Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/84

 emerged from the mason's hands, intact and glittering with all the effulgence of the rainbow, their chambers crowded with students, their sanctuaries thronged by pilgrims, and their corporations endowed by kings, the imagination can still make some endeavour to depict'

The other sights of Samarcand which we visited during our stay of one week in that place can only be briefly mentioned. The mosque of Bibi Khanoum, the Chinese consort of the great Timour, is rapidly falling into complete decay. Here is to be seen the great marble lectern, on which formerly reposed the gigantic copy of the Koran, said to be eight hundred years old, which was carried off by the Russians after the storming of Samarcand, and deposited in the great public library of St. Petersburg. A smaller, and far less ancient Koran, is carefull preserved in the cluster of the mosques and chapels forming the mausoleum of Shah Zindeh, which, too, is so rapidly decaying that in a few more years, unless some archæological society comes to the rescue, little will remain of any of these glorious monuments of ancient Samarcand, 'with their turquoise and sapphire, and