Taraz

Taraz appears in written sources in the 6th century, when Byzantine envoys travelling to the Turkic khagan recorded a town on the Talas, and it grew as a staging post on the northern branch of the Silk Road where caravan routes met the pastures of the steppe. In 751 the armies of Tang China and the Abbasid Caliphate fought the Battle of Talas somewhere in this river valley, a defeat that ended Chinese expansion westwards and left Central Asia within the Muslim world.

Under the Karakhanids, from the 10th to the 12th century, the town became a regional capital of mosques, bath houses and brick tombs, and it was in this period that the mausoleums which still stand were built. The Mongol invasion of 1220 destroyed it, and for centuries afterwards it was a lesser settlement under successive steppe powers and finally the Khanate of Kokand, whose fort of Aulie-Ata — "holy father" — was taken by Russian forces in 1864.

Russian and then Soviet rule rebuilt the place as a provincial town of grid streets, sugar refineries and, from the 1940s, chemical works using the phosphate deposits of the Karatau mountains nearby. It was renamed Mirzoyan and then, in 1938, Zhambyl, after the Kazakh folk poet Zhambyl Zhabayev, and grew quickly with industry and migration. In 1997 the city recovered its ancient name of Taraz. Excavations in the 2010s beneath the central market exposed streets and buildings of the medieval town, which were preserved as an open archaeological site.

Taraz presents itself as the country's oldest city, and antiquity is part of everyday civic identity: the monuments appear on signs and souvenirs, and the Karakhanid tombs are treated as much as living shrines as historic buildings. Pilgrims come to Tekturmas and to Aisha Bibi, and the legend attached to Aisha Bibi — a young woman who died on her way to her beloved, who then raised the tomb over her — is known to every resident and retold at weddings.

The region is named after Zhambyl Zhabayev, the akyn, or improvising folk poet, who lived into the Soviet period and became a national figure. Sung poetry contests, the dombra and horse games remain part of celebrations here, and the south's reputation for large weddings, strict seniority and generous hospitality holds in the city as much as in the villages around it.

Kazakh is the dominant language, more so than in Almaty, and Islam is a visible part of life, with well-attended mosques and a considerable observance of Ramadan and the two Eids. The population also includes long-settled Russian, Uzbek, Dungan, Kurdish and Turkish communities, the legacy of Soviet deportations and of a border town's trade, and their cooking and customs are part of the mix. Life is lived outdoors in the warm months, in parks, teahouses and courtyards.

About 490,000 people live in Taraz, making it one of Kazakhstan's larger cities and the capital of Zhambyl Region. Most residents live in Soviet-era blocks in the microdistricts or in single-storey houses behind fences in the older quarters, and the working day starts early, pauses in the worst of the afternoon heat and ends with families out in the parks and along the river in the evening.

The economy rests on chemicals and phosphate processing, drawing on the deposits in the Karatau range to the north-west, together with sugar refining, food processing, construction and the trade that fills the bazaars. Agriculture in the surrounding irrigated districts supplies sugar beet, grain, vegetables and livestock. Wages are lower than in Almaty, and many families depend on remittances from relatives working there or in Russia, while the bazaar economy employs a large share of the city informally.

The problems are those of a mid-sized provincial city: ageing infrastructure, water supply in a dry region, air quality around the industrial plants and the steady departure of young people for the bigger cities. Against that, the border with Kyrgyzstan a short drive to the south keeps cross-border trade and family ties active, and the excavation and presentation of the ancient city has given Taraz a role in domestic tourism that it did not have before.

Taraz eats the food of the Kazakh south, with Uzbek and Dungan influence from the border districts. Plov — rice cooked with mutton, carrot and onion in a heavy kazan — is the dish for guests and celebrations, and beshbarmak, boiled meat and broth over wide sheets of pasta, remains the ceremonial meal. Samsa, pastries filled with meat and onion and baked against the wall of a clay tandoor, are sold hot all over the city, as are flat lepyoshka loaves from the same ovens.

Noodles are everywhere: lagman, hand-pulled and served either in broth or under a stir-fry of meat and peppers, is the standard cheap lunch, and Dungan cafés in the region make their own sharper, spicier versions. Manty, large steamed dumplings of minced meat and onion, and shashlyk grilled over charcoal complete the everyday repertoire, with kuyrdak, a fry of liver, heart and potato, for those who want something more traditional.

The bazaars are the best of the city's food: melons and watermelons from the irrigated fields in late summer, apricots, grapes and tomatoes, mountains of dried apricots and nuts, horsemeat and kazy sausage, and dairy in every form — ayran, kurt, irimshik and, in summer, kymyz and shubat. Tea, black and taken with milk, accompanies everything, served with baursak, small pieces of fried dough, and jam.