Newsletter
A letter from the HD editors
Once a week, we send the best stories, events, and cultural discoveries from Central Asia.
Samarkand had its own Leaning Tower. Had, because two engineers defeated gravity - here is their storyMore than a century ago, the towers of the Ulugbek Madrasah (it's on the left if you're facing Registan), which Alisher Navoi could have attended and where the grandson of Amir Temur himself taught, began to move and dangerously overhung the main square of Samarkand. The dynastic 'games of thrones,' earthquakes, and decline of the Silk Road cities that occurred over the past five centuries did not spare the most famous university of the medieval East. We tell the story of how the creation of Timurid architects was saved by an unlikely duo: an exiled Moscow nobleman and a world-renowned architect.Svyatoslav Morskoy#Origins#Heritage & Identity