Gur-Emir: the tomb of Timur

In 1403 Timur’s favourite grandson and chosen heir, Muhammad Sultan, died of wounds after a campaign in Anatolia. Timur ordered a mausoleum for him beside the madrasah and khanaka that Muhammad Sultan had built in Samarkand. When Timur himself died in February 1405 at Otrar, on his way to invade China, his body was brought back and buried here rather than in the tomb he had prepared in his home town of Shakhrisabz.

His grandson Ulugbek completed the complex, adding a gallery and an entrance portal, and made it the family tomb of the Timurid dynasty. Later generations neglected it, but it was never destroyed, and extensive restoration in the 20th and early 21st centuries returned the dome and the interior to their former splendour.

The main hall contains decorative cenotaphs; the actual graves lie directly below in a crypt. The tombs include:

• Timur (died 1405), under a slab of dark green nephrite (jade), the largest piece of its kind known at the time. Ulugbek is said to have brought the stone from Mongolia in 1425. It is now broken in two.
• Mir Said Baraka, Timur’s spiritual teacher, beside whom Timur asked to be buried.
• Muhammad Sultan, for whom the building was begun.
• Shahrukh and Miranshah, Timur’s sons.
• Ulugbek, Timur’s grandson, the astronomer-ruler of Samarkand.

A tall pole with a horsetail standard in the hall recalls the Turkic tradition of marking the grave of a warrior.

The building is a single octagonal chamber crowned by a high drum and a ribbed dome covered with turquoise and blue tiles, a form that influenced later Islamic architecture as far away as India. Inscriptions in large Kufic letters run around the drum.

Inside, the lower walls are lined with onyx panels and the upper walls and dome are covered with painted and gilded papier-mâché relief in the kundal technique. The gold and blue decoration was restored in the 1990s and 2000s. Light from latticed windows falls on the cenotaphs, creating a solemn atmosphere.

In June 1941 a Soviet team led by the anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov opened Timur’s tomb to study the remains. They confirmed that Timur had been lame, with injuries to his right leg and arm, matching his name Timur-i lang (“Timur the Lame”). A popular legend says an inscription warned that whoever disturbed the tomb would unleash war; two days after the opening, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The remains were reburied with Islamic rites in late 1942. The story is often told by guides; it is a legend, but the dates are real.

Gur-Emir is about 10 minutes’ walk south-west of the Registan. A ticket is required. The mausoleum is beautiful by day, when you can see the details of the interior, and magical in the evening, when the dome is illuminated. Visitors should dress modestly, and silence is expected inside. The small Ak-Saray and Rukhabad mausoleums are a few minutes’ walk away.

Gur-Emir was originally part of a larger ensemble. Muhammad Sultan’s madrasah and khanaka stood around a shared courtyard in front of the mausoleum; today only the foundations and part of the entrance portal survive, but the layout of the courtyard can still be traced. A garden surrounds the complex, and the modern statue of Timur in the city centre is a short walk away.

The architecture of Gur-Emir had a long influence. Its tall drum and ribbed dome were copied in Timurid buildings across Central Asia and Iran, and historians see an echo of its design in the great Mughal tombs of India, built by Timur’s descendant Babur and his successors, including Humayun’s tomb in Delhi and, ultimately, the Taj Mahal. Standing beneath the dome, you are looking at one of the ancestors of some of the most famous buildings in the world.

Rukhabad is two minutes away on foot and Ak-Saray five minutes behind the mausoleum. The Registan is a ten-minute walk along the pedestrian path, and the statue of Timur stands nearby on Amir Timur Street.