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Khorassan and Central Asia
69
ceedings with inquisitive interest. Mr. Curzon has declared that the Reghistan of Samarcand was originally, and is still even in its ruins, the noblest public square in the world.
'There is nothing,' he says, 'in the East approaching it in massive simplicity and grandeur, and nothing in Europe, save, perhaps, on a humbler scale, the Piazza di San Marco, at Venice, which can even aspire to enter the competition. No European spectacle,indeed, can adequately be compared with it in our inability to point to an open space in any western city that is commanded on three of its four sides by Gothic cathedrals of the finest order. For it is clear that the Medresseh of Central Asian Mahometanism is both in its architectural scope and design a lineal counterpart of the minster of the West. Instead of the intricate sculpture and tracery crowning the pointed archways of the Gothic front, we see the enamelled tiles of Persia framing a portal of stupendous magnitude. For the flanking minster, towers, or spires, are substituted two soaring minarets. The central lantern of the West is anticipated by the Saracenic dome, and in lieu of artificial colour thrown through tinted panes, from the open heavens shine down the azure of the Eastern sky and the glory of the Eastern sun. What Samarcand must have been in its prime, when those great fabrics
