194 SAMARKAND. 



lame, whence our Tamerlane, — and he was blind in one 

 eye. One day while being waited upon by the barber 

 he chanced to catch sight of himself in the glass, and 

 was so struck by his appearance that he began to weep 

 violently, in which he was joined by his companion 

 Chodscha. At the expiration of two hours the king 

 ceased weeping, but Chodscha then began wailing in 

 good earnest. Timur, surprised, demanded the reason 

 of his renewed lamentation, to whom Chodscha replied, 

 " If thou hast only seen thy face once, and at once 

 seeing hast not been able to contain thyself, but hast 

 wept, what should we do — we who see thy face every 

 day and night ! " So say the Persians. It would seem 

 from the above that, as the Persian poet Saadi once 

 said of a compatriot, he was "so ugly and crabbed 

 that a sight of him would derange the ecstasies of the 

 orthodox ! " In which respect he resembles another 

 great monarch, who was so adverse to seeing his own 

 likeness that he was at last unwilling that it should 

 appear on his country's coins. Wherefore it is the 

 two-headed eagle of Byzantium that is stamped on 

 the rouble of Russia. 



But whatever can be said against Tamerlane on the 

 grounds of his personal appearance, nothing can be said 

 against his success as a conqueror or against his accom- 

 plishments as an architect, whereby his city became 

 one of the proudest in the world and the beloved resort 

 a century later of the renowned Sultan Baber. 



The city fell into the hands of the Russians under 

 General Kaufmann in May 1868, and was the scene of 

 what has been described as being " one of the brightest 

 and most glorious pages in all the history of the 

 Russian advance in Asia.''^ A small garrison under 

 Major Stempel, left to hold the city by General Kauf- 



^ Turkestan. Schuyler. 



