The Sogdian town of Kesh when Chinese Buddhist traveler Xuan Zang passed through in the early seventh century. The inner town was surrounded by high walls and deep moat, crossed by drawbridge. The (Tamerlane), family cemetery was enlarged and, towering on a scale all its own, Tamerlane.s White Palace took shape. Though Tamerlane's dynasty would crumble like the buildings he commissioned, Kesh took from its golden age a new appellation, Shakhrisabz, Green Town, after the spring vendure of its many gardens.
Though Tamerlane built lavish mausoleums for his relatives,in Shakhrisabz he made himself but a simple crypt and, with his last breaths, requested: only a stone, and my name upon it.. Instead he lies beneath Samarkand.s sumptuous Gur Emir and giant slab of jade. His wish for simplicity is fulfilled only at his birthplace, Khodja Ilgar village, 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of Shakhrisabz, where a small brick kern quietly marks the entrance of the Terror of the World.
