AK-SARAI - THE WHITE PALACE

Ak means "white". Yet Tamerlane's palace was covered in azure and dark-blue majolica. Today, little remains of the sumptuous palace described in Spanish ambassador Clavijo's lengthy account. Nevertheless, the ruins of the portal are immense - 30 m high. The depredations go back a long way, and are attributable to the Emir of Bukhara, who had the building destroyed in the ^16th century. The palace overshadowed him..

After building his capital Samarkand, Tamerlane wanted to pay tribute to his hometown. He himself oversaw the construction of this monumental palace for almost a quarter of a century (between 1380 and 1404), bringing in craftsmen from various nations, notably Iran, and some 50,000 slaves. The result was breathtaking. Not only was it the largest palace ever built (the inner courtyard alone was 250 m long and 120 m wide), it was also one of the most sumptuous!

Legends are attached to architectural challenges! According to the first version, once the palace was completed, Tamerlane asked the architect if he was capable of building an even more beautiful palace, and the braggart replied yes! You can guess what happened next: he was immediately thrown off the walls! End of story. In the second version, the architect was supposed to inscribe the following phrase at the foot of the arch: "The Sultan is the shadow of Allah", but there wasn't enough room on one of the sides! The result: "The Sultan is the shadow"! Oops!