Regret that you never saw Samarkand--Uzbekistan

Written in one of my poems, that line didn't anticipate that I would
> one day be in Tashkent wishing I had planned to go to samarkand. It
> recently celebrated its 2,752 birthday, was a major stop on the silk
> road and contains many of the ancient treasures, at least those not
> destroyed by the Arabs, mongols, Persians, Chinese Russians, whomever.
> The Uzbecks are a warm, friendly open people, there are over 150
> nationalities or tribes in the country, which fact is reflected in the
> faces on the street. It was part of the Assyrian Empire, then
> conquered by Alexander the Great. He fell in love with and married
> Roxanne, a woman from Samarkand. Could I have been so fortunate had I
> gone there? He also suffered one of his few defeats in the area of
> Xorazm. He had laid seibe to the fortress for almost six months but
> could not break thru the walls or gate. When the besieged realized
> they could not hold out much longer they slipped in the night thru a
> tunnel previously built into the hills beyond. When Alexander attacked
> the next morning he breached the open gate and found only goats. The
> country was invaded by the Arab Caliphate in the 8th century and has
> since been muslim. They have always refused (twice recently even
> though offered millions of dollars) to adopt the Iranian model of
> statehood--religious power over the state. After the dissolution of
> the ussr in 1991 they formed a democracy. Their form of Islam has some
> elements of Zoroastrianism. I saw a beautiful mosque from the 10th
> century, one of the few of that age not destroyed by Mongols. And it
> was a privilege to see the oldest copy of the Koran extant, written in
> 646. It was lost to the Persians but recovered by the great Emperor
> Tamerlane. The Russians took it to the Hermitage but they did return
> it after making 50 copies. An interesting aside. Stalin was so
> impressed by Tamerlane's military prowess-28 successful campaigns
> without a losing one- that he had Tamerlane's body disinterred and
> brought to Russia for his scientists to study. He was warned that he
> would have no military victories during this base act. He finally
> relented and the body was returned and reburied. Soon after that the
> Russians were victorius in lifting the seige at Leningrad.
> Pithancropus were here 1.5 million years ago and the Neanderthal.
> Fully human man was here 50,000 years ago, earlier than previously
> thought. Cities began around 3,000 b.c.e. A great quote of Tamerlane "
> the power is in justice." FYI It was a fifth generation descendant of
> Tamerlane who built the Taj Mahal. Tamerlane's empire had extended
> into northern India. Russia, in the person of Alexyev, Peter the
> Great's grandson, conquered Uzbekistan in 1865 and it was Russian
> until 1991.Important to point out that in Azerbijan, Kazakhstan and
> Uzbekistan, it is a type of Muslim country where religion is totally
> separate from religion, where all religions and ethnicity are
> accepted. f.y.i. The taliban came from Iran.