In the summer of 1404, Timur inspected the nearly finished Bibi-Khanym Mosque and didn’t like the entrance. It wasn’t grand enough, so he ordered it torn down and rebuilt. He died the following February, with the work still unfinished.

He had wanted the finest mosque in the Muslim world, with a dome almost 50 metres high and space for Samarkand’s entire male population at Friday prayers. Earthquakes and neglect did the rest. By the 1800s it was a ruin, and some of its bricks went into the city’s bazaar. Even the name is a puzzle, since there’s no medieval evidence that Timur’s wife, Bibi-Khanum, had a hand in building it.

Two VoiceMap tours stop in the courtyard. One retells the legend of the architect who stole a kiss and flew to Mecca. The other examines the double-shelled dome, the marble Qur’an stand and the mausoleum across the way, where the identity of the woman buried inside is still disputed.