To add some geographical context for those readers who may be unfamiliar with the city, Samarkand is located in the Zerafshan River basin in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet Republic. The country is bordered to the north by Kazakhstan, with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, Turkmenistan lies to the west and troubled Afghanistan to the south.
The Golden Road to Samarkand
It’s a city, immortalised by the poetic words of James Elroy Flecker in The Golden Road to Samarkand, which grew from humble origins in the 7th century B.C.E. into the cultural melting pot that stands today.
In a long and often bloody history, life in Samarkand was punctuated with ‘visits’ from Alexander the Great and Chingiz Khan (Genghis Khan) to name only two.
