4 ideas
In autumn 1404, Clavijo's embassy from Henry III of Castile reached Samarkand after a journey of more than a year via Constantinople, Trebizond and Persia. At his audience Timur had the Spanish envoys moved to a seat above the ambassador of the Ming emperor, calling the Chinese ruler a thief and an enemy. Within months Timur set out to invade China and died on the march in early 1405, so the seating was a public statement of that coming war.
Timur's roads had post stations at regular day-stages, each keeping fresh horses so that envoys and couriers could ride through without resting their mounts. Anyone travelling on the ruler's business could requisition horses from any subject along the route, and refusal was punished severely. Speed of command across a vast territory depended on this standing claim on local resources.
Clavijo reports that Samarkand's industries were stocked by force: weavers, glassmakers, armourers and other skilled workers were carried off from Damascus, Anatolia and other conquered cities and resettled there. Conquest moved skill and prestige from the defeated cities to the centre.
Timur ordered a covered market street cut straight through Samarkand, lined with shops. Houses in its path were demolished without compensation, and crews worked day and night in shifts so that it was finished in about twenty days. Clavijo gives it as an example of building done at the ruler's personal whim and pace, with no regard for the cost to residents.