherdar Madrasa

The Sherdar (The Abode of Lions) Madrasa was constructed between 1619 and 1636.

The image of predators hunting deer implies the need for students to chase knowledge, as lions chase their prey, and absorb wisdom, as lions eat captured animals.” The person’s face symbolizes the deity and warns: “‘ You need to remember that you are not immortal, even if you are a predator.”

As the legend says: 

“When the city of Samarkand was founded,  a leopard— palyang descended from the Zeravshan Mountains. He wandered around the walls, approved the construction, and retired back to the mountains. Since then, residents of Samarkand have been called leopards. Their standards and coats of arms depicted a leopard. Samarkand residents are proud and wayward, do not tolerate lies, and do not seek wealth; their souls lie only in glory and honors. The sages say that the Land of Samarkand has such an effect, and the Samarqandans, wherever you go, are different from other people. Their souls are open to the beautiful; among them, there are many great masters in creating miracles that adorn the world.”

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Tilakari Madrasa

The Tilakari Madrasa is the youngest of the three built between 1646 and 1660. The Tilakari Madrasa is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Timurid architecture, a tradition deeply rooted in the Persianate architectural and artistic legacy that dominated Central Asia during the 14th–17th centuries.

The lavish interior of the Tilakari Madrasa, covered with gilded surfaces and a dense program of floral and geometric patterns, exemplifies the Timurid mastery of decorative arts. Its tilework, calligraphy, and structural composition closely parallel those of major Iranian and Khurasani monuments, reflecting shared workshops, technologies, and artistic conventions across the region.

The madrasa’s harmonious proportions, turquoise-and-gold palette, and synthesis of spatial and ornamental design make it one of the finest surviving examples of the Persianate Timurid architectural style, rather than a representative of a pan-Turkic artistic category.

It is absolutely overwhelming to visit this site

Once you step inside the Madrasas, they conform to a very similar layout. These are all interior shots of the Sherdar Madrasa.

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Around and about

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Mausoleum of Shaybanids

The Mausoleum of Shaybanids is off in a small corner by itself and easy to miss.

Shaybani’s hut was built in the 16th century and holds the representatives of the Shaybani Uzbek dynasty.

May 2026

Named for Timur’s wife, Saray Mulk Khanym (Bibi Khanym was her nickname, meaning ‘senior princess’) between 1399 and 1405.

Timur was a huge fan of the arts. His megalomania project was the Bibi Khanum mosque.  It was to be a monument to God and to himself. It was originally to have 160-foot minarets and tall turquoise domes. However, once he returned from a campaign, he executed the architects because the building’s portals were too low. He tossed meat and coins to masons who pleased him, while 95 elephants lugged the marble into place, which he had ordered from Persia and the Caucasus.

Frightened of him, the workers raised the building too quickly, and within Timur’s lifetime, it began to crack apart.  By the 19^th century, it was being used as a cotton warehouse and a stable for tsarist cavalry, and it was later severely damaged in an earthquake.

By 1974, the Soviet Union had begun reconstructing the mosque, restoring the facades and revealing Quranic inscriptions.

However, you can see that the damages are still rather large.

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In 2004, a $4 million fund was established by the Qatar Fund for Development and the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation to support further restoration.

 

May 13, 026

Gur-e-Amir

The Gur-e-Amir Mausoleum is the final resting place of Timur.

The site of the tomb was originally a khanqah (a Sufi lodge) and madrasa endowed by Timur’s grandson, Muhammad Sultan, Timur’s heir-apparent.

In 1403, Muhammad Sultan died suddenly at age 27. The inconsolable Timur ordered a lengthy period of official mourning and mounted an honor guard to temporarily bury him near the city of Soltaniyeh (now in northwest Iran). Throughout the following year, men worked at Timur’s command to construct a grand tomb for Muhammad Sultan. In 1403, Muhammad Sultan’s body was exhumed and transported for burial in Samarkand, where it was re-interred in the tomb that would—in time—become known as the Gur-e-Amir (Tomb of the Leader).

Timur was laid to rest alongside his grandson Muhammad Sultan in the shrine’s central chamber. In time, Timur’s own tomb was boxed in by three more graves—those of his spiritual adviser, Sayyid Baraka (1343-1403); his grandson Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), the famous astronomer king; and one of his sons, Shah Rukh Mirza (1377-1447), the second ruler of the Timurid empire.

 

The interior of the tomb chamber is a pièce de résistance of “papier mache” muqarnas vaulting decorated throughout with gilded kundal, a laborious technique involving the application of mortar-like glue covered in polychrome paints and accented with gold plating, lending a three-dimensional effect.

The dome’s height, mounted as it is on a tall cylindrical drum, was only achievable by means of employing a hidden inner dome and extensive cross-bracing to redistribute the outward pressure of the dome, lest it tear the cylindrical drum apart. Such techniques to produce “double shelled domes” were familiar to architects in Iran and other areas conquered by Timur, suggesting Persian conscripts were responsible for the design.

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The ensemble has suffered badly from neglect over the centuries. After the end of the 17th century, Samarkand suffered a long period of decline. The city lost the status of capital to Bukhara. The great Silk Road bypassed the city, and its great historical monuments stood empty and forgotten. Only after the Second World War did extensive restoration work in Gur-Emir begin.

In the 1950s, the dome, main portal, and minarets were refurbished. By that time the maiolica tiles had mostly fallen away. In the 1970s, the interior underwent restoration.

In June 1941, Timur’s tomb was opened shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, under the direction of Soviet scientist and anthropologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov, who was able to reconstruct Timur’s facial features from his skull, and it was also confirmed that he was about 5 1/2 feet tall and would have walked with a pronounced limp.

 

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