Samarkand



Samarkand or Samarqand (Uzbek and Tajik: Самарқанд; Persian: سمرقند) is a city in south-eastern Uzbekistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia.

Quotes

 * Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight, And bid these arms thy neck infold; That rosy cheek, that lily hand, Would give thy poet more delight Than all Bocara’s vaunted gold, Than all the gems of Samarcand.
 * Sir William Jones, "A Persian Song of Hafiz"
 * A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771)
 * Poems, consisting chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (1772)


 * The almond groves of Samarcand, Bokhara, where red lilies blow, And Oxus, by whose yellow sand  The grave white-turbaned merchants go;
 * Oscar Wilde, "Ave Imperatrix"


 * ‘There’s a far-off scent about you seems Born in Samarkand.’
 * Rachel Taylor, "The Princess of Scotland"


 * White on a throne or guarded in a cave There lies a prophet who can understand Why men were born: but surely we are brave,  Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
 * James Elroy Flecker, Hassan of Bagdad (1922), Act 5, Scene 2
 * The last line is sometimes rendered "Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand."


 * To learn the age-old lesson day by day: It is not in the bright arrival planned, But in the dreams men dream along the way, They find the Golden Road to Samarkand.
 * George Macdonald Fraser, Flashman at the Charge (1973)