Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.
On a clear night, if you look long enough,
you can see that the surface of the moon is dimpled with craters.
They add interest, texture, but their names provide another kind of pleasure.
They form a kind of dictionary of great astronomers.
There are craters called Halley, Galileo, and Copernicus.
But among them, there's an astronomer whose name I certainly didn't recognize.
He lived in Central Asia at the start of the 15th century, and his name was Ulugh Beg.
Ulugh Beg built a great observatory in Samarkand, in modern Uzbekistan,
and compiled a famous catalog of just under a thousand stars.
He was also, briefly, the ruler of one of the world's great powers:
the Timurid Empire, that at its height ruled not only Central Asia,
but Iran and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Iraq, Pakistan, and India.
The Timurid Empire had been founded by the redoubtable Tamerlane, in the years around 1400.
Ulugh Beg, the astronomer prince, was Tamerlane's grandson.
He had a cup made of jade, with his name incised on it.
I have it with me now.
It's the subject of this program.
I think that cup, the idea of which comes from China,
but which was made in Central Asia and which has landed up in the West,