Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

[Alfred Translator] As a reporter, I've traveled the

Middle East for many years.

It's an area that has always fascinated me,

but in my work, I've mainly covered its war zones,

its crises, and its tragedies.

This journey, which takes me down the Silk Road

in the footsteps of Marco Polo,

gives me the opportunity of exploring the great

historical and cultural significance

of this part of the world,

its ancient melting pot of peoples and civilizations

that have contributed so much to our own.

(dramatic music)

(intense music)

The second leg of my trip through Uzbekistan

takes me from Bukhara to Samarkand.

The old caravan trail still follows the same route

as it did thousands of years ago,

except that today the trail has become a highway

and the Bactrian camels have been replaced by trucks.

(intense music)

(camera clicking)

(intense music)

We're on the Royal Route,

what was formerly the middle section of the Silk Road,

that connected Bukhara to Samarkand.

Every 40 kilometers, there was a fortified caravansary

called a ribat.

This is Ribat-I Malik, the king's ribat,

with its monumental gate, 12 meters high,

that opens onto, well, not much at all.

Built in the 11th century by the Sultan Shams Al-Muluk,

this is one of the largest and oldest caravansaries

in central Asia.

On the routes, caravansaries were placed approximately

40 kilometers apart at the most,

since this was the distance a caravan of camels

could walk in a day.

The Royal Route, also known as the Golden Road

due to the prosperity and significance of this area,

thus had five main ribats on the way from

Bukhara to Samarkand.

These ribats were just as important as gas stations,

but the truckers today don't even glance at them

as they go by.

The Golden Road has been a vital part of the Silk Road

ever since the first caravans were reported to have

traveled it nearly 3,000 years ago.

And in the 4th century, this was the road that

the Chinese monk Faxian took when he set off

in search of the sacred Buddhist texts in India

and Afghanistan.

Later on, it was also via this road

that Manicheism, the religion of good and evil,

was spread from Iran, and Islam from Saudi Arabia.

A little to the north of the road

lies the ancient city of Nurata.

It would become one of Alexander the Great's

most distant conquests.

If Alexander stationed his army here,

it was because of the pure freshwater spring

which gushes forth in the middle of this desert.

(playful music)

Fishing is not allowed here.

Drinking the water, however, will ensure you,

the pilgrims say, a long and prosperous life.

This is the sacred water from the spring.

(playful music)

This fortress in adobe was built by Alexander the Great

in 300 BC using the same technique that is still used today.

Although worn down by centuries and centuries of erosion,

Alexander's fortress is still standing

in spite of everything.

Like a witness, a sentinel, keeping a lookout

on the steps of the ancient world,

as it was known to Europe until Marco Polo.

It's seen all the great conquerors of Asia come by

from Genghis Khan to Stalin.

(playful music)

As we continue our way down the Golden Road,

we come to the crown jewel of the Silk Road.

The Timurid Emperor set out to make it

one of the most beautiful cities in the world

in the 14th century.

The city that sounds like a promise, Samarkand.

Even though Afghanistan is located just to the south,

it's the Russian influence that at first

seems to prevail here,

especially in terms of its more joyful aspects.

Rococo buildings in stucco with pastel colors,

women in bright outfits.

After the starkness of the desert,

it's a delightful surprise to discover

how pleasant life can be in this lush green city,

where even the doves are tinted green,

the color of hope.

Samarkand indeed owes its fortune to the mildness

of its climate,

or more precisely, to the man who thus decided

to make it his capital, a capital unsurpassed by any other:

Tamerlane or Timur the Lame,

the Turco-Mongol clan leader who became a world conqueror.

Tamerlane is the heart and soul of Samarkand.

He considered himself a descendant of Genghis Khan,

and established the largest land empire in history.

He razed and slaughtered his way across Asia,

plundering and destroying ancient cities in his wake.

But Tamerlane was also a great builder.

He made Samarkand his capital,

and his mausoleum an architectural masterpiece

to serve as his testament.

This is Tamerlane the Terrible's cenotaph.

It's a cenotaph because the tomb is empty.

His body's in the crypt below.

Legend tells us that the following words

were inscribed on his tomb:

Whosoever disturbs my tomb will unleash an invader

more terrible than myself.

It was a warning that meant

do not open my grave, or you will let loose

the spirits of war.

Everyone heeded this warning for centuries

until the Soviets, who were neither religious

nor superstitious,

decided they wanted to open the tomb

in order to study his remains.

It was the anthropologist Gerasimov

who opened it on the night of the 21st

or 22nd of June, 1941.

And that same night, Hitler launched the Nazi operation

Barbarossa and invaded the USSR.

That didn't stop the Soviets from pursuing

their examination of the skeleton.

One of the things they discovered was that the hair

that was still on Tamerlane's head was red.

Again, according to the legend,

which the Uzbeks firmly believe in,

Stalin started having nightmares,

seeing Tamerlane in his dreams.

So he said to his henchmen,

"Listen, we have to get rid of that corpse."

It was taken out of the Kremlin's basement,

put in a plane that circled over Moscow three times

before bringing the body back here to Uzbekistan.

Tamerlane's remains were buried with full Islamic rituals,

and a few weeks later, the Soviets won

the Battle of Stalingrad.

The Registan in Samarkand is regarded

as one of the finest examples of Persian architecture.

Although construction began under Tamerlane,

the mosques and gigantic madrasahs around the square

are mainly the work of his grandson,

the Timurid Sultan Ulugh Beg.

Completed in 1420, the Madrasah Ulugh Beg

was the largest university in Central Asia.

Many subjects were studied here.

The Quran, of course, as well as astronomy,

mathematics, philosophy, and literature.

The Sultan himself would come to talk

or even study with the students.

Ulugh Beg was a poet, mathematician, and astronomer,

who made Samarkand the empire's

brilliant intellectual center.

Professor Murid Khan Ergashev is very passionate

about the history of his city.

[Murid Translator] Before all this architecture was here,

this was a huge marketplace back in the time of Amir Timur.

[Alfred Translator] The Registan.

[Murid Translator] The sandy place.

And all six avenues in the city of Samarkand

came through here.

This was the terminus for the caravans.

[Alfred Translator] Of course, everything here is

spectacular.

It's extraordinary.

But there's one thing in particular that I find

really interesting,

and that's the mosaics,

especially on this madrasah.

They're very original.

I've never seen anything like those tigers and gazelles

before in Islamic decoration.

What's it about?

[Murid Translator] Listen, in my opinion,

they have to do with the signs of the zodiac.

You see, I think they began or perhaps finished

building here when the sun had entered the sign of the lion.

There are also other theories

that say that the lion represents the students

or it represents power.

And in fact, on Ulugh Beg's standard,

and on the money of the time,

we find this tiger.

[Alfred Translator] Okay, so it's not really a tiger,

it's a lion.

[Murid Translator] We usually call it a lion.

[Alfred Translator] Okay, and the figure being carried,

is that the sun?

[Murid Translator] Ah yes, the sun with a human face

represents the enlightened mind.

You see, the light?

[Alfred Translator] By bringing craftsmen

from all over his empire to come and work here,

Tamerlane, or Amir Timur if you prefer,

encouraged a syncretic style of art

called Timurid art.

One of its trademarks is the glazed tiling

made of terracotta covered with a thin layer of glass

that gets its bluish hue from the copper dyes.

Wow, it's stunning.

(dramatic music)

The Timurid style is also known for its

trompe l'oeil designs.

For example, on this dome in the Tilla Kari Mosque,

which is covered with gold.

(dramatic music)

What's interesting is that you speak of Tamerlane

as the builder of empires,

where as in France we see him as a conqueror

or someone who was destructive,

who killed tens of thousands of people

like Attila or Genghis Khan.

But you see him, on the contrary,

as a great king.

Besides, you don't see Tamerlane, that is Timur the Lame,

but Amir Timur.

[Murid Translator] Tamerlane is somewhat pejorative.

[Alfred Translator] Tamerlane is pejorative?

[Murid Translator] Yes, it means, like you said,

Timur the Lame.

[Alfred Translator] But wasn't he lame?

[Murid Translator] Yes, he was lame.

But that doesn't mean we should call him lame.

You know, it's not polite.

[Alfred Translator] I see.

So what do you call him?

[Murid Translator] Simply, Amir Timur.

[Alfred Translator] Amir Timur.

Prince Timur, right?

[Murid Translator] Yeah.

[Alfred Translator] So was Amir Timur's empire,

real empire, a centralized state,

or was it mainly just a lot of conquered territories?

[Murid Translator] It was a real empire.

A truly centralized state.

For us, and for me personally,

comparing Amir Timur to Attila or to Genghis Khan

is, well, a little insulting.

Look, the Mongols were here in our lands

for almost 150 years, and they never built anything.

While Amir Timur, even in the countries he invaded,

set about building a lot of things.

He built madrasahs, caravansaries, bridges, et cetera.

He spent most of his time on horseback,

going out to conquer countries,

but after each expedition,

he would come back to Samarkand.

[Alfred Translator] And he was always thinking

of his capital here in Samarkand,

since he did something that was rather peculiar,

quite astonishing for a conqueror, really,

which was to capture, to kidnap, or imprison

all of the highly skilled craftsmen in the cities

that he took, and then bring them back here.

And so how many craftsmen, how many artists,

were there here in the end?

[Murid Translator] Well, I can't tell you how many

artists there were.

[Alfred Translator] Dozens?

Hundreds?

[ Murid Translator] Maybe.

There were at least 12 to 15 architecture schools here

at the same time in the city of Samarkand.

The ribbed domes, the torsades,

everything was invented in Samarkand.

[Alfred Translator] The ribbed dome was really

invented in Samarkand?

[Murid Translator] Yes.

[Alfred Translator] Because later on we find them

in Delhi and in many different places.

[Murid Translator] But they're more recent.

[Alfred Translator] So they were inspired by Samarkand.

The city was already legendary back then.

[Murid Translator] Yes, it's often said that

Alexander exclaimed when he saw Samarkand

that everything he'd heard about it was true.

Except that it was even more beautiful

than he'd imagined.

So if he said that, he must have been right.

[Alfred Translator] Samarkand is thus so beautiful

that it makes Professor Ergashev get all mixed up

in his chronology, since the city was built

more than a thousand years after Alexander

came through here.

But after all, there are all kinds of legends

about the Greek conqueror on the Silk Road.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)

In Samarkand the Grand Bazaar is still here

to remind us of the Golden Age of the Silk Road.

Dried fruits and nuts are a custom left over

from those days.

Light and long lasting, they were a favorite food

among caravaners.

Can I taste them?

[Server Translator] Are you French?

Francais.

Francais, je suis.

Je suis, yes.

[Alfred Translator] Thank you.

The fabled dried fruit and nuts of the Silk Road.

They could be carried in caravans,

and they were one of Samarkand's big attractions.

The city lured people by selling these delicious

fruits and nuts.

And it's true that the raisins here are incredible.

Wow, honey crystals, can I taste?

The diversity of the faces is amazing.

I can't get over it.

Transoxiana lies at the crossroads between several worlds,

and the result is a mosaic of the many peoples

who have crisscrossed Asia throughout history.

Today, some Uzbeks look like Turks,

others like Iranians, while some look Chinese,

Mongol, or almost Russian.

It was said that the bread in Samarkand was so good

that on his forays into faraway lands,

Tamerlane would requisition bakers, flour,

and all of the ingredients, because he wanted to eat

the same bread,

and each time he'd be disappointed

the bread wouldn't be right.

And it was said that a lot of bakers were executed

to punish them for the bad bread they'd made.

And in the end, he decided he would never travel

without his own stock of bread.

And so every day while he was out on his conquests

in India or Russia, there would be people going

back and forth on horseback to bring him bread,

freshly baked.

(dramatic music)

If we go outside of the city center to

Afrasiab Hill, we come upon the remains of Marakanda,

as the city was called at the time of Alexander the Great.

We can see the ruins of a palace which belonged to

the king of the Sogdian people.

This palace also served as an enormous caravansary.

The king of Sogdiana thus acted at the same time

as the head of the merchants guild.

Which was to be expected since he was the ruler

of one of the greatest trading cultures in history.

Samarkand was founded in the 6th century BC

by the Sogdians.

And the Silk Road exists precisely because of the

Sogdian people.

They came from the Scythians, the nomads who dominated

Eurasia for thousands of years.

They were brilliant traders, as well as very educated

and refined.

One of the most famous Sogdians was the woman whom

Alexander the Great fell in love with, Roxanne.

(piano music)

For a long time, historians didn't know much about

the Sogdians,

except that their merchant kingdom controlled

all of the caravans and trading posts

from Persia to China.

As the capital of Sogdiana, Samarkand was strategically

located at the crossroads of all the major trade routes,

and the Sogdians, who were basically a peaceful people,

managed to turn their city into the main economic

and cultural center of the entire region.

(dramatic music)

Under the Soviet regime, archeological excavation

brought to light more information about the Sogdians.

In particular, due to the discovery of the ambassador's

painting, dating from the middle of the 7th century.

This extraordinary mural shows the diplomatic activity

of the Chinese, who were depicted here

on a ceremonial visit to the king of Sogdiana.

The Russian restorer, Marena Rotova,

has devoted her life to trying to unravel its mysteries.

The Sogdians are considered to be the true founders

of the Silk Road.

Can you tell us how far away their trading posts were,

geographically speaking?

[Marena Translator] The people who lived here

were very enterprising.

And in Sogdiana, of course, there were a lot of goods

that were valued in other countries.

Sogdian merchants went to China where they had their

trading posts.

When I visited China, I saw many pictures

of Sogdians in the museum.

And so they also went as far as the Al Tahi,

and thus all along the Silk Road.

They were a very educated people

and very enterprising in business.

Even though the journeys were long,

some took years,

they traveled up and down the Silk Road on foot,

were able to deal with all of the difficulties

along the way,

discover new territories,

and conquer new markets.

And so they not only forged strong commercial ties,

but political ties as well.

When a new baby was born,

the family would smear its mouth and hand with honey

so that later it would grow up to talk sweetly

and money would stick to its hands.

In other words, they prepared their children

to go into commerce from a very early age.

(dramatic music)

[Alfred Translator] Marena, you're a chemist.

In the techniques used to create this mural,

do you see the historical influences as coming more

from the Middle East or more from methods from Asia?

[Marena Translator] The wall was prepared using a plaster

made of clay, and then another kind of plaster

called ganch was applied.

Once the ganch was dry, they painted on top of it.

This is a technique that is only used in central Asia.

As for the colors, various pigments were used.

Ochre, charcoal, and gypsum were local pigments.

But lezurite, which provided the color blue,

was imported from Badakhshan.

And studies have shown that the cinnabar

used for the red paint

and the ceruse, or white lead,

were probably imported from China.

[Alfred Translator] Marena, you've been restoring

this mural for almost four decades now.

You've dedicated your life to it.

What do you think about when you're working on it?

What is it that moves you in this work of art?

[Marena Translator] When you're working,

especially out on the excavation site

with the archeologists,

you feel like you're traveling back in time.

You've left the 21st century and gone back

to the 8th or the 7th century.

Or even earlier, depending on the period in which

the painting was created.

It really is extraordinary.

Your heart starts to beat as you uncover the painting

very delicately, centimeter by centimeter.

You can't wait to see what comes next.

What else will you find?

It's a very fascinating process,

revealing the painting and seeing

what was painted thousands of years ago.

(dramatic music)

[Alfred Translator] It can now be seen

in the mural that Marena is restoring.

What makes Samarkand the epicenter of the Silk Road

is the very visible influence of China.

Silk, paper, printing, porcelain, gunpowder.

The Chinese discovered all of these things

centuries before Europe did,

and these technical advances then passed through the hands

of the Sogdians of Samarkand.

A small paper mill continues to thrive

on the outskirts of the city

as a testimonial to this historical role.

In the year 751, an Arab army defeated the army

sent by the emperor of China

to conquer central Asia.

The Chinese prisoners of war were sent to Samarkand

as slaves, where they would reveal the secret

of making paper from the bark of the mulberry tree.

Samarkand would become the main supplier of paper

to the Arab world, and then to all of Europe

until the end of the Middle Ages.

(dramatic music)

This fiber is incredibly resistant.

I can't, I can't even.

Can I try?

So, I'm taking it, I put it here.

And then I pull?

Is that right?

To make paper, you need a lot of bark,

and even more water.

The technique is relatively simple.

First, the mulberry bark is left to soak in boiling water

in order to soften it.

Then a knife is used to remove the outer skin

from the long fibers underneath.

By mixing these fibers together again,

and pounding them for hours,

in this case with the mechanical pestles

operated by the water mill,

a fairly liquid paste is obtained,

which is then filtered, pressed, and dried,

to obtain these beautiful sheets of paper.

In the Middle Ages, Europe went crazy

for these sheets of paper from Samarkand.

They enabled writing to be distributed via a medium

other than parchment or tanned animal hides.

The intellectual revolution that Gutenberg would bring about

with his invention of the printing press in the 15th century

would not have been possible without

the prior introduction of paper.

In the travels of Marco Polo,

Marco Polo described Samarkand as a noble city

adorned with beautiful gardens

surrounded by a plain in which are produced

all the fruits that man can desire.

But how could so many gardens grow

on the edge of a desert?

The secret, in fact, lies in the glaciers and snow

from the Pamir Mountains in the Himalayas

that melt and provide water,

which is all the more abundant in summer.

Explains Uzman Kurimof, who is an agricultural manager.

There's a lot of talk about the fabulous gardens

owned by Tamerlane or Amir Timur.

Do we know where they were around Samarkand?

[Uzman Translator] We are, in fact, standing in

Amir Timur's gardens.

There were only big trees here in the past,

but today the younger generation has created

modern gardens and new technologies are being used.

[Alfred Translator] Were these pleasure gardens

filled with flowers or instead orchards that bore fruit?

[Uzman Translator] Amir Timur's gardens were

quite extraordinary.

There were all kinds of fruit trees grown here.

These gardens furnished all of the nutrients

that people needed.

Merchants who were tired after being on the road

and were looking for a place to rest

and regain their strength

would stop next to the gardens.

And so shelters were then set up near the gardens

because they provided an environment that was

cool and refreshing.

[Alfred Translator] And back in the days

of the Silk Road,

which fruit was exported from the area around Samarkand?

[Uzman Translator] There were no refrigerators back then,

so it was dried fruits that were exported.

Raisins, dried apricots, dried apples, dried melons,

and nuts were produced.

Everything was dried under our wonderful sun,

which allowed the natural properties of the fruits

to be preserved.

(dramatic music)

[Alfred Translator] As I leave Samarkand,

I feel like I'm crossing a milestone.

We have passed the halfway point in our journey,

and there are many little signs that tell us this.

This is the end of the world known to Western culture,

the world of the Mediterranean and of Persia.

I'll soon be entering a new world,

the realm of the Middle Kingdom.

(dramatic music)