Historic Sights of Tashkent

The Bibi Khanum Madrassah

The Bibi Khanum Mosque, built in Samarkand between 1399 and 1404, commemorates Timur's wife. She was buried in a tomb located in a madrasa complex just across the main road which leads from the old city of Afrasiab to the center of the Timurid city at the Registan. (The tomb is currently being restored.) A contemporary chronicler relates that Timur brought in architects from Iran and India for the project (he had sacked Delhi in 1398) and used ninety-five elephants to haul construction material. One of the models for the building likely was the great mosque erected in Sultaniyya by the Ilkhanid (Mongol) ruler Uljaytu. As Blair and Bloom suggest, "Timur's mosque was designed not only to continue Iranian imperial tradition, but also to symbolize his conquest of the world."
Clavijo wrote in some detail about the final stages of what apparently was the construction of the Bibi Khanum (even though he identifies the dedicatee differently). Here we have one of several tales about Timur's personal involvement in his projects and his apparent impatience with architects who seem to have lacked his grandiose aspirations regarding his buildings' chief faзades.
The Mosque which Timur had caused to be built in memory of the mother of his wife the Great Khanum seemed to us the noblest of all those we visited in the city of Samarqand, but no sooner had it been completed than he began to find fault with its entrace gateway, which he now said was much too low and must forthwith be pulled down. Then the workmen began to dig pits to lay the new foundations, when in order that the piers might be rapidly rebuilt his Higness gave out that he imself would take charge to direct the labor for the one pier of the new gateway while he laid it on two of the lords of his court, his special favorites, to see to the foundations on the other part. Thus all should see whether it was he or those other two lords who first might bring this business to its proper conclusion. Now at this season Timur was already weak in health, he could no longer stand for long on his feet, or mount his horse, having always to be carried in a litter.