Shakhrisabz

Timur was born near Shakhrisabz and built there on a scale meant to eclipse anything else, and the surviving fragment of the Ak-Saray palace gives the measure of it: two brick piers of the entrance portal standing around forty metres high, with the arch between them long gone and the span it once covered still visible in the ruins. The Dorut Tilovat and Dorus Saodat complexes hold family tombs, including a crypt made for Timur himself.

History

Known as Kesh, heart-pleasing, and perhaps the ancient Nautaca, the city was founded more than 2,700 years ago and was an important town of Sogdiana under the Achaemenid Persians from the 6th to the 4th century BC; at Nautaca Alexander's general Ptolemy captured Bessus, the last pretender to the Persian throne, and Alexander wintered in the area in 328-327 BC. Its rulers paid tribute to the Turkic khagans between 567 and 658, the Arabs took the city in the 8th century, when the valley became a centre of the revolt of al-Muqanna, and after the Mongol conquest the region passed to the Barlas tribe. Timur was born here in the 14th century, and the city has been called Shahrisabz since the Timurid era (Wikipedia, Shahrisabz).

What to look for

• The Ak-Saray portal - two brick piers around forty metres high from the palace gate.
• The Dorus Saodat - the burial complex with the crypt made for Timur.
• The Dorut Tilovat - the mosque and tombs of the Kok Gumbaz group.
• The pass road - the drive over the Takhtakaracha from Samarkand.

When to go

April to June and September to October are the comfortable months. The pass can close in winter snow. Summer heat is severe.

Good to know

Large-scale demolition around the monuments in 2015 and 2016 to create a park led UNESCO to place the site on its list of World Heritage in danger, and the setting is now an open plaza rather than a town. The drive over the pass is winding. Summer heat is severe with little shade.

Nearby

Samarkand is north over the pass, and Karshi is south-west.

Key facts