Samarkand – Crossroad of Cultures
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. How many people have stood at a site or want to go will be shown once enough people use the app.
Seals, your want-to-go list and the year you stood here are kept in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
Samarkand lies in a large oasis of the Zerafshan valley, and the town began around the 7th century BC on what is now the mound of Afrasiab. In 329 BC Alexander the Great conquered the city the Greeks called Maracanda. It became a centre of Sogdian civilisation and, under the Achaemenids, capital of the Sogdian satrapy.
Around 710 Umayyad armies under Qutayba ibn Muslim took the city. In 1220 Genghis Khan's Mongols caused widespread destruction, and Afrasiab was left in ruins. In 1370 Timur made Samarkand his capital, and a new city grew to the south.
Between 1417 and 1420 Ulugh Beg built a madrasa that became the first building of the Registan, and in 1428 he built his observatory. In 1868 Russian forces under Konstantin von Kaufman took the citadel, and a European-style quarter grew to the west. In 2001 an area of 1,123 ha covering the ancient, Timurid and Russian parts of the city was inscribed.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).