chingizhobbes:

A statue of Amir Timur stands in front of the ostentatiously Soviet Hotel Uzbekistan in Central Tashkent, Uzbekistan. As the Central Asian newly independent states struggled to form national identities separate from their Soviet pasts, each of them adopted some kind of historical patron to be the father of their nation and strengthen their otherwise often a-historical borders and sovereignty (which is to say that pre-Soviet Central Asian “states” have little to do with the way modern Central Asia is divided up). In Uzbekistan, that man was Amir Timur, the great Turko-Mongol conqueror who bloodily created one of the largest empires in the history of the world.

Amir Timur has been used by Uzbek President Islom Karimov to form a sort of proxy cult of personality, embodying all that is great and noble about the Uzbek nation. That Timur was not an Uzbek at all is beside the point, of course, and the great amir’s face is endemic throughout the country these days.

Photo by Chingiz Hobbes