ABSTRACT
The Bibi-Khanum was the name of one of Ameer-Timur's sisters, to whom the great monarch was deeply attached. She died before reaching an advanced age, and Timur's grief at her loss was boundless. He buried her in Samarcand, and beside her mausoleum he decided to build another monument to her memory, which should be a thing of both moral and physical beauty for ever. In the very centre of the bazaars he erected the madrasa which bears her name. The lonely splendour of Bibi-Khanum's madrasa is still far more striking by night than by day. Nights in Central Asia are, as a rule, different from that elsewhere, owing to the extreme dryness and clearness of the air. Bibi-Khanum's school appears too many eyes as but a pitiful wreck, and not even a very important wreck, perhaps, now that imagination and memory have to do so much to reconstruct the image of the past from out of the present dilapidation.
