We awoke next morning to find ourselves in a grey desolate wilderness, as bare as the Hunger Desert. The lovely gardens full of fruit-trees characterising Tashkent extend for some distance round the city, and then comes a dull expanse of desert which, when seen through sheets of rain, is the acme of dreariness. When we reached the end of our railway journey we found, as usual, that the station was some miles away from our destination, Samarkand, and we drove through oceans of mud under a pelting rain to the Grand Hotel, a nice new house where the rooms looked out on to a little garden. To our relief our host and hostess had a limited acquaintance with the German language, so that we were able to make our wishes known, the main one being for thorough washing accommodation. We were taken to see a fine bath-room, and arranged to have the stove at once lighted, for it is something of a function to have a bath in Russia, and cannot be achieved under a couple of hours; our host was evidently very proud of possessing a bath-room, and we spent a happy afternoon getting rid of all traces of our eleven days and nights of travel.

Next morning a radiant sun following the rain showed us Samarkand in its most attractive guise. We drove through shady avenues, past fashionable shops towards the real city, and suddenly there burst upon our view a wonderful dome and lofty archway, jewelled with tiles of dazzling blue. It is the Gur Amir, the tomb of Tamerlane, the great Conqueror, the forerunner of the Mogul Emperors. In the midst of a thick cluster of trees the tomb rises erect, so that only the cupola is visible until you come close to it. It is enclosed by the care of the Russian authorities with an inconspicuous little wall, finished off with a metal coping along the top. Formerly the tomb was entered (according to regulation) from the south side, but most of the outer buildings have already fallen to pieces. The present entrance is on the north, and the façade is completely covered with tiles; it is a marvellous blaze of colour, composed of various shades of blue, varied with white and a little yellow, the whole effect being that of a blue mosaic. The decorations are varied; there are a large number of inscriptions, many of them from the Koran, in Persian characters of the fifteenth century. They certainly add rather than detract from the decorative character of the design. Passing through the entrance gate one comes into a grassy courtyard paved with black marble, in which are ancient mulberry trees, and the central building rises beyond them. The whole of this inner façade is also tiled. Among the inscriptions one was deciphered by Vambéry, which proved to be the architect’s signature: “This is the work of poor Abdullah, son of Mohammed, native of Ispahan.”

In the days of his glory Tamerlane determined to have erected for himself a mausoleum excelling in magnificence all the other buildings at Samarkand. For this purpose he selected the Persian architect, Abdullah, charging him to build a tomb worthy to enshrine his remains. The two original towers which flanked the cupola are both gone, one of them quite recently, and the great western archway is falling to pieces, but the immense Kûfic[5] characters (white on a blue ground) which form the frieze immediately below the cupola are still almost perfect. The style is not entirely Persian, but was probably modified by the influence of the architecture which the Persians found in Samarkand. On each side of the main building is a small chapel containing tombs of minor importance. Entering the tomb by a beautifully carved and inlaid door, we found ourselves in a little sanctuary, where the faithful come to pray, laying their foreheads against the walls. The height of the dome (measured from within) is about 74 feet. Despite a small window at each end containing alabaster tracery, the light is dim, and a religious hush seems to pervade the building. Not only Tamerlane but others also are buried here. Shortly after the building of the mausoleum, his teacher, Saïd Mir Berke, a venerable mullah (holy man), died, so Tamerlane showed his supreme reverence for him by having him buried in the Gur Amir, ordering that his own body should be placed (when he died) at the mullah’s feet. There are in addition several small tombstones surrounding the special slab (said to be of green jade) which marks Tamerlane’s resting-place. This precious monolith was sent for this purpose by a Mongolian princess ten years after his death to his successor, Nadir Shah, but was unfortunately broken in the transport. The two pieces have been fastened together, and it has been elaborately carved with Tamerlane’s name, titles, and ancestry, interspersed with passages from the Koran. Copies of these are for sale at the tomb. Monsieur Edouard Blanc, in an interesting article in the Revue des Deux Mondes (Feb. 15, 1893), says he examined this stone very carefully from the mineralogist’s point of view, and has no hesitation in declaring that it is not jade. Certainly there is no other known specimen of this stone anything like the size, for jade is only found in small pieces; but there are other stones frequently mistaken for jade, such as jadeite (hence its name), which is not nearly so valuable. Tamerlane’s known desire to have a tomb of jade is probably the reason why it is so called. The jade mines of Turkestan have been celebrated in China for at least 2000 years. Above the mullah’s tomb are two crossed bamboo poles bearing the Prophet’s green flag, and the standard, which consists of a horse’s mane and a gold button. The tombs are enclosed by a low alabaster-work balustrade, as seen on the left hand in the sketch.

But Tamerlane was so afraid lest cupidity should cause his tomb to be rifled that he ordered his body to be buried in a crypt below the other tomb, the existence of which was until quite recently unknown, except to a few initiated persons. The entrance, which was concealed by a paving stone, is now open to the gaze of all. We went down into it by a flight of steep stone steps and found a number of tombs, one of which was the hero’s, made of specially finely carved marble. We were invited to pay a small sum in order to place candles on it, so I presume our respectful attitude had won us the reputation of being good Moslems. The vaulted roof of this crypt was admirably designed brickwork, of which the rough sketch opposite may give an idea. It was a twelve-sided figure, and the whole of the interior was in excellent repair. It was dimly lighted by a torch, which our guide produced, and we were glad to escape promptly back to the upper air, where I sat down to sketch. Various worshippers came in and out to say their prayers, for the worship of saints is a marked characteristic of Mohammedanism, and there are many shrines in Samarkand. Every one seemed friendly and devout, except an obvious tourist with his guide, who certainly disturbed the serenity of the atmosphere.

Another day I sketched the outside of that wonderful mausoleum, and day by day as we studied the monuments which time has defaced, but which even in decay surpass all others in their potent effect upon the imagination, I dreamed of the genius which had left such an imperishable memory. Surely none of the other conquerors of the world was ever so strange a mixture as the great Mogul, compounded of ambition, lust of power, love of beauty, relentless cruelty, domestic affection, and zeal for “the Faith.”

Timur i Leng, the lame Timur, or Tamerlane (to use the vulgarised form of his name), was born at Shahr-i-Sabz, “the green city,” about fifty miles south of Samarkand, in 1336. His father, Teragai, had been the first ruler in the country converted to Islamism, and he brought up his son Tamerlane in the studious retirement which he himself loved. The young man was well versed in the knowledge of the Koran, but he was noted also for his good horsemanship and other manly pursuits. Tamerlane soon abandoned his father’s way of life and reverted to the earlier type of Genghiz Khan and Kubla Khan. The accounts of the Mongol raids sound like visions of the lowest hell, beside which Dante’s descriptions are colourless; these raids are inconceivable to the modern mind, and yet history shows that they were not the work of madmen, but that they are due to a strain of ferocious brutality in the Mongol blood. Where this happens to be combined with great power or genius, as in the case of Ivan the Terrible, or Tamerlane, the result is appalling.

At the age of twenty-two Tamerlane was sent at the head of a thousand horse to invade Khorasan, but it was not the first time he had been in the field, and he was subsequently employed in fighting for his own throne after his father’s death. In 1369 he had conquered his opponents, and he mounted the throne at Samarkand. It would be monotonous and vain to recapitulate the history of the incessant wars which Tamerlane waged during the next thirty years in order to extend his dominions in Central Asia, but it was when he was over sixty years of age that he undertook the greatest of his expeditions, the conquest of India (as it has been erroneously called). He ravaged the north and sacked its principal city, Delhi, returning to Samarkand with great spoil. Clavigo, the historian, says that he brought back ninety captured elephants to carry stone for the building of a new mosque at Samarkand. It was Baber, his descendant of the fifth generation, who founded the Mongol Empire in India in 1525, more than a century and a quarter later than Tamerlane.

During this campaign Tamerlane became embarrassed by the number of his Hindu prisoners, no less than 100,000 at a single time, so his counsellors urged him to have them slain. The historian remarks: “He listened to this considerate and wise advice, and gave orders to that effect”; so that they were all slain “with the sword of holy war.” In order to accomplish the frightful task the soldiery was not sufficient, and “one of the chief ecclesiastics, who in all his life had never even slaughtered a sheep, put fifteen Hindus to the sword.” (Holden’s “Mogul Emperors of Hindustan,” p. 27.) On another occasion he slew no less than 70,000, and had the heads piled into a pyramid and plastered over with mud. In this gruesome conception he was following the example of his ancestor Genghiz Khan, who had devised the idea of having the thousands of corpses which were slain on various occasions built into architectural designs. At the taking of Bagdad the number of slaughtered enemies was 80,000.

Tamerlane was in the habit of taking his wives with him on his campaigns, as well as learned men, and it is related that when in India he had the latter placed behind the women, and the women behind the army during the battles. The fear of him was so great that even after he had left Delhi prayers were said in his name in the mosque there until his death; afterwards in the name of his son. Tamerlane’s religiosity (for it can really be called by no other name) is shown in the account which he caused to be written in his Memoirs giving his reasons for the invasion of India. “My principal object in coming to Hindustan and in undergoing all this toil and hardship was to accomplish two things. The first was to war with infidels, the enemies of the Mohammedan religion; and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was a worldly object, that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth of the infidels; plunder in war is as lawful as their mother’s milk to Mussulmans who fight for their faith, and the consuming of that which is lawful is a means of grace.” The necessity for keeping his troops in good humour can be readily understood, but that the awful atrocities and unmentionable crimes committed by them, which are veiled in that last sentence, should be characterised as “a means of grace,” sounds like an unholy jest. It is impossible to ascertain with any accuracy the numbers of Tamerlane’s troops, but not only were there picked troops of some 200,000 men, but also vast numbers of irregulars, who flocked to his standard in the hope of plunder. But besides Tamerlane’s hosts of soldiers, who are said by his biographer to have idolised him, he had also hosts of artificers and workmen, for he built many palaces, mosques, and houses, of which only a comparatively small number survive the ravages of time. Clavijo describes the building of a street full of shops, which was to extend from one end of Samarkand to the other. No heed was taken of the claims of those who already were in possession; their houses were torn down, while the inmates fled with such things as they were able to snatch up and take with them. As fast as the houses were demolished others rose upon the ruins, as by enchantment, and at the end of twenty days and nights of uninterrupted labour the street was complete, and Tamerlane had it occupied forthwith by shopkeepers.

The various trades were formed into guilds as in western lands apparently, and at one of the feasts given during the visit of the Spanish embassy we are told that “an amphitheatre was covered with carpets, where there were masquerades. The women were dressed like goats, others like sheep and fairies, and they ran after each other. The skinners and butchers appeared like lions and foxes, and all other tradesmen contributed specimens of their skill.”

The Conte de Rubruquis, who was sent by St. Louis of France from the Holy Land to visit the Court of Tamerlane, gives a similar impression of the way in which building operations were carried on by that autocratic monarch, all of whose operations seem to have been executed in desperate haste. He says of the building of one of the great mosques: “The architects chose a happy moment to begin it, namely, on the fourth of Ramadam, 801 (May 28, 1399), which answers to the year of the Hare, the Moon being then in Leo, going out of the sextile aspect of Venus. The masons, brought from foreign countries, as mentioned before, gave the greatest proofs of their art and skill, as well in the solidity and beauty of the angles, as in the strength of the foundations of this noble edifice. In the inside of the mosque were employed two hundred masons from Azerbijana, Persia, and India; five hundred men likewise worked in the mountains in the cutting and hewing of stones, which were sent into the city. Several other artisans of different trades performed their parts with the utmost application. Ninety-five chains of elephants were made use of in drawing large stones with wheels and machines according to the laws of mechanics. The princes of the blood and Emirs were appointed to oversee the workmen, that not one moment might be lost in finishing this stupendous building.” The event was celebrated with sumptuous banquets, accompanied by all sorts of plays and diversions. “The Empress Rokia Canica on this occasion gave a noble entertainment, accompanied with concerts of music and fine dancing.”[6] The descriptions of Clavijo, the Spanish envoy, are equally vivid and interesting, giving a thoroughly complete picture of life at the Court of the great Khan. Referring to the Empress Cano (as Clavijo calls her), he says that after she had approached the Emperor, attended by her 300 ladies and eunuchs, and had taken her seat, the second wife or “little Cano” came out and took up her position, followed in turns by his seven other wives. The tents and pavilions on such occasions were of the utmost magnificence, scarlet cloth embroidered with gold and silks, white satin and different coloured silks, with silken cords and tassels. The tables were of gold, and the ornaments of gold and precious stones. Drinking formed an important part of the ceremony, and the Empress was greatly displeased when the monk de Rubruquis refused to drink at her invitation; he narrates that many of the guests became quite drunk and even fell down before her, which added to the amusement. There was also a popular and less harmful beverage of cream and sugar. The meats consisted of sheep and oxen, roasted whole, and served on dishes of thick stamped leather. No less than three hundred men were requisite to bring them in, and camels were used to bring them to the place. This part of the feast sounds quite unrefined, for the food is said to have been placed in heaps on the ground, and there is no mention of any utensils.

At another great festival to which the Spanish envoys were summoned, they were forced to pay elaborate homage to one of the Khan’s grandsons newly come from India, kneeling time after time before him. Doubtless they felt there was no choice as to obeying any such order of Tamerlane, for had they not seen plenty of instances of his summary methods of so-called “justice.” At the marriage festival of two of his grandsons Tamerlane said he “knew how to be merciful and kind to some, and how to be severe to others,” so a number of gallows were set up at the place of entertainment. When the games were over he meted out “justice” to various people who had incurred his displeasure, and they were instantly put to death; hanging was the more aristocratic punishment, and execution was the fate of the poorer classes.

Tamerlane’s most pleasing characteristic is the deep affection he entertained for his Chinese wife and for his sons, whose death caused him deep and passionate grief. There is a legend that he caused his daughters to be taught magic in order to help him in his conquests, but that sounds wholly at variance with his character. He was extremely energetic and ambitious, and brooked no interference. The portraits of his personal appearance are far from pleasing; he was not only lame, but also blind in one eye. Tamerlane’s last campaign was against the Turks, and he pushed as far as to Damascus, taking prisoner the Sultan Bajazet. On his return he projected another distant campaign against China, but he fell ill of ague and fever, and died in Syr Daria in 1405. His body was embalmed and carried for burial to Samarkand.