: | Global Television |
Episode Number: | 41075 |
Title: | Ipak Yoli |
Languages: | E De |
26 Mins | |
Produced: | 2016 |
An important section of the ancient Silk Road passes through today's Uzbekistan, where once-powerful trading centres competed in wealth, beauty and dimension. We begin our journey in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, in the city of Amir Timur, the ‘riding general’, who established a dynasty there. The city was famous in both Orient and Occident for its scholars, poets and artisans and even today its inhabitants are proud of their legacy which is a combination of Oriental, Russian and Soviet times.
Samarqand became integrated within the Persian Empire, was later conquered by Alexander The Great and, in the fourteenth century, became the centre of the World Empire of Amir Timur. Newly-introduced Timurid design further enriched the architecture. The Bibi Khanym Mosque became Timur's most prestigious project, the largest and most magnificent Friday Mosque of the entire empire, named after his favourite wife.
Further west, the caravans on the outskirts of the Kyzylkum Sand Desert arrived at the oasis city of Bukhara, Blessed City Of God, in the Middle Ages, one of the most important religious and economic centres of the Islamic world. In ancient times Bukhara was part of Sogdia, a region in Central Asia in which from the second half of the first millennium B.C. a city-like plan developed.
Countless nations have made their mark on the Old Silk Road along which flowering and destruction, recovery and decline were always close together. What remains is the magic and exoticism of the Thousand And One Nights!