. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Q< Oi < < o <Q UJ SAMARKAND AND BEYOND 327 with gardens and vineyards. Around these was the bare, sandydesert, rolling up into the Alai range. Behind me was the peace-. interior of Shir Dar, Samarkand. ful courtyard, surrounded by its tiers of cells for the students,with trees, and fountains, and slowly stepping, white-turbaned 328 ALL THE RUSSIAS mollahs. Once this was the metropolis of the world of Islam,the home of art and poetry, the site of everything most
. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Q< Oi < < o <Q UJ SAMARKAND AND BEYOND 327 with gardens and vineyards. Around these was the bare, sandydesert, rolling up into the Alai range. Behind me was the peace-. interior of Shir Dar, Samarkand. ful courtyard, surrounded by its tiers of cells for the students,with trees, and fountains, and slowly stepping, white-turbaned 328 ALL THE RUSSIAS mollahs. Once this was the metropolis of the world of Islam,the home of art and poetry, the site of everything most splendidthat Mohammedanism produced, the place of every Mussulmansdesire, the symbol of beauty and perfection. Hafiz of Shiraz be-lieved himself to be touching the high-water mark of hyperbolewhen he wrote— If that Turkish girl of Shiraz would give me her heart, I would give for one mole of her cheek Samarkand and Bokhara. But the Uzbegs were the Goths and Vandals of this Asian Rome—the Turks of this later Athens. Finally even Bokhara took itand held it till the Russians came conquering from Timur built his monuments so solidly that neither mennor time have destroyed them, and to-day they are assuredlystill among the most glorious works of human hands. Timur himself repose
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