Биби Ханум

The Bibi-Khanym Mosque is a historic congregational mosque in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, standing to the east of the Registan square. It is counted among the city's best-known landmarks and is nicknamed the "Jewel of Samarkand". The mosque takes its name from the wife of Timur, who commissioned it, and it is regarded as a masterpiece of Timurid architecture. In the fifteenth century it was among the largest and most splendid mosques of the Islamic world. Today it is protected as an object of tangible cultural heritage of Uzbekistan.

The mosque was commissioned by Timur and is dated in our records to 1404. Remarkable for its scale and magnificence in the fifteenth century, it had been reduced to a vast ruin by the middle of the twentieth century. During the Soviet period large parts of the building were restored and reconstructed.