SAMARCAND, in lat. 39° 38' 45" N. and fong. 64° 38' 12" E. of Paris, is a town 2150 feet above the sea, was the capital of the ancient Sogdiana. It is 2 miles distant from the left bank of the Zar-afshan river, 235 miles from Bokhara, 247 from Khokand, and 139 from Tashkand. It has eight gates, is 81 miles in circumference, and has a population of about 70,000 souls viz. 40,000 in the Russian quarter, and 30,000 in the Asiatic quarter. The area of its ark or citadel is 91'87 acres. It has 165 mosques, 24 colleges, 24 cemeteries, 33 cara vansaries, 3000 shops, and 1000 factories and estab lishments. The Talar-i-Timur, or reception-hall of Timur, contains the Kok-tash, a colossal mass of stone of a greenish or bluish colour, 10 feet long, 4 feet broad, and 4i feet high, on which the throne of Titular u.sed to be placed. Each arnir of Bokh ara, on his accession, took his seat on this stone.
European goods of every kind are largely im ported, and skins, knives, carpets, silks, em broidered saddles, etc., are exported. The citadel, which is defended by a strong wall thirty-six feet high, and nearly two miles in circumference, is one of the finest in Central Asia. This city has been subjected to many reverses. It was known in the thne of Alexander the Great by the name of Marakanda Regio Sogdianarium.
. Shannnir Yerash, the son of Ya.shir, the succes sor of the Balkees of the Christian era, was cme of the greatest -warriors who ever held the throne of Yemen. He carried his arms into Irak, Persia, and the neighbouring countries, attacked and nearly destroyed the ancient capital of Sogdiana, which thenceforth took the name of Samarcand.
Remains of Himyaritic inscriptions were long found there, and one mentioned by Abul Fada began thus : In the name of God, this building was erected by Shammir Yerash, in honour of the Lord the Sun.' Shammir afterwards perished with his army in the deserts of Tibet, in an invasion of China. To revenge the death of his grandfather, Tobba-ul-Akran, who occupied the throne of Ye men for about fifty years, from A.D. 90 to A.D. 140, marched and rebuilt Samarcand ; carried war into China, where he founded a city which Thaalebi called El-Beit, and where he left a colony of 30,000 Arabs, who continued a distinct people when Hemedoun wrote in A.D. 553. Samarcand in the time of the Samanides was the largest city beyond the Oxus, and only began to decline from its former importance when Ismail chose Bokhara for his own residence. Under the Kharezmians it is said to have raised itself again, and become much larger than its rival, and under Timur, to have reached the culminating point of its prosperity. Timur marched from Samarcand in A.D. 1397, into /ndia, but returned the followino. year and pro ceeded against Syria, Egypt, anSConstantinople. With the fall of the Timurides, its decay com menced ; Bokhara bemme from this time the only official capital, and the princes of the house of the Sheibani, the Ashtarkhani, and the Manghits, only visited Samarcand as a summer excursion for the sake of its natural beauties.—Vantbery, Bokhara, p. 27.