The Face of Manchuria, Korea, & Russian Turkestan by Emily Georgiana Kemp

We awoke next morning to find ourselves in a grey desolate wilderness, as bare as the Hunger Desert. The lovely gardens full of fruit-trees characterising Tashkent extend for some distance round the city, and then comes a dull expanse of desert which, when seen through sheets of rain, is the acme of dreariness. When we reached the end of our railway journey we found, as usual, that the station was some miles away from our destination, Samarkand, and we drove through oceans of mud under a pelting rain to the Grand Hotel, a nice new house where the rooms looked out on to a little garden. To our relief our host and hostess had a limited acquaintance with the German language, so that we were able to make our wishes known, the main one being for thorough washing accommodation. We were taken to see a fine bath-room, and arranged to have the stove at once lighted, for it is something of a function to have a bath in Russia, and cannot be achieved under a couple of hours; our host was evidently very proud of possessing a bath-room, and we spent a happy afternoon getting rid of all traces of our eleven days and nights of travel.

Next morning a radiant sun following the rain showed us Samarkand in its most attractive guise. We drove through shady avenues, past fashionable shops towards the _real_ city, and suddenly there burst upon our view a wonderful dome and lofty archway, jewelled with tiles of dazzling blue. It is the Gur Amir, the tomb of Tamerlane, the great Conqueror, the forerunner of the Mogul Emperors. In the midst of a thick cluster of trees the tomb rises erect, so that only the cupola is visible until you come close to it. It is enclosed by the care of the Russian authorities with an inconspicuous little wall, finished off with a metal coping along the top. Formerly the tomb was entered (according to regulation) from the south side, but most of the outer buildings have already fallen to pieces. The present entrance is on the north, and the facade is completely covered with tiles; it is a marvellous blaze of colour, composed of various shades of blue, varied with white and a little yellow, the whole effect being that of a blue mosaic. The decorations are varied; there are a large number of inscriptions, many of them from the Koran, in Persian characters of the fifteenth century. They certainly add rather than detract from the decorative character of the design. Passing through the entrance gate one comes into a grassy courtyard paved with black marble, in which are ancient mulberry trees, and the central building rises beyond them. The whole of this inner facade is also tiled. Among the inscriptions one was deciphered by Vambéry, which proved to be the architect's signature: "This is the work of poor Abdullah, son of Mohammed, native of Ispahan."