The multi-talented Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg built his Observatory in Samarkand between 1424 and 1429 and many scholars believe it to have been one of the finest observatories in the Islamic world at the time and the largest in Central Asia.  The Observatory was destroyed in 1449 and not rediscovered until 1908.  What remains of his construction forms a part of the modern Ulugh Beg Observatory Museum built in 1970 which we visited on Friday afternoon.  We were told that the Museum has copies only of Ulugh Beg's Star Charts because the original drawings were stolen by the British and are kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

So prodigious were his talents that he also had eleven wives!

The art of paper making was originally brought to Samarkand along the Silk Road from China in the 7th century.  However, with the help of UNESCO Samarkand has re-created the ancient process at a specially built paper mill with a working water-wheel on the banks of the river Siab in a village ten km from the centre of the city.  When we visited the site we followed the whole process with interest, and some of our number bought a little of the output!

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