Ulugbek Madrasa - Early XX Century
Madrasa of the East is an educational institution. In the middle ages it was both – a general education school and a university. Ugulbek Madrasa was one of the best clerical universities of the Muslim East of the XV century. As stories say, a famous poet, scholar and philosopher Abdurahman Jami studied in the madrasa. A constellation of well-known scientists – Salah-ad-din Musa Kazy-zade Rumi, Gias-ad-din Jamshid al-Kashi, and maulana Ali Kushchi – used to deliver their lectures here on mathematics, geometry, logics, natural sciences, teachings on person, the world soul and theology. Ulugbek himself taught at the madrasa. As a rector the ruler and scholar chose a simple but very educated man – maulan Muhammed Hawfi. On the day of the madrasa opening Hawfi read a lecture in presence of 90 scholars, but nobody could understand it, except for Ulugbek and Kaza-zade Rumi, who was his teacher.Ugulbek Madrasa was seriously damaged by time, earthquakes and conflicts, especially in the years of strife in the early XVIII century. The outer domes, two minarets and most of the dwelling premises were destroyed.
In 1918 booksellers and bookbinders, who had shops near the building’s side facade, were the first to notice that the northeastern minaret (on the front photos it’s on the right) started moving. Each day it tilted more and more outwards, separating from the building’s main body. It was apparent that left to itself the minaret would soon reach a critical angle and fall down. Alarmed by the fact that the it could fall right on their shops they decided to inform V.L. Vyatkin – a representative of the Samarkand Commission of Turkomstaris (Committee for the Affairs of Museums and Preservation of Monuments of the Past, Arts and Nature of the Turkestan ASSR), who was the warden of Samarkand’s historical monuments.
To save the minaret and to restore Samarkand’s historical monuments a special commission called “Samkomstaris” was organized in May 1920 within the Turkomstaris for preserving historic and artistic monuments. 
It comprised three sections: technical and construction, art and archeological. As a stopgap measure the minaret was belted by a wooden corset, and the tilted trunk was tackled by 24 steel cables weighing 36 tons, which were held by wooden anchors dug into the ground to the northeast of the modern wooden podium for performances. As a result, the minaret stopped tilting at 1.8 meters from its normal position.Saving the monument was of extreme importance. M.E. Masson writes the following about it: “the commissioners knew very well that the famous Ugulbek Madrasa is a monument of great scientific and artistic importance and without a corner minaret its main facade would be unacceptably disfigured,” as in 1870 one of the madrasa’s four minarets fell down, and was later followed by the second one.