Samarkand was the place of a rebellion against Mongols in 1365.
In 1370 the empire of Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane, expanded from India to Turkey, and the emperor determined to make Samarkand its capital. For the following thirty-five years he constructed a new urban center and settled it with craftsmen and artisans from all the regions he had taken over. Tamerlane earned a reputation as a supporter of arts, and Samarkand turned into a center of the Transoxiana region. At that time the population of Samarkand was around 150,000.
The Samarkand Observatory was built here by the outstanding scholar Ulugh Beg between 1424 and 1429. It had a sextant of 11 meters. Once it reached the top of the three-storey building around it, however it was mostly situated underground for security against earthquakes. Considering its dimensions, it was the largest ninety degree quadrant in the world at that epoch. In 1449 the facility was destroyed by religious zealots.
