The ongoing absorption of Central Asia into the Russian empire, especially from the 1860s, mandated that archeologists identify the Muslim antiquities, especially on the sites along the old Silk Road. Veselovskii played the primary role in this, and the wealth there made it quite vulnerable to both thieves and forgers. This mosque was one included in his album Mosques of Samarkand (1905). ordered built by Tamerlane in 1399, by 1897 it had fallen victim to natural forces, and the cupola had collapsed.