But the liberation struggle foundered on semantics. In 712 Qutaiba ibn-Muslim, governor of the province of Khorassan which was then part of the Islamic Umayyad empire, arrived with his soldiers at the gates of Samarkand. Its defenders tried to snub him. 'We have found it written,' they shouted from the battlements, 'that our city can only be captured by a man named Camel-Saddle.' Unfortunately, in Arabic 'Qutaiba' means precisely that, camel saddle, so in rode Qutaiba (on a horse).  

Samarkand's first mosque was built in the western corner of what is now the Afrasiab site. The city was absorbed into Khorassan (based on Merv) and, in the late 9th century, into the Samanid empire based on Bukhara. Islam, and its pervasive influence on art and architecture, was here to stay. Meanwhile, for all her neighbour's political pretensions, Samarkand remained the largest, richest city in Transomana. When Abulkasim ibn-Khakal visited Samarkand in the mid-10th century he climbed the citadel and saw 'one of the most beautiful views that man has ever gazed upon: the fresh greenness of the trees, the glittering castles... All of this is reflected in the canals running with water and the artificial ponds... Samarkand is a city with large market places, blocks of dwellings, bath-houses, caravanserai... The running water flows through canals that are partially made out of lead... With few exceptions there is not a single street or house where there is no running water, and very few houses do not have gardens.'  

Even a New era of nomadic invasions, starting with that of the Karakhanid Turks in the late 10th century, failed at first to destroy this irrigated idyll or the commerce which financed it. Over the next 200 years control of Samarkand alternated between Muslim Turks-the Seljuks, and later the Khorezmshahs from the Amu Darya delta-and another tribe of pagan nomads, the Kara-Khitai. Then came a terror of a different order.