The Living King

So to pick up where we left Ibn Battuta in what is now the Street of the Dead - and the tomb of Qutham ibn Abbas, which is still very much there.

“The people of Samarqand go out to visit it on the eve of every Tuesday and Friday, and the Tatars too come and visit it and make large votive offerings to it bringing to it cattle and sheep, dirhams and dinars all of which is devoted to the expenditure for the maintenance of travelers and the servitors of the hospice and the blessed tomb. The latter is sumounted by a dome resting on four pilasters each of which is combined with two marble columns, green, black, white and red. The walls of the cell beneath the cupola are of marble inlaid with different colors and decorated with gold and its roof made of lead. The tomb itself is covered with planks of ebony inlaid with gold and jewels and with silver cornerpieces; above it are three silver lamps. The hangings of the dome are of wool and cotton.....”

Samarkand; The Pearl of the East and the Cemetery of Forty Evil Spirits

Ibn Battuta gives a rare (and incomplete) glimpse of his personal life here - en route to Samarkand, one of his slave girls gave birth to a girl although he was told it was a boy, and he did not learn the truth until the following week when according to tradition, the child is named. But he believed the child was blessed and brought him luck, although she did not survive for long. He does not say the child was his.

....... I journeyed to the city of Samarqand, which is one of the greatest and finest of cities and most perfect of them in beauty........There were formerly great palaces on its bank and constructions which bear witness to the lofty aspirations of the townsfolk, but most of this is obliterated and most of the city itself has fallen into ruin. It has no city wall, and no gates and there are gardens inside it.”

One of the domes of the Bibi Khanum Mosque built by Tamerlane as the city's Friday mosque. The ailing emir wanted it completed in a great hurry - too great perhaps as bits of masonry began crumbling shortly after its completion. The mosque itself is still closed.

Of Mausolea, brides and pagans

“I visited at Bukhara also the tomb of the learned imam Abu Abdullah al-Bukhari, compiler of al-Jami al-Sahih, the Sheikh of the Muslims and over it is inscribed; This is the grave of Muhammed ibn Ismail al-Bukhari who composed such and such books. In the same manner the tombs of the learned men of Bukhara are inscribed with their names and the titles of their writings. “

Al-Bukhari is not just ‘a learned imam’, he is considered to be the greatest compiler of the Hadith, sayings of the Prophet Mohammed collected over the years, as an additional source of canonical law. For a sunni Muslim, such as Ibn Battuta, there are essentially only two sources of Islamic jurisprudence; the Koran and the Hadith. Al-Bukhari was respected by all Sunni Muslims because of the scrupulous detail he attached to his research - he did not include any hadith that could not be traced to a respected source. And because he did not align himself fully with any particular school of law, he was considered fair-minded by all.

The Last Khan and his Dancing Boys

En route to Bukhara, Ibn Battuta traveled to Kath, formerly an important city in Khwarezm but one which no longer exists. Over its ruins however is a place called Bereni about which the guidebooks have nothing to say, and it took me some time to realize that Bereni is Kath - named after the famous afore-mentioned scholar al-Buruni (after a fashion) who was born there. I did not visit because I was working and it was not part of the itinerary. It will have to wait for another time. We did however visit Khiva - capital of the notorious Khanate of slave traders, thieves and brigands. Ibn Battuta did not visit because in the 14th century the town was of little importance - it came into its own as a den of iniquity in the 18th century. Nowadays its newly-restored cobbled streets ring out to the cries of vendors and tourists and not to the shrieking of unfortunates being thrown off the top of a minaret.

The heavily restored mud brick walls of Khiva Old Town, the Ichon-Kala.