Jade dragon cup

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The history of humanity as told through one hundred objects from the British Museum in London is this week exploring powerful empires around the world in the 14th and 15th centuries. Today he is with a handsome jade cup that once belonged to one of the great leaders of the Timurid Empire - the great power that stretched across Central Asia, from Iran to parts of India. The owner of the cup was Ulugh Beg, the man who built the great observatory in his capital Samakand and who - like Galileo and Copernicus - has a crater on the moon named after him. Neil tells the story of the Timurids and charts the influences that spread along the Silk Road at this time. The Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov and the historian Beatrice Forbes Manz describe the Timurid world and the extraordinary character of Ulugh Beg. Producer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:09.0	On a clear night, if you look long enough, you can see that the surface of the moon is dimpled with craters.
0:18.0	They add interest, texture. But their names provide another kind of pleasure. They form a kind of dictionary of great
0:25.4	astronomers. There are craters called Haley, Galileo and Copernicus. But among them
0:31.4	there's an astronomer whose name I certainly didn't recognize.
0:35.0	He lived in Central Asia at the start of the 15th century and his name was Ululog Beg.
0:45.0	Ulog Beg.
0:48.0	Ulog Beg built a great observatory in Samakand in modern Uzbekistan and compiled a famous
0:56.7	catalogue of just under a thousand stars.
1:00.4	He was also, briefly, the ruler of one of the world's great powers, the Timurid Empire
1:06.8	that at its height ruled not only Central Asia, but Iran and Afghanistan as well as parts of Iraq, Pakistan and India.
1:15.4	The Timurid Empire had been founded by the redoubtable Tamalane in the years around
1:20.0	1400.
1:21.9	Ulug Beg, the astronomer prince, was Tamulane's grandson. He had a cup made of jade with
1:28.6	his name incised on it. I have it with me now. It's the subject of this program.
1:34.0	I think that cup, the idea of which comes from China but which was made in
1:40.1	Central Asia and which has landed up in the West really does
1:44.0	symbolize a good deal about where the Timorid stand in the history of the
1:48.8	Middle East and of the world. A history of the world in a hundred objects. Jade Dragon Cup
2:08.0	Cup, probably from Samakand, Uzbekistan, made around 1430.
2:17.0	In this week's programs we've been looking at the great empires that dominated the world
2:26.3	five to six hundred years ago Ottoman Turkey Ming China and the Inca in South America. In this program...
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