SAMARKAND, a city of Asiatic Russia, in 39° 39' N., 66° 56' E., situated in the Uzbek S.S.R. Pop. (1933) 154,600. The city is the ancient Maracanda, the capital of Sogdiana, then the residence of the Muslim Samanid dynasty, and subsequently the capital of the Mongol prince Tamerlane. It was captured by the Russians under General Kaufmann, after a fierce struggle, in 1868 and for a time declined. In 1900 its population was 58,194, but since the foundation of the Uzbek republic in 1924 with Samarkand as its administrative centre, the town has grown rapidly, an electric power station has been constructed and it has leather factories, cotton cleaning mills, flour-mills, distilleries, and pencil and brick factories. It is linked by rail with Orenburg and with the Caspian, and when these lines are joined up via Semipalatinsk with the trans-Siberian line, it is hoped that cotton cultivation will develop markedly and the population will depend on Siberian grain. It is situated at a height of 2,358 ft. in the fertile loess valley of the Zarafshan, at the point where the river issues from the western spurs of the Tian Shan, on a high plain, with the snow clad Hissar range rising to the south, from which bracing winds blow and make the city more healthy than others in Central Asia. Within a journey of a couple of days lie the glacier snouts of the Archa-Maidan, "Place of Junipers." The Russian part of the town has wide streets lined with poplar, acacia, willow and elm strees, but the Muslim part is an intricate labyrinth of narrow, winding streets. Gardening, the making of pottery and metal goods, and trade in cotton, silk, wheat, rice, horses, asses, fruit and cutlery are among the occupations of the people. The native city, with its maze of yellow houses nestling among the trees, and from which rises the turquoise cupola of the Bibi-Khanum (a college erected in 1388 by a Chinese wife of Timur), centres on the Rigistan, a square around which are three madrasahs (Muslim colleges), Ulug-beg, Shir-dar and Tilla-kari, of great architectural symmetry and beauty, decorated with enamelled tiles of various colours. Outside the walls of Samar
kand are the Hazret Shah-Zindeh, the summer palace of Timur, on a terrace reached by 4o marble steps, and the grave of Shah Zindeh (Kasim ibn Abbas), a companion of Timur. The latter was a famous shrine in the 14th century (Ibn Batuta's Travels, iii. 52). The Gur Amir, the tomb of Timur, a dome-crowned chapel, has suffered much from time and earthquakes; on its interior walls are turquoise arabesques and inscriptions in gold.
Maracanda was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 329 B.C. and was the scene of the murder of Cleitus. Ruins of its buildings, amongst which are plain and enamelled tiles and Graeco-Bactrian coins, lie outside Samarkand and are now called Aphrosiab. The city reappears as Samarkand at the time of the Arab conquest, when it was finally reduced by Kotaiba ibn Muslim in A.D. 711 712. Under the Samanids it became a brilliant seat of Arabic civilization and is reported to have been defended by i r o,000 men when besieged by Jenghiz Khan in 1221, by whom it was destroyed and pillaged. When Timur (Tamerlane) made it his residence in 1369, its inhabitants numbered 15o,000. The magni ficent buildings of Timur's successors, which still remain, testify to its former wealth. But by the beginning of the 18th century it was almost uninhabited. It fell under Chinese dominion and subsequently under that of the Amir of Bukhara, and finally under that of Russia.