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Samarkand history

There are cities which centuries-old history embodies the history of whole nation and countries, reflecting the way passed by many generations.
Such is Samarkand-one of the most ancient city in the world.
As other first centers of human civilization-Babylon and Memphis, Athens and Rome, Alexandria and Byzantium-Samarkand was intended to go through rapid events and shakes.
Samarkand history goes deep into thousand years. Archeological finds and annalistic proceedings of eyewitnesses and ancient historians allowed to establish with full reliability that a man had been living on the territory of modern city many thousand years ago B.C.
Special advantageous geographical location, comparatively cool climate, abundance of natural springs with fine water, “obi rahmat”-“mercy water”, nearness of mountains with large wild fowl, flowing near Zaravshan river - all these always provided favorable conditions for human settlings in that area, where strong walls, castles, majestic buildings and temples of Samarkand raised some centuries ago B.C.
In historical proceedings of ancient time the earliest mention about Samarkand-that was famous then as Marakand-related to 329th year B.C., in descriptions of eyewitnesses and participants of Alexandr Macedonian’s aggressive tours.
Already at that time Samarkand was a big city with crowded population, developed crafts, trade, and culture. He had unassailable citadel and outside defensive wall about 10 and half kilometers long.
With new archeological finds scientists concluded that Samarkand occurred much earlier than Greek-Macedonian winnings and already during the epoch of the state development of ahemenids (6-4 BC) was quite developed city. That is why the “age” of Samarkand amounted to round chronological data of 2500 years starting from the day of its birth on the forest hill of Afrosiab, though it is greatly older.
During its history the city saw half savage sacs and massagets on the streets, iron “flanks” of greek-macedonins, hordes of cruel karakitays, the city withstood destructive invasion of fanatic Arabic commanders-the followers of Islam religion founder Mohammed. Bloody hordes of Chigiz-han came down on its peaceful houses with fire and sword. Samarkand became the capital of World Empire ranged from Ind River to Bosfor with cruel Timur.
After Timur’s death all his empire goes to the power of his children and grandchildren. Samarkand and bordered to it areas devolved to the ownership of Ulugbek, Timur’s grandson. Ulugbek ruled Samarkand during 40 years. During the whole history Uligbek was the most peace-loving ruler. He almost did not participate in aggressive campaigns over ruling his state. He visited other countries many times but only for learning traditions, culture, and customs of those countries. He was great scientist, astronomer, and mathematician; that is why he brought many scientists from different countries for science development in his government.
In reality Timur’s grandson was called Muhhmad Taragay, and his grandmother, Timur’s wife, gave Ulugbek name to him because from early childhood he was very clever boy, and Timur means “clever, talented”; that is why in history Timur’s grandson mentioned only under the name Ulugbek.
Now Samarkand like most cities of Central Asia is a city divided into two parts: old and new ones. New part is an administrative part of the city where industrial and cultural centers, high educational institutions are situated. There are 5 institutes in Samarkand: medical, agricultural, architectural, cooperative, institute of foreign languages, and also State University that has 10 faculties.
Old part this is part where historical monuments, shops, small school are situated. Our entire excursion will be in the old part of the city.
Population of Samarkand is about 500 thousands. This is multinational city, more that 100 nations live in Samarkand. Samarkand takes second place in Uzbekistan by number of population and territory.