Uzbekistan
Edited by:
Massimo Martini
Access
Uzbekistan can be reached from Italy mainly by air, with stopover flights to Tashkent's Islam Karimov International Airport (IATA code: TAS), the country's main hub, located about 12 km from the centre of the capital. Connecting flights depart from Milan, Rome and other Italian cities with stopovers in Ankara, Istanbul, Dubai, Moscow or Doha, with total travel times of six to twelve hours depending on the connection. Uzbekistan Airways operates seasonal direct flights from some European cities. The country has other international airports in Samarkand (SQD), Bukhara (BHK), Urgench - gateway to Khiva - and Nukus, the latter being relevant for access to the Karakalpakstan region and the Aral Sea area. Entry by land is possible from Kazakhstan via the Tashkent-Chernyaevka and Gisht Kuprik crossings; from Georgia and Russia it is possible to reach the country via Kazakhstan. The borders with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are open but subject to variations in accessibility, particularly in the eastern mountain sections. The borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan require up-to-date verification of transit requirements. The internal railway network is operated by the Uzbek Railways (O'zbekiston Temir Yo'llari): the Afrosiyob high-speed train, in operation since 2011, connects Tashkent to Samarkand in less than two hours and continues to Bukhara; a train service reaches Khiva via Urgench. The Tashkent Metro, in operation since 1977, is one of the most extensive in Central Asia. Intercity transport relies on marshrutkas and buses covering routes not served by rail, including the eastern mountainous areas and the western desert regions.
.Introduction
Uzbekistan is one of only two landlocked countries in the world - surrounded by countries that are themselves landlocked - and occupies the heart of Central Asia, between Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, Afghanistan to the south and Turkmenistan to the southwest. More than two-thirds of the territory is dominated by steppe and desert, with the Kyzylkum stretching in the central and western parts between the two great historical rivers of Central Asia, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya. To the east and south-east, the landscape gradually changes: the foothills give way to the western Tian Shan and Pamir-Alay ranges, which mark the borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Along these mountain ranges and in the irrigated plains of Zeravshan, the highest urban civilisations of Central Asia developed: Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva are the most visible legacies of that millennial history, intertwined with the Silk Road and the great nomads and conquerors of Eurasia. A member of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 1991, Uzbekistan is the most populous country in Central Asia and one of the world's largest producers of cotton and natural gas.
Description
Uzbekistan's territory covers 448,971 km² and encompasses an exceptionally varied morphology for an inland region. The Kyzylkum Desert, whose name means "red sand" in the local language, occupies some 300,000 km² in the inter-fluvial zone between Amu Darya and Syr Darya, with dunes, clay plains and rocky outcrops that are home to a fauna adapted to extreme drought. To the west, the Ustyurt Plateau separates the basin of the Aral Sea from the Caspian Sea with limestone walls tens of metres high. To the east and southeast, the landscape gradually rises towards the ranges of the western Tian Shan - with the Chatkal, Pskem and Ugam Mountains - and the Pamir-Alay, where the Gissar Mountains touch the country's highest peak, Khazret Sultan at 4,643 metres, on the border with Tajikistan. The Ferghana Valley, wedged between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, is one of the most fertile areas in Central Asia, closed to the north and south by mountain ranges and traversed by the Syr Darya in its upper reaches. The Zeravshan flows through the Samarkand and Bukhara region before dispersing into the desert. The country is in a high seismic risk zone: the 1966 earthquake destroyed much of Soviet Tashkent. The Aral Sea, already the fourth largest body of fresh water in the world with 68.000 km², has shrunk to about a tenth of its original size due to the systematic diversion of water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for the irrigation of cotton fields since the 1960s: one of the most serious environmental catastrophes of the 20th century, which turned the bed into a salt desert - the Aralkum - and devastated the fishing communities of coastal towns such as Moynaq.
The history of Uzbekistan is inseparable from the trade routes that linked China to the Mediterranean for two thousand years. The Sogdian cities of Transoxiana - the territory "across the Oxus River" today's Amu Darya - were already flourishing trading centres in the 1st millennium BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Maracanda, today's Samarkand, in 329 BC. The caravans of the Silk Road made these cities meeting points for Greek, Persian, Chinese, Indian and steppe nomadic civilisations. In the 7th century, the Arab conquest brought Islam and the Arabic alphabet; in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Samanid kingdom, with its capital in Bukhara, was a centre of Islamic learning in which the mathematician al-Khwarizmi - from whose Latinised name comes the word "algorithm" - and the physician and philosopher Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, born in Bukhara in 980 AD, worked. The 13th century was devastated by Genghis Khan's invasion, which razed Samarkand and Bukhara to the ground. The rebirth came with Tamerlane (Timur), the Turkish-Mongolian leader born in Shahrisabz in 1336, who made Samarkand the capital of an empire stretching from Turkey to India: in those decades the city was rebuilt with mosques, madrasas and mausoleums that remain among the absolute masterpieces of medieval Islamic architecture. His grandson Ulugh Beg ruled the region for forty years as an astronomer and patron, building the Samarkand observatory and cataloguing over a thousand stars. In the 16th century, the Uzbeks established the Khanates of Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand, which resisted until the Russian conquest in the second half of the 19th century. Tsarist annexation brought the railway and the intensification of cotton monoculture. Uzbekistan became a Soviet republic in 1924 and declared independence on 1 September 1991.
The Uzbek economy is based on irrigated agriculture - cotton and cereals in the Zeravshan and Fergana plains -, the extraction of natural gas, gold, uranium and copper, and a growing manufacturing sector. The country is among the world's leading cotton producers and the largest gold extractor in Central Asia, with the Muruntau mine in the Kyzylkum Desert among the largest in the world. Silk from Margilan and pottery from Rishtan are the most historically important handicrafts in the Fergana Valley. Tourism is a rapidly expanding sector: Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva attract increasing numbers of international visitors every year.
Uzbek culture is characterised by the interweaving of Turkish, Persian and nomadic traditions. The plov - rice pilaf cooked with lamb, carrots, onions and spices in a large cast-iron cauldron - is the national dish par excellence, prepared with precise rituals on every public and private occasion; since 2016, it has been inscribed on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. Lavash, the thin bread baked in the tandyr, is another identifying element of the local cuisine. Handicrafts include ikat silk work with its colourful geometric patterns, carpets from the Bukhara region, blue glazed pottery from Rishtan and wood carving of the columns of the emirs' palaces. Uzbek classical music, based on the maqom system, has been included in the UNESCO Intangible World Heritage List.
Uzbekistan has five sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Samarkand - Crossroads of Cultures, inscribed in 2001, includes the main Timorese monuments: Registan Square with its three 14th-17th century madrasas, the Bibi Khanym mosque, the Gur-e Amir mausoleum where Tamerlane rests, the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis and the Ulugh Beg observatory. The Historic Centre of Bukhara, inscribed in 1993, is one of the best-preserved medieval Islamic urban complexes in the world, with the 9th-century Ismail Samani mausoleum - the oldest surviving fired-brick Islamic building in Central Asia - the Maghoki-Attar mosque, the Kalon minaret and the Ark Palace complex. The Historic Centre of Khiva - Itchan Kala, inscribed in 1990, is an entirely preserved walled city with the palace of the Khans, the Islam-Khoja minaret and dozens of terracotta madrasas and mosques. The Historic Centre of Shahrisabz, inscribed in 2000, preserves the remains of Tamerlane's Ak-Saray palace and the funerary complex of Dorus Saodat. The Transcontinental Historic Route of the Silk Roads, inscribed in 2023 as a transnational serial site, includes Uzbek sections of the Silk Road. The country's fauna includes the Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica), the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) in the eastern mountainous areas, the chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) the wolf (Canis lupus), the saiga tatarica (Saiga tatarica) in the steppes - a critically endangered species - and the desert monitor lizard (Varanus griseus), the largest lizard inCentral Asia. The mountainous forests of the Tian Shan are home to juniper (Juniperus seravschanica), common walnut (Juglans regia) and wild apple tree (Malus sieversii), the progenitor of all cultivated apple varieties, which can still be found in the forests of western Tian Shan.
Hiking is mainly practised in the eastern mountainous areas, with the Chimgan Mountains - part of the Ugam-Chatkal National Park, 80 km from Tashkent - as the most accessible target area. The Big Chimgan (3,309 m) can be reached by one- or multi-day trekking routes through juniper valleys, alpine meadows and rocky gorges such as Gulkam; the Charvak reservoir at the foot of the Chimgans is a popular base. Further east, the Fann Mountains - technically in Tajik territory but also accessible from Uzbekistan - offer high-level alpine trekking with the Iskanderkul and Kulikalon lakes. The Nuratau Mountains, reached from Samarkand, preserve traditional villages and paths through juniper forests to Lake Aydarkul in the steppe. The Fergana Valley is criss-crossed with trails through silk villages and terraced fields. The ski resorts of Chimgan, Beldersay and Amirsoy offer downhill skiing and snowboarding from December to March, with ski mountaineering practised in the surrounding valleys.
Uzbek mountaineering has its roots in the Soviet period, when mountaineering clubs in Tashkent organised expeditions into the Tian Shan, Pamir and Hindukush. The main technical routes are concentrated in the western Tian Shan, in the Maidantal, Pskem and Chatkal ranges, with ascents on granite walls and glacier routes accessible from the Chimgan valley. Khazret Sultan (4,643 m), the country's highest peak in the Gissar Mountains on the border with Tajikistan, is the destination of expeditions organised from Samarkand or Shahrisabz. Uzbek national mountaineering and rock climbing competitions are regularly held in the western Tian Shan area. Sport climbing can be found at equipped sites in the Gulkam Gorge and at some cliffs near Chimgan.
Trail running in Uzbekistan is a recently developing discipline, with no established international competitive events at the date of writing. The mountainous territory of the western Tian Shan, with its trails at altitudes between 1,500 and 3,300 metres near Chimgan and in Ugam-Chatkal Park, offers the most favourable conditions for the discipline. The Tashkent Marathon, an asphalt race held every spring in the capital, is the country's main running event. Several local operators offer non-competitive running routes in the mountains around Tashkent and in the Nuratau region, which is growing with the increase in active tourism.
Information
General Data
Capital: Tashkent
Area: 448.971 km²
Minimum elevation: 38m (bed of the Amu Darya near the border with Turkmenistan)
Maximum elevation: 4,643m - Khazret Sultan
Number of inhabitants: 36,963.000 (estimate 2024)
Official name: O'zbekiston Respublikasi
Name of inhabitants: Uzbeks
Regions: Andijan - Bukhara - Fergana - Jizzakh - Karakalpakstan - Kashkadarya - Khorezm - Namangan - Navoiy - Samarkand - Sirdarya - Surkhandarya - Tashkent - Tashkent city
Bordering countries: Afghanistan - Kazakhstan - Kyrgyzstan - Tagikistan - Turkmenistan
Institutional site: https://www.gov.uz