Tashkent

Tashkent sits where the Chirchiq river leaves the Tian Shan foothills and spreads across a plain, and that water is the reason for the city. Ancient sources speak of an oasis called Chach, a farming and trading region on the northern edge of the Silk Road. Caravans crossed here between the Fergana valley, the steppe and the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, and the settlement grew as a market and a fortress rather than a capital. The name Tashkent is Turkic and means stone city, a name that appears in written sources from around the 11th century.

The Arab armies reached Central Asia in the 8th century and brought Islam, and the region later passed between Persian, Turkic and Mongol rulers. Tashkent was damaged by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century and recovered under the Timurids in the 14th and 15th centuries. Timur, born near Shahrisabz, ruled from Samarkand, and Tashkent remained a provincial city, but it gained mosques and tombs, and the scholar Abu Bakr Kaffal Shashi was already remembered here as an early saint. The Shaybanid rulers of the 16th century built madrasas and markets, and the Kukeldash madrasa beside today's Chorsu bazaar dates from this period.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries Tashkent was contested by the Kokand Khanate and local city councils. The Russian army took it in 1865, and the empire made it the capital of the Turkestan governor-generalship. Russians built a new town of straight streets and gardens to the south of the old one, so Tashkent grew as two cities side by side, an Uzbek old town of mud-brick courtyards and a European-style quarter with parks and canals. After the revolution, it became the capital of the Uzbek Soviet republic in 1930, replacing Samarkand, and it grew fast as a centre of industry, universities and the military.

The great turning point was the earthquake of 26 April 1966. It destroyed much of the old centre and left hundreds of thousands of people without homes. The Soviet republics sent builders, architects and materials, and the city was rebuilt as a showpiece of modern planning, with wide avenues, big squares, microdistricts of apartment blocks, and a metro that opened in 1977. Tashkent became one of the largest cities in the Soviet Union and the fourth after Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv. Many Soviet-era buildings still stand, next to newer glass towers built after independence.

Uzbekistan became independent on 1 September 1991, and Tashkent became the capital of a new state. The city changed its symbols quickly: a statue of Timur replaced Karl Marx on the main square in 1993, Lenin Square became Independence Square, and mosques and madrasas that had been closed or turned into workshops reopened. Today the city has about three million people, and the past shows in layers, from the Kukeldash madrasa to the tiled metro stations and the mahalla courtyards. To read them, the four clusters of this guide are a good start.

Tashkent is a flat, sprawling city, and the first thing to understand is that its sights are far apart. The centre is a grid of wide avenues laid out in the Soviet period, with squares, parks and fountains between blocks of apartments and government buildings. Distances that look short on a map are long on foot, especially in July, and that is why a first visit works best in four small clusters connected by the metro and short car rides.

The old town, in Uzbek Eski Shahar, lies in the north-west around Chorsu bazaar and the Hazrati Imam complex. It is a maze of lanes lined by mud-brick walls, called mahallas, each a small community with its own mosque, tea house and neighbourhood committee. The 1966 earthquake spared parts of it and flattened others, so today you find courtyard houses beside apartment blocks and schools. Walking these lanes in the morning, with the smell of bread from a tandoor, is the closest thing to the city as it was.

The new town, Yangi Shahar, is the area the Russians laid out after 1865 to the south-east of the old one. Its shady streets, small parks and older buildings were much damaged in 1966, but the layout survives, and the pedestrian street known as Broadway, Sayilgoh in Uzbek, is a reminder of it. Amir Temur Square is at the heart of this area, with the museum, Hotel Uzbekistan and a ring of avenues around it. From here the metro and ride-hail cars reach everything else.

Water shapes the map. The Ankhor canal winds through the centre as a green corridor of parks and walking paths, and the Chirchiq river flows to the north. Summers are hot and dry, so many streets have irrigation channels called aryks and rows of plane and poplar trees. To the east, the Chimgan and Charvak mountains rise on clear days, and the road to them is a common day trip.

The metro is the best key to the layout. Three lines cross the centre and a circle line joins them, and the stations named for the big squares tell you where to go: Chorsu for the old town, Amir Temur Xiyoboni for the modern centre, Mustaqillik Maydoni for Independence Square. Use the metro for the long hops and Yandex Go for the last mile, and walk only inside a cluster. That rhythm, morning outdoors, midday indoors and evening on the squares, is the one the city itself follows.

Most of what visitors remember from Tashkent is eaten, and most of it starts at the bazaar. Chorsu is the biggest and best known, and its blue dome, built in the 1970s, covers the meat and dairy hall at the centre. The name comes from the Persian for four ways, meaning a crossroads market. Around the dome are open aisles of bread, dried fruit, spices, vegetables and household goods, and the noise, colour and smell are the reason to go. The best hours are 07:00 to 09:00, when bread is hot and the crowd is thin.

Bread is treated with respect. Non is baked on the inside wall of a clay tandoor, round and flat and stamped with a pattern by the baker, and each region has its own style. Tashkent non is thick and soft, and a fresh loaf breaks with steam. Locals do not put bread upside down, throw it away or drop it, and a piece that falls is picked up and kissed. Samsa, the baked pastry with beef, pumpkin or cheese, comes out of the same kind of oven.

Plov, called osh in Uzbek, is the national dish and the centre of a social ritual. Rice is cooked in a large cast-iron cauldron, a kazan, over a gas flame or wood fire. The cook, usually a man called an oshpaz, fries meat and onions in oil, adds yellow carrot in long strips, spices such as cumin and barberries, and finally rice and water, and steams it without stirring. Each region has its own version, and Tashkent's is known for its oil, its chickpeas and its boiled eggs and horse meat on festive plates. Plov is a lunch dish, eaten at midday in a canteen or plov centre, and by mid-afternoon the cauldron is often empty. Many families and offices have plov on Thursday.

Beyond plov, there is lagman, hand-pulled noodles with beef and peppers, served fried or in soup, a dish brought by the Uyghur and Dungan communities. Manti are big steamed dumplings with lamb and onion. Shurpa is a clear soup with meat and potato. Shashlik grills skewers over charcoal, and the fresh tomato and onion salad called achichuk is served beside them. Korean-style carrot salads at the bazaar come from the Koryo-saram, Koreans deported to Central Asia in 1937, whose descendants are a part of Tashkent life.

Tea is the frame around all of it. Green tea in a small china bowl, poured and returned to the pot three times to mix it, is served with almost every meal, and a tea house, or choyxona, is a place to rest, talk and eat. Accept tea when it is offered; refusing is a small insult. On a hot day, a pot of green tea in the shade with bread and dried apricots does more than water. Bring small notes in som, because bazaars and tea houses are cash only, and ask the price per kilo before food is weighed.

The Hazrati Imam complex, called Khast Imam in the local shorthand, is the religious centre of Tashkent and the place to understand how faith and building have gone together here. It grew around the tomb of Abu Bakr Kaffal Shashi, a 10th-century scholar of Islamic law and a poet, who was born in Shash, the old name for the Tashkent area, and who became a saint. The mausoleum you see today dates mostly from the 16th century, when the Shaybanid rulers rebuilt it, and its garden is one of the calmest corners of the city.

Around the main square stand a group of buildings that come from several centuries. The Barak-Khan Madrasa is a 16th-century religious school with a tiled portal and rows of student cells that now hold craft stalls. The Tilla Sheikh Mosque is a Friday mosque with a fine interior. The Muyi Muborak Madrasa is next to them and holds a library with old manuscripts. Newer buildings, including the Hazrati Imam Mosque with its two slim minarets, were raised in the 21st century on the same axis, so the square feels both old and new.

The library's best-known treasure is an old Quran manuscript, often called the Uthman Quran after the third caliph. Tradition holds that it is one of the oldest copies of the Quran in the world. It is said to have been taken to Samarkand by Timur, later to Saint Petersburg, and returned to Central Asia in the early Soviet years, where it now rests in Tashkent. Whatever its exact age, it shows how much of the Muslim world's written heritage passed through this city, and the library is worth the small fee if it is open.

This is a working religious site, not a museum, and the visitor's role is to be a respectful guest. Dress covered, with shoulders and knees hidden and a scarf for women, and take shoes off at prayer halls. Do not photograph people at prayer. Some areas close around the noon prayer, and Friday is the busiest day. Go in the first hours after opening, when the squares are quiet and the blue domes take the morning light, and leave before the midday heat turns the open squares into a griddle.

The Soviet period restricted religion, closed mosques and turned some into warehouses, and the revival since independence explains why the complex looks half old and half new. The small tea houses on the edge of the complex, the craft stalls in the madrasa cells and the garden of Kaffal Shashi are good places to slow down. Ask your hotel to check prayer times and the day's opening hours by phone before you set out, because they change more than printed guides suggest.

After the 1966 earthquake, Tashkent became a laboratory of Soviet urban planning, and much of what the city looks like today comes from that decade. Planners built wide avenues, big squares and neighbourhoods of apartment blocks, arranged in microdistricts with schools and shops. The buildings were designed to withstand earthquakes, with reinforced frames, and to mix Soviet forms with Central Asian motifs such as tiled screens, arches and geometric patterns. The result is a city that is more open and green than its neighbours in the region, and more spread out than it looks on a map.

The metro is the best example. It opened in November 1977 as the first in Central Asia, and its stations were designed as showpieces, with marble, chandeliers, tile, carved panels and murals. Each of the stations on the first lines has a theme, from cosmonauts and space to the poet Alisher Navoi to the silk and cotton industries. Riding through them is one of the cheapest sightseeing hours in the region, and each stop is a short walk from something else. For years photography was forbidden, and the rules have relaxed, but signs still ban it in some places, and you should never photograph guards, military staff or turnstiles.

The Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre, opened in 1947, is another Soviet-era building with a story. It was built during and after the war by builders including Japanese prisoners of war, and its interior mixes Uzbek carving and tile with European theatre design. Tickets are cheap, evening performances are a formal occasion, and the building survived the 1966 earthquake almost undamaged, which became a point of civic pride. If you have an evening free, a ballet or opera performance is an inexpensive way to see the interior.

Independence Square was Lenin Square until 1991, and its vast size shows its origin as a stage for parades. After independence, the Lenin statue was removed, a monument of a mother with a child on a globe took the centre, and a memorial arch was built at one end. It is a good place to feel the scale of Soviet-era planning, and its gardens and fountains make the evening walk pleasant. Be aware that government buildings surround it, and guards watch what you photograph.

The Tashkent TV Tower, finished in the 1980s, is one of the tallest structures in the region and a landmark on the skyline. Panel apartment blocks, wide parks and fountains fill most other districts, and few are beautiful by themselves. But together they explain the city and its people, who are proud of having rebuilt from a disaster. The metro, the theatre and the squares are the way in, and the mahalla lanes of the old town are the counterpoint.

Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, is the historical figure Uzbekistan chose as its symbol after 1991. He was a 14th-century conqueror who built an empire from Delhi to Damascus and made Samarkand his capital, and he is remembered here as a state-builder and patron of architecture. His statue on horseback in Amir Temur Square, raised in 1993, stands where a monument to Karl Marx once stood, and the change explains the modern country's search for its own past. The square is a place to see how a young state uses history.

The Temuriylar History Museum, on the north side of the square, is a big domed building whose halls tell the story of the Timurid dynasty and of Uzbek history. It opened in the 1990s, and its display of portraits, manuscripts, weapons and costumes is uneven, but the building itself, with a great painted dome and a gilded interior, is worth an hour. It is also the most convenient air-conditioned rest near the hotels, so it fits a hot afternoon. Captions are mostly in Uzbek and Russian with some English, and tickets cost a small amount.

Around the square, the modern centre is a mix of hotels, banks and cafés. Hotel Uzbekistan, a Soviet-era tower on the south side, stands beside newer glass buildings, and the pedestrian street Broadway, Sayilgoh, has painters, cafés and street stalls. The city has been changing fast: new roads, parks and towers have replaced older neighbourhoods, and cafés serving flat whites sit beside samsa stalls. Visitors find a mix of quiet politeness, generous hospitality and small business energy, and they often find that Uzbeks are curious about them.

For a traveller, the most important change is access. Visa-free entry for many passports, an e-visa system, high-speed trains to Samarkand and Bukhara, and English signage at major sights have made Tashkent easy to use as a gateway. The Afrosiyob train takes about two hours and ten minutes to Samarkand, and Tashkent's airport has a growing network of regional and international flights. The city is a good place to arrive, adjust and plan, and the practical work of a first day is to buy a SIM, change money at a bank, and book train seats.

What to take from all this is a sense of proportion. Tashkent is not a city of postcard views; it is a city of everyday life on a grand scale, where the bazaar, the tea house, the metro and the square are the sights. Give it two or three days, keep the mornings and evenings for walking, and use the middle of the day for the museum, the metro and a long lunch. When the train to Samarkand leaves, you will have seen a lot of Central Asia in one place.