Great Statesman Amir Timur's Mausoleum

In the mornign we reached the Gur-i-Amir (meaning Lord’s Tomb, the Mausoleum of Amir Timur). Of the sights that we visited in Samarkand, Gur-i-Amir was perhaps more “down to earth” in its appearance as compared to others. Being the resting place for many royal members of the Timurid dynasty, however, the Gur-I-Amir’s interior was the grandest of all that I have seen in the places I visited this time in Uzbekistan.



Perhaps the key learning about Amir Timur at his mausoleum is the fact that this was in fact not the place of his own choice in terms of a burial. He had wanted to be buried in his hometown, Shakhirsabz, and in a single tomb. The Gur-I-Amir was actually built for his grandson in 1404. Muhammad Sultan, who Amir Timur had named as the successor, died preceding Amir Timur’s own death.

When Amir Timur died in 1405, his remains could not be carried to the mausoleum in Shakhirsabz due to snow. Therefore he had to be buried in Gur-I-Amir. Thereafter, the Gur-I-Amir became the site for dynastic burial. A few of the Timurid royalties, including Amir Timur’s sons Shah Rukh and Miran Shah, and his other well-known grandson, Ulug Bek, lied in rest here.

Amir Timur’s learned grandson Ulug Bek, who was a well-reputed astronomer, saw through the completion of Gur-I-Amir. He acquired a large plaque of jade from Mongolia. This piece of jade was rumored to be the largest one-piece jade in the world. This jade slab contains an inscription in Arabic, “When I Rise, the World Will Tremble.” It covered Amir Timur’s coffin. The words felt like a mighty curse and history might have proven it so as well. According to Sophie Ibbotson, a Persian invader Nadir Shah took the jade slab to Persia in 1740. Thereafter all kinds of misfortunes befell him and his son, so severely that his advisors demanded that he return the jade slab to Uzbekistan. On June 22, 1941, a team of Russian scientists exhumed Amir Timur’s remains for scientific inquiry. Within hours, the Nazis came into Soviet Union territory.

No matter how unbelievable these stories sound, Amir Timur possessing a strong postmortem spell of the spirit is perhaps not so surprising, given the strong will that enabled him to stare down the whole world with mounted archery.




#mausoleum #samarkand #uzbekistan #uzbekhistory #centralasia #guriamir #amirtimur #ulugbeg



#travel#museums

Post by Helen Yu (Chestnut Journal) | Mar 31, 2025