Bibi Khanym Mosque stands northeast of the famous Samarkand Registan and was completed just before Timur’s death for the purpose of being the jewel of his empire. Two of the three structures that originally formed the ensemble for Tarmelane‘s Chinese wife Bibi Khanym, are still standing as a third large madrassa was destroyed by Nadir Shah’s Persian troops when they invaded Samarkand in 1740. Nevertheless, Bibi Khanym Mosque is one of Samarkand’s most remarkable sites, but also one of the most mysterious due to the heavy reconstruction as the structures that can be seen now are an almost total rebuild from the 1970s.

Once Bibi Khanym was one of the Islamic world’s largest mosques with the cupola of the main mosque 41 m high and the pishtak 38 m high. During its time, it pushed the construction techniques to their limit with the most trustworthy slave-artisans in the region working for it to achieve the emperor’s plan. It tells something about the ambition of the project as for example 95 elephants were shipped from India to be used to move the heavy wagons laden with marble for the decoration of the buildings.