BIBI KHANUM MOSQUE

For the traveller arriving by car from Tashkent, Bibi Khanum's immense blue dome behind the compact and colourful crowd is one of the first images of Samarkand la. It was in 1399, when he returned from his campaign in India where his troops had set fire and blood to the temples of Zoroastrians and Hindus Infidels, that Timur decided to build the Masjid-i-Jami mosque, known today as Bibi Khanum, daughter of the Emperor of China and favored wife of Timur. The best architects and artisans from the Khorassan, Azerbaijan and India were attelèrent to the construction of what was to be the largest mosque in Central Asia. The best location of the capital and Timur laid the first stone on the best day, the fourth day of Ramadan 801 (10 May 1399). Ninety-five elephants, which Timur had brought back from his conquests in Indouhistan, were fighters huge blocks of stone needed for construction. According to Cherif Id Din, there were four hundred blocks of five metres height! Entrusting to the supervision of the grandiose project to his most loyal collaborators, Timur left for new conquests in Asia Minor, and returned to Samarkand only in July 1404. The versions differ as to the sequence of history. According to Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, Ambassador of Castilian and end observer to Samarkand in August 1404, Timur's first wife was actually named Cano. She was daughter of Chiacao, emperor of Samarkand province and former king of Persia and Damascus, and it was in honour of Cano's mother that the mosque had been built. Clavijo tells how, upon his return from Asia Minor, Timur judged the portal too low and destroyed it then rebuilt. The workers who would be arriving day and night were treated fairly badly. To those who worked in the pits, meat was thrown like dogs, sometimes adding coins so that they continued their hard work. According to the historian Sharaf ad-Din, when he returned in 1404, Timur entered a black fury because Bibi Khanum, who was to be a woman of head, had built a madrasas and a mausoleum for herself just in front of the mosque. As subsequently shown by archaeological excavations, Tamerlane's fury was perhaps due to the fact that the portail portal had not been constructed in parallel with that of the mosque. Whatever was the real reason for the wrath of the Emir of Iron, the legend grabbed it and tells the following story: While Timur guerroyait away from his land, Bibi Khanum decided to make a surprise by erecting the highest mosque ever built. She supervised the work herself and fervently wanted them to be completed for the return of her husband. Asked to hurry, the architect ends up pulling her a kiss in exchange for his promise to finish the work on time. The kiss, though given through the hand, was so hot and so hot that Bibi Khanum still wore a mark on her cheek when returned her husband's emperor. He offusqua more from the sashimi than he is happy with the huge mosque. He entered a mad fury and ordered his soldiers to seize the architect, but the traitor went on top of one of the minarets and flew to Persia forever. Bibi Khanum was rushed from the top of another minaret, and Timur gave the order that in his empire all women wore the veil so that their faces no longer tried men when the husbands were in war.

In its construction, the complex consisted of four marble paved galleries, covered by 400 domes and supported by 400 columns of marble which surrounded a huge inner courtyard of 130 m on 102 m. Two 50 m high minarets were located on each side of the entrance gate, up to 35 m high, as well as the portal of the large prayer hall up to 40 m. each outside of the court. In the north and south, two smaller mosques, each adorned with a dome perched on a luxuriously decorated cylindrical drum, looked at the centre of the courtyard where, on a marble stand, Osman's Koran: the second largest Koran of Islam, dating from the th century, that Timur was reborn from Damascus. It is said that the surahs were written in such a large character that the imams could read them from the top of the colonnade. It is also said that, barely finished, the mosque already began to degrade. The precipitation of architects was probably for something and the earthquakes, one of which had its epicenter at the very center of the mosque, did the rest. In 1868, Russian shells were endommagèrent the great dome of the mosque. Armin Vambery, the faux dervish that was able to visit Samarkand five years earlier, in 1863, described a monument that was already very damaged and which served as a garage for service carriages linking Kokand to Karchi. Ten years later, Eugene Schuyller, an American diplomat, also went to Samarkand and described the courtyard of the mosque, transformed into cotton markets, but in the centre of the inner courtyard, the great marble stand on which the Koran Osman was asked was still there. He also brought together popular belief that to heal back pain, it was necessary to crawl between the nine short and thick pillars that supported stand. Another superstition wanted the sterile women to come to glisser in the morning to be able to procréer. Even today, we can see women crawling between these pillars… conservators have worked for more than forty years to rebuild the mosque to gradually restore its original forms. The three domes appeared, but those of the North and south mosques already lost their blue ceramic decorations. Since April 2003, the entrance gate, which was once masked by tangles of scaffolding, is again visible, and the two flanking minarets have also been restored. We better appreciate the quality of the architecture that plunges the visitor directly into the courtyard by three degraded monuments in the portal. During the course of the work, it was possible to climb at the top of the minarets with a slight bachshish to the workers. It seems that the rise is now banned. In the courtyard, the interior of the East Dome still retains some paintings and ceramics of origin but the restoration works began during our passage and should be completed at the time of the publication of this guide. And it is to be feared that the latest frescoes disappear under the rolls of paint. The large cracks circulating around the other buildings around the central court give an idea of the scale of the work that has been carried out at the entrance gate, which remains to be carried out here. It will take ten years of work to restore interior decorations, recreate the colonnade and complete the ornaments of the entrance portal. Ten years to say again about the Bibi Khanum mosque: " His dome would be unique if there were the heavens, and unique would be its portal if there were the Milky Way. '»»»»