TRAVEL SPECIAL: Tamerlane

In the 14th century, Timur the Lame led a nomad army against the whole settled world. He plundered from the Ganges to the Dardanelles, but the heartland of his empire lay between two great rivers north of Afghanistan, the Amu Dar’ya and Syr Dar’ya. Today both rivers sink into the sands of what is now the Republic of Uzbekistan. Many ancient cities lie beneath those sands, among them the city of Benaket.

I was in Uzbekistan this summer exploring the life of another great conqueror, Babur, and decided to try to find Benaket. It has an interesting history: as a 13-year-old, Babur came to meet the hostile Mongol Khan, a descendant of Genghis, in a garden outside Benaket’s city walls, and made the Khan his ally.

I consulted guidebooks and several historians, but at first it seemed as if the soft bricks of the city had simply melted away. All I discovered was that Benaket had another name, Shahrukhiya, after Timur the Lame’s son Shah’rukh.