Registan

The Registan is the central square of Samarkand, framed on three sides by three great madrasas, colleges of religious learning. The name means “sandy place” in Persian, and the square was a marketplace and public gathering ground long before the madrasas rose around it. Samarkand was inscribed by UNESCO in 2001 as a crossroads of cultures.

The oldest of the three, on the western side, is the madrasa of Ulugh Beg, built between 1417 and 1420 by the Timurid prince and astronomer who governed the city; mathematics and astronomy were among the subjects taught there. Two centuries later, under Yalangtush Bahadur, governor of Samarkand for the Ashtarkhanid khans of Bukhara, the square was completed with two more: the Sher-Dor madrasa, built from 1619 to 1636 opposite Ulugh Beg's, and the Tilya-Kori, built from 1646 to 1660 between them, which also served as the city's main mosque.

Each building presents a towering pishtaq, a monumental portal framing a deep arch, flanked by minarets and covered in tilework. On the Sher-Dor, the portal shows two striped feline beasts chasing white deer beneath rising suns with human faces, a bold figurative image for a religious building. Inside the Tilya-Kori, the name of which means “gilded”, the prayer hall glows with gold leaf. In the evenings the square is often lit, and the three facades face one another like a stage set.