January 11, 2024
By Heidi Fuller Love, Features Correspondent
silk road samarkand
(Credit: Silk Road Samarkand)
Samarkand was a major center of Silk Road trade for over 2,500 years. Now, the Uzbek city has a large new tourist complex that hopes to reflect its former glory.
With a muffled sound, wind-blown rain shimmers on the ancient cobblestones, making them shine like chickpeas in oil on Uzbekistan’s national rice dish, plov. Timurid tilework in bright turquoise, royal blue, and honey yellow gleams above the Kufic-covered gate, or pishtak, in the flickering light of distant streetlamps.
“Shah-i-Zinda is Samarkand’s holiest place,” our guide, Katia, whispers as we walk through the high-walled alleys of this vast cemetery dedicated to Qasim bin Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, who brought Islam to the region in the 7th century.
A jewel of the Silk Road and a melting pot of cultures and religions, Samarkand’s bustling bazaars and magnificent monuments have inspired countless poets, including James Elroy Flecker, who wrote about rose candy, mastics, oils and spices in his epic poem, The Golden Road to Samarkand.
From our own correspondent
This story has been compiled from recent episodes of the podcast From Our Own Correspondent, which provides insight, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers from around the world.
Twenty minutes from Samarkand’s gleaming new airport, along a paved boulevard that makes a cruel mockery of the country’s broken and potholed road network, the brand new Silk Road Samarkand Resort is the home of Amir Timur (born in modern-day Uzbekistan and head of the central city of Uzbekistan). (who founded the company). (such as the vast Timurid Empire in Asia). Eight skyscraper-style luxury hotels and wellness centers are clustered around wide canals that were used to train rowing champions during the Soviet era.
Linked by bike paths and planted with thousands of small saplings, the site is still virgin and new. Through the gaps in the trees you can see the shoddy prefabricated buildings that housed 15,000 workers during the two and a half years it took to build. The complex is the largest of its kind in Central Asia, and cost about US$580 million to build, with investments from local oil and real estate oligarch Bakhtiyor Fazilov and a Chinese hotel group.
Marina Pisarova/Alamy
Samarkand’s new Eternal City aims to recreate the city’s ancient roots (Credit: Marina Pissarova/Alamy)
“We built it here because there is no space to develop a project of this size in Samarkand’s historical center,” said general manager Roland Obermeyer.
The so-called “Eternal City” is at the heart of this modern complex, which aims to “nurturing local culture”. A beautiful (if somewhat sanitary) recreation of ancient Samarkand, it houses a dome, a mosque, a restaurant serving somsa (salty pastries) and shashlik (meat kebabs), and some of the country’s top artisans. There are bazaar-style shops showcasing traditional crafts.
“Like Amir Timur, who made Samarkand a cultural center, the Eternal City aims to preserve Uzbekistan’s art and ancient traditions,” says the sixth generation, whose works are housed in the British Museum. Ceramist Abdulla Narzulayev explained.
When the current president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, was re-elected in 2021, he said he would create a new Uzbekistan with judicial reform, economic liberalization, and new policies of transparency and tolerance. Some issues have been resolved. Slave labor, which once forced millions of Uzbeks (including children) into the fields to pick cotton, was finally banned in March 2022. However, human rights concerns persist in other areas, and local shopkeepers fear this will deter tourists from visiting.
Photo by Robert Preston/Alamy
Uzbekistan has one of the fastest growing populations in the world (Credit: Robert Preston Photography/Alamy)
Uzbekistan has one of the world’s fastest growing populations, and is also one of the youngest, meaning unemployment is a problem. More than 11 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the average monthly salary is just $300, and nearly two million Uzbeks work abroad, mostly in Russia, but some return home.
A front office manager from Tashkent who returned to Uzbekistan to take a job with Silk Road Samarkand said: “Now it is possible to find a job, whereas before it was not possible, so people like me who came back from abroad “There are a lot of people who come here,” says the soft-spoken front office manager from Tashkent. he said to me. This new complex has so far created more than 2,000 jobs.
As the sun sets over a scarlet pond that stretches beyond the jagged molars of the Hissar Mountains, ceramist Narzulayev guides the last visitors through his shop.
“We are creating again and living again. This is our hope after so many years of despair,” he told me, smiling broadly. “And at the end of the day, as Confucius once said, it doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you don’t stop.”
