Samarkand, Ancient City of Azure and Gold, Thrives Almost Unnoticed : Muslim Asia: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Marco Polo once roamed the neighborhood. Rudyard Kipling labeled the region ‘the back of beyond.’

Under a white mulberry tree, amid the aroma of roasting kebabs, wizened men in coats of many colors stare at chess pieces that might not have moved since Genghis Khan went home.

If it’s a bustling city of mainframe computers and brain surgeons, Samarkand is also a Tower of Babel exuding mystery, an air of high intrigue from its ancient days as a world capital.

At the juncture of crosscurrents washing over Muslim Asia, it is emerging from 70 years as a Soviet backwater. But authorities worry that this is a mixed blessing.

“Samarkand is a living anthropology museum, unique in the world,” said Sergei Kapitza, a Soviet scientist and television personality. “It is among the most fascinating places anywhere.”

At the same time, he added, it is an ethnic powder keg. The city’s diverse past jostles the present, threatening a future that few venture to predict.

Once it was remote, two time zones southeast of Moscow near the Afghan border in the region Rudyard Kipling called “the back of beyond.” Now, in a smaller, turbulent world, its role has changed.

The Russians who came as conquerors and colonizers are beginning to go home, leaving behind economic distress and communal tension.

Samarkand recently declared itself 2,500 years old after historians, probing its earlier roots, threw up their hands. It was a center of world power before Columbus found America.

Camel caravans bringing Chinese silks to Europe quickened their pace on nearing the gleaming city, a thriving oasis with all the comforts of its day, a blend of Islamic piety and secret sin.

It was already a metropolis, ringed by 10 miles of ramparts, when Alexander the Great wrecked the place in 329 BC. Genghis Khan found splendid urban renewal 900 years later, and he torched it.

Tamerlane, a legendary 14th-Century ruler of Turkish origin, built soaring towers and domes, finished in azure tile and gold leaf. Scientists and scholars gathered to explore the universe.

For centuries afterward, Samarkand was picky about its visitors. It was a hub on the Silk Road, but infidels were sometimes put to death. It fell to the czars’ armies only in 1868.

At the height of the Cold War, Kremlin strategists sold its charms to group tourists, who were separated from local people as assiduously as they were separated from their hard currency.

Perestroika was to have brought a tourist boom. As nationalist tensions run high in Central Asia, however, authorities fear that they may face an explosion of another kind.

In the ancient center and the surrounding modern sprawl, 390,000 people of 90 ethnic backgrounds cling to old customs that blended partly as a result of the firm hand of government.

Residents are largely Uzbeks, people of Mongol and Turkish roots who settled in many centuries ago, and Tadzhiks, ethnic Persians whose ancestors built the city.

There are also Russians who came as pioneers and professionals over the last century, along with Kazakhs, Turks, Bukhara Jews, Germans and scores of others.

So far, Samarkand has escaped the pogroms, ethnic skirmishes and random violence that have killed more than 1,000 people over the last year in Uzbekistan and neighboring republics.

“We have been living together here for so long that we are used to each other,” said Davlat Sittar, an Uzbek university student who speaks fluent Russian and Tadzhik.

But reports of upheaval nearby have stemmed the tide of foreign tourists expected with relaxed Soviet travel restrictions.

Last April, Moscow radio reported ethnic riots in Samarkand which, in fact, did not happen. Uzbek newspapers reacted angrily but could not repair damage to the city’s image.

And, according to local dissidents who spoke only if promised anonymity, the potential of sudden flare-up lies just beneath the surface.

Nonetheless, Soviet officials say they are confident that Samarkand’s stunning beauty and exotic flavor will draw more visitors than the city can handle.

Even now, the Hotel Samarkand fills to capacity during the balmy months of spring and fall. Intourist is building a large new luxury hotel nearby in a joint venture with Indian investors.

Each morning, busloads of Americans, Germans and Japanese clog the mud lanes running past monuments that have astonished visitors for centuries.

Ancient Samarkand sits in moldering glory at the center of the modern Soviet urban blur that spreads from its edges. Its main plaza is a dramatic square of arches and domes in rich colors.

Tamerlane, the master builder and tyrant, lies blocks away under a gracefully shaped, fluted cupola tiled in the deep blue and gold hues that were his trademark.

Across town, a complex of blue-domed mausoleums line a sunken alley 100 yards long, each elaborately inlaid with ceramic mosaics, semiprecious stones and hardwoods.

The old market sprawls from the magnificent ruins of the Bibi Khanum mosque to the outdoor teahouse where old men spend the day chatting and picking their toes.

Many visitors find it as exciting to watch the people as the architecture.

Men, Muslims and Jews alike, favor a white-embroidered black square skullcap. Robe styles date back to the first draft of the Bible. But there are also calf roper’s baseball caps, faded designer jeans and Mickey Mouse T-shirts.

Most women dress to tradition, in cape-like garments of cotton or silk in vivid patterns. Baggy pants reach below the ankles. Some women, mostly Russians, venture out with low necklines and high hems.

All styles and colors blend in the market, a dusty sprawl of ancient brick, tin roofing and rickety stalls. Men doze at tables laden with spices. Women hawk fat red strawberries, mysterious grains and the Uzbeks’ distinctive wheels of tasty flat bread.

Samarkand is rich in legendary hospitality. On winding back streets, families make room at dinner tables, even wedding parties, for tourists who stop to show interest.

In fact, a smiling and gentle exterior masks ominous undercurrents that outsiders must probe to fathom.

Newly established opposition parties, such as a grass-roots Uzbek movement called Birlik, or Unity, agitate for sovereignty and a return to Asian roots. Some organizations go further.

“We are many, and we are growing,” confided one dissident, a Tadzhik entrepreneur, who agreed to speak anonymously only after cautious introductions. He described underground groups that seek a total break with Moscow.

“Lithuania is a textbook, and we are reading it carefully,” he said. But unlike the Baltic states, he added, Uzbekistan had a high potential for sustained violence.

His own group is dominated by Tadzhiks who argue that since they built Samarkand, Soviet planners should have put it in Tadzhikistan, not Uzbekistan, and it is never too late to change.