THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



273 



dreds of praying men and its tasseled 

 boxes made from gourds of fantastic 

 shape for use with pea-green tobacco 

 powder, one sees tilework at its best, dat- 

 ing from Timur's prime. Here are found 

 the beautiful mausolea of Shakh Zinda, 

 erected by the monarch whose empire 

 reached from Siberia to the Dardanelles 

 and from the Ganges to the Persian Gulf. 



A JACK-OE-ALL-TRADES ARMY 



That Timur the Lame, whom Marlowe 

 pictures as a crude barbarian, was not 

 without culture as well as kultur is 

 shown by the fact that these mausolea 

 were erected to the nurse, the sisters, and 

 the spiritual adviser of the great nomadic 

 chief who captured Delhi and Tiflis, Da- 

 mascus and Aleppo, cities now coveted 

 by Hadji Wilhelm of Potsdam. 



In the shadow of the huge Mosque of 

 Bibi Khanum, which Timur erected to his 

 favorite wife, the great grain and dried 

 fruit market is now held, for the fertile 

 valley of the Zerafshan produces heavy 

 grain, luscious grapes, and thin-shelled 

 almonds, as well as the juicy melons 

 which one buys, after sampling, in great 

 drippy slices, in the Registan. 



Timur's army was a Jack-of-all-Trades 

 horde, for each fighter not only carried a 

 bow with thirty arrows, a quiver, and a 

 buckler, but for every two mounted fight- 

 ing men a spare horse, and every ten had 

 a great tent of felt. Each squad of ten 

 also had two spades, a pickaxe, a sickle, 

 a saw, an ax, an awl, a hundred needles, 

 eight and a half pounds of stout cord, an 

 ox's hide, and a strong pan. Swiss Fam- 

 ily Robinson was not better provided for 

 from the mother's wrist bag. 



With this equipment and such flocks 

 as were necessary, the great roving war- 

 rior advanced against a score of enemies 

 and conquered most of them, so that he 

 was reputed to have had his chariots 

 drawn by conquered kings, wearing as 

 parts of their harness the jewels which 

 once they wore as crown gems. 



Then came the day when the conqueror 

 returned by way of Derbent and northern 

 Persia, over the route Germany seeks as 

 the corridor to the East, and the long, 

 long trail winding across barren steppes 

 and hot desert, over snow mountains and 

 through the torrid heat of the Ganges 



and the Caspian depression, led Timur, 

 the lame wanderer, back to his tomb in 

 Samarkand. He never reached his capi- 

 tal alive ; but his faithful followers, be- 

 fore they began fighting among them- 

 selves, carried the warrior's aged body 

 back to the city where his friends lay 

 buried. 



The tomb of Timur, with its melon 

 dome of turquoise blue, is in a quiet sec- 

 tion of the city, at some distance from 

 the smaller but lovelier mausolea of his 

 loved ones. But in that cool and dark 

 tomb, below the hot sun of Turkestan, 

 the great Mongol leader and lame trav- 

 eler lies buried with eight friends. Bar- 

 barian though he was, Timur loved 

 deeply, and in death he is not alone. 



romance: gives way to commerce 



Historical romance gives way to com- 

 merce when one leaves the polychrome- 

 tiled mosques of Samarkand and slips 

 across into the lovely valleys of fertile 

 Ferghana, where Russia's cotton was 

 grown before revolution spoiled the Mos- 

 cow factories and the railways at the 

 same time, so that mountains of cotton 

 piled up in the yards at Kokand and 

 Andijan. Last winter the people hun- 

 gered, for the railway that took out cot- 

 ton used to bring back food ; but this year 

 the food is growing once more in the 

 cotton fields, and Turkestan will be better 

 off when this winter's famine comes to 

 parts of Russia. 



Down into Ferghana and out toward 

 the Pamirs the express from Petrograd, 

 with its sleeping cars and spotless diners, 

 used to run ; and across the protecting 

 mountains the British Indian officials 

 watched with undisguised dismay this 

 onward sweep of Tsardom. But Rus- 

 sia's imperial power has been divided into 

 warring atoms, and it is a Teutonic power 

 robbed of its dream of Bagdad that now 

 looks out on the romantic cities of Merv, 

 Bokhara, and Samarkand as stepping- 

 stones to the tropical materials and popu- 

 lation centers of India and the East. 



The modern Hadji has found that he 

 cannot ride to India on the bowed backs 

 of Moslem worshipers. But prostrate 

 hordes in the unenlightened cities of Bok- 

 hara and Samarkand beckon the drama- 

 loving Kaiser on to seek aids among the 



