Khujand

Khujand is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia. Tradition identifies it with Alexandria Eschate, "Alexandria the Furthest", founded by Alexander the Great on the Syr Darya in 329 BC at the edge of the settled world, and archaeology shows a fortified town on the site well before that. Its position where the river leaves the Fergana Valley made it a crossing point and a Silk Road halt between the valley oases and the routes west to Samarkand.

The city's most remembered episode is its defence against the Mongols in 1219–1220, when its governor Timur Malik held out on an island in the river before being overwhelmed; the citadel was destroyed and the town took centuries to recover. Later it was contested between the emirate of Bukhara and the khanate of Kokand, and Russian forces took it in 1866. The railway and cotton trade arrived, and Russian-built quarters grew beside the old town.

In Soviet times, as Leninabad from 1936 to 1991, it became the most industrial province of Tajikistan, with silk and textile mills, food processing and uranium mining and processing in the district around; its elite dominated the republic's politics for decades. The Arbob palace on the city's edge is where the republic's supreme soviet declared independence in 1991. The civil war of the 1990s was fought mainly in the south, but it shifted power away from the north, and the reopening of the Uzbek border in 2018 has since restored some of the city's old role as a trading crossroads.

Khujand thinks of itself as Tajikistan's second capital and its most urban place, with a long tradition of education, theatre and literature. It claims the 14th-century Persian poet Kamol Khujandi as its own, and his name is attached to a park, a theatre and a museum in the city. Classical Persian poetry, shashmaqom music and the crafts of the Fergana towns are all cultivated here.

The Fergana setting shows in daily life: many families speak Tajik and Uzbek, Uzbek neighbourhoods and Uzbek cooking are part of the city, and customs, dress and food have as much in common with the towns across the border as with the mountain south. Bright atlas silk, embroidered skullcaps and gold jewellery are worn at weddings, which are the great social events, large and expensive enough to be limited by law.

Religion is Sunni Islam under state supervision. The Sheikh Muslihiddin complex on the main square, with its mosque and minaret, is a focus of visits and Friday prayers, and pilgrims come from across the north. The bazaar is as much a social institution as a market, where people meet, drink tea and exchange news. Nowruz in March is the year's great festival, and Independence Day carries particular weight in the city where independence was proclaimed.

About 180,000 people live in Khujand, with many more in the surrounding districts of the Fergana Valley, which is the most densely populated part of the country. The city sits on both banks of the Syr Darya, linked by bridges, and mixes a compact old centre with Soviet blocks, industrial estates and newer suburbs spreading into the orchards.

The economy is the most diverse in Tajikistan: textiles and silk, food processing, building materials and workshops, along with mining for gold, coal and rare metals in the province, and trade with Uzbekistan through nearby crossings. There is a large university and a teaching hospital. Even so, wages are low and, as everywhere in the country, a great many working-age men spend much of the year in Russia, sending money home.

Days start early, with the bazaar busy from soon after dawn and lunch the main meal; the afternoon heat thins the streets in summer, and evenings bring families to the embankment, the parks and the cafés along the water. Summer heat, winter power cuts, the cost of living and the state of the border with Kyrgyzstan around Isfara are the recurring local concerns.

The northern table is the Fergana table, shared with neighbouring Uzbekistan. Oshi palav is the dish of celebrations, rice cooked with mutton, carrot and onion in a wide kazan, and here it is often made with the plump rice of the valley. Qurutob, flaky fatir bread soaked in a sauce of dissolved qurut and topped with onions, herbs and sometimes meat, is eaten by hand from a shared dish as it is across the country.

Sambusa baked against the wall of a tandoor, manti, laghmon noodles, shurbo soup and shashlik grilled over coals fill the chaikhonas, and non, the stamped round flatbread, is baked in every neighbourhood; Khujand's bread is a point of local pride. Uzbek dishes appear everywhere, along with Russian-era additions such as pelmeni, cutlets and bakery cakes.

Fruit is the region's glory, and the Panjshanbe bazaar is the place to see it: apricots, grapes, melons, peaches, pomegranates and cherries in season, and mountains of dried apricots, raisins, walnuts and almonds the rest of the year, with the almonds of nearby Kanibadam and Isfara particularly prized. Chalop, a chilled mixture of sour milk with dill, coriander and vegetables, is a summer drink and light dish, and green tea is poured continuously with bowls of dried fruit and sweets for guests.