The madrasa portal
Blue tile.
User:GMM — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Bobyrr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bobyrr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bobyrr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bobyrr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bobyrr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bobyrr — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0
A religious complex in south Samarkand with a mosque, a madrasa and the tomb of Khwaja Ahrar (1404-1490), Nasir al-Din Ubaydullah, a Naqshbandi Sufi master and a leading statesman of Samarkand in the troubled years after the Timurids. He had great influence over Sultan Abu Sa'id, grandfather of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire in India. The site held a khanqah founded by Khwaja Ahrar, who was buried behind it, and his grave became a place of pilgrimage. In 1630 Nadir Divan-Begi, vizier of the ruler Imam Quli Khan, ordered a mosque and madrasa built beside the grave, with winter and summer mosques in a single building; the complex was finished in 1635-1636. The Samarkand Quran, attributed by tradition to the Caliph Uthman ibn Affan, was kept in this madrasa until the Russian army took it to the Imperial Library in Saint Petersburg after capturing Samarkand in 1868; today it is in the Center for Islamic Civilization in Tashkent. Abandoned in Soviet times, the complex was fully restored in the early 21st century. It is a shrine and mosque, so dress modestly, and ask at the entrance about any fee.
Blue tile.
Wooden columns.
From here to Tashkent.
Ulugbek district, south Samarkand
The Samarkand Quran was kept in its madrasa until the Russian army took it after 1868; today it is in the Center for Islamic Civilization in Tashkent.