Jalal-Abad

The settlement grew up around mineral springs in the foothills above the Fergana Valley, on a route that pilgrims and traders used between the valley towns and the mountains, and the waters were held to have healing properties long before any spa was built. A small Kokand fortress was built here in the early 19th century and a village grew up around it, the area belonging to the khanate that ruled the valley until Russian forces took it in the 1870s.

Under Russian and then Soviet rule the town was developed for its water. A proper resort was laid out on the hill, and by the middle of the 20th century its sanatoriums treated patients sent from across the Soviet Union for courses of mineral water and mud. Around the spa the town filled out with administration, light industry, food processing and blocks of flats, and it became the capital of a region covering the walnut forests, the Toktogul reservoir and much of the western Tian Shan.

Independence in 1991 cost the town most of its Soviet-era visitors and much of its industry. It was one of the centres of the protests that brought down the government in 2005, and in June 2010 it suffered the ethnic violence that struck the south, with buildings burned and hundreds killed across the region. Rebuilding followed, and trade, farming and remittances have carried the economy since. In 2025 the city was renamed after Manas, the hero of the Kyrgyz national epic, while the region kept the name Jalal-Abad.

This is a mixed southern city where Kyrgyz and Uzbek families live in the same streets, both languages are heard in the bazaar, and Russian is less common than in the north. The Uzbek contribution shows in the walled courtyard houses of the older quarters, in bread baked in tandoors and in the style of the tea houses; the Kyrgyz contribution in felt hats, horse culture and the pull of the mountain pastures above the town in summer.

Religious life is more visible than in Bishkek. Mosques fill on Fridays, the fasting month is widely observed, and the two Eid festivals — Orozo Ait and Kurman Ait — are the biggest family occasions of the year, when meat is shared between households. Nowruz in March brings communal cooking of sumalak and concerts on the main square.

The spa tradition gave the city a particular character: taking the waters is still seen as a health practice rather than a holiday, and older people come for a fortnight's course. Hospitality follows the regional pattern, with guests fed generously, elders served first and tea poured continuously into small bowls. The events of 2010 are remembered and rarely discussed openly with outsiders, and the renaming of the city in 2025 is a reminder of how strongly the Manas epic is tied to national identity.

About 120,000 people live in Jalal-Abad, which makes it one of the larger Kyrgyz cities, though it feels like a big town: streets of single-storey houses behind walls, a handful of Soviet blocks, plane trees and a low skyline. Villages run almost continuously into the suburbs along the valley roads.

The economy rests on trade and farming. The bazaar is the city's engine, selling the produce of the irrigated land around — fruit, vegetables, rice, cotton and tobacco — along with walnuts from the forests to the north. There is food processing and light manufacturing, administration for the region, a university, and the sanatoriums on the hill. As across the south, money sent home from men and women working in Russia supports a large share of households and pays for house-building and weddings.

The day begins early, especially in summer, when the bazaar is at its busiest by seven and the streets empty in the afternoon heat; evenings bring people to the park, the tea houses and the courtyards. Water and electricity supply, roads, dust and a shortage of work for young people are the recurring local concerns, and many families count the return of migrant relatives among the main events of the year.

The city eats the Fergana table, close to Uzbek cooking. Plov — paloo in Kyrgyz — is the dish of weddings and guests: rice cooked slowly with mutton, carrot, onion and cumin in a wide kazan, and the region's most famous version uses the short-grain rice from Uzgen, south-east of the city. Plov houses cook one batch a day and stop when it is finished.

Everyday food runs to samsa, mutton and onion pastries baked against the wall of a tandoor; shashlik grilled over coals and served with raw onion; manty, large steamed dumplings; laghman, hand-pulled noodles in broth or fried with vegetables; and shurpa, a fatty meat and vegetable soup. Round nan bread comes from neighbourhood tandoors and is treated with respect. Uyghur and Dungan dishes, including spicier noodle and cold salad dishes, appear on many menus.

The bazaar is where the region's produce is clearest: apricots, melons, grapes and pomegranates in season, dried fruit for winter, and walnuts from the Arslanbob forests sold by the sack in autumn. Kurut, hard salty balls of strained yoghurt, is eaten as a snack, and chalap, a salted yoghurt drink, is drunk cold in summer. Green tea accompanies every meal, and bottled mineral water from the springs above the city is sold across Kyrgyzstan.