Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Observatory in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, built in the 1420s
On Kohak hill, about two kilometres north-east of central Samarkand, Ulugh Beg, Timur's grandson and ruler of the city, built between 1424 and 1428 one of the greatest observatories of its time, the last of the major medieval Islamic observatories. Leading scientists worked here with him, among them Jamshid al-Kashi, Qazi Zada Rumi and Ali Qushji. The observatory was a three-storey cylinder about 46 metres across and 30 metres high, built around the Fakhri sextant, a huge marble arc with a radius of about 36 metres, unmatched in precision before the telescope. With it Ulugh Beg compiled his famous star catalogue of more than a thousand stars and measured the tilt of the Earth's axis and the length of the sidereal year with accuracy close to modern values. After Ulugh Beg was killed in 1449 the observatory was demolished and forgotten, until the archaeologist Vasily Vyatkin uncovered the lower part of the rock-cut arc in 1908, which you see today in a covered trench, beside a small museum on Ulugh Beg and the astronomy of his age.
Allow an hour for the arc and the museum. It is on a hill outside the centre, so take a taxi and combine it with the Tomb of Daniel and the Afrasiab Museum nearby. Children interested in science enjoy it, and the hill has a view over the city.
Hours and prices change — check before you go. Source: en.wikipedia.org
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