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Samarkand - Pearl of Central Asia

Some info about me, myself and I...

Now let me tell about myself, my name is Temur. I live in Uzbekistan and was born in Samarkand, however since my childhood I live in Tashkent .

I love making new friends and learning new languages. At the moment I can speak Russian, Spanish, English, Tajik, Uzbek and trying to learn, well at least trying to learn some German. I also love messing with HTML and website designing, so please visit the following websites, which may be of interest to you:
T-Moor's World of Ramblings (My personal blog)

GreyLib - Online Library: books in Uzbek, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French.

Khurshid Davron's World of Letters (Website I designed for a well-known Uzbek poet and writer-historian Khurshid Davron, where you may read his poems and novels in Uzbek, Russian and English)

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Gur Emir, Samarkand

Magic of Samarkand

Recently I visited Samarkand and took lots of pictures of all the ancient places of the city with my friend. Since, here you may not post too many pictures I uploaded all of them to my personal blog, so to see them you have to click on the following links:
Rukhabad and Gur Emir
Registan
Bibikhanim Mosque
Shohi Zinda, Khazrat Khizr Mosque and Prophet Daniel's tomb
Samarkand train station and etc
Also you may see some pictures, which were taken on the next day in Tashkent metro:
Tashkent
Please leave your comments on the blog, they would be very much appreciated. Enjoy the pictures and keep checking the blog for some more!!!

Eastern-Sogda Archaeological Expedition of the Science Academies of Ukraine and Uzbekistan found a new epigraphic monument – inscriptions in Sogdian language (Iranian language, close to Persian and Tajik) with the use of Armenian graphics (language close to today's Hebrew) - during the excavations of the early medieval Christian monastery in Urgut district of Samarkand region. The ancient engravings like these are a unique discovery. There are only a few of them in the world. Now their number has increased by around twenty.

Two years ago, local residents were building a road in Urgut mountains and a bulldozer hit the side of a hill. The cut opened up the finding that required the involvement of archaeologists.

The monastery was built in the late 9th century and existed approximately until the 13th century. A Zoroastrian temple Jar-Tepe and a temple of a pagan deity Aspan who could be the protectress of Urgut were located nearby.

In the mountain cave, near the monastery engravings in Sogdian and Syrian languages were found. One inscription used Chinese hieroglyphs, and scientists suggest that it could be written by some palmer from Sinjan. The world knows only one such monument discovered in 1922. These are "visitors'" notes, such as such and such (a Syrian name with the title of an ecclesiastic was here, as well as sentences like "good weather" or "it's snowing".

The monastery has survived intact. It appears that the structure has suffered neither fires nor attacks. The monument is in ideal shape: if it is dug out and restored, it will be good to stay in. The monastery is located at the top of the hill, on the mountain terrace with the area of 25 by 100 meters. A river runs by the two sides of the hill. The monks dug a tunnel 150 meters long and took water directly from the river through ceramic water pipe to the monastery wells 13-15 meters deep. The walls of the monastery are built with double brickwork from adobe bricks. The walls are four meters high. This monumental structure was a good protection against mudflows and landslides. All the common futures of monastery architecture that has its roots in Mesopotamia and Syria are evident. The most interesting is the fact that the structure is built from the adobe brick, although originally such structures were made of stone.

Scientists think that from the very beginning the ancient structure was being built according to a general plan: it has many subtle architectural details, the floor is covered with thin ceramic tiles of high quality and a layer of alabaster, the walls have fragments of paintings.

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Around the World

How I wish I could go around the world

How I wish I could see the world, visit all the distant countries, meet new people. Well, If I only could, I would start my journey from Latin America, because I have El Corazon Latino, I'd go to every country of this magic continent. I'd go to Argentina and meet my friends over there, then to Panama, Guatemala and even Colombia.
After finishing off with Latin America, I'd go to Europe, then to Asia, and then would see the rest of the world. How I wish to do this... To escape this concrete jungle and go to a real jungle, how I wish to do so...