Kokand

Kokand takes its name from the Khokand or Khuqand of the medieval sources, a settlement on the caravan road between the Fergana Valley and the west that was destroyed by the Mongols and lay largely abandoned for centuries. It was refounded as a fortress in 1709 by Shahrukh Biy of the Ming tribe of Uzbeks, who had made themselves masters of the western valley, and from that fort grew the Khanate of Kokand.

Under Alim Khan, Umar Khan and Madali Khan in the first half of the 19th century the khanate expanded far beyond the valley, taking Tashkent, pushing north across the steppe to Turkestan and Hazrat-i Turkestan and south into the Pamirs, and controlling the caravan trade towards Kashgar and Russia. Umar Khan's court was a centre of Chagatai poetry, presided over in part by his wife Nodira, herself a celebrated poet, and the city filled with mosques, madrasas and the tombs of the ruling family. By the mid-century it was said to hold more than three hundred mosques, along with many madrasas.

Rivalry with the Emirate of Bukhara, revolts and dynastic murders weakened the khanate, and Russian expansion did the rest: Tashkent fell in 1865, and after an uprising the generals Kaufman and Skobelev annexed the khanate, which was abolished in 1876, its lands becoming the Fergana Oblast of Russian Turkestan. Khudayar Khan's palace, finished only a few years earlier, survived. Soviet rule brought cotton, a railway and light industry; many older religious buildings were demolished or converted. The late Soviet years and the decades since brought periods of unrest to the valley, and Kokand is now a provincial industrial and market town whose monuments have been restored for visitors.

Kokand carries the memory of a court city. Its 19th-century poets, above all Nodira, are part of the national literary canon, and the palace, the tombs and the madrasas are treated as monuments of Uzbek statehood rather than only as tourist sights. The city has long had a reputation for scholarship and for religious learning, and several of the old madrasas still stand.

Craft traditions run through everyday life in the western valley: pottery from Rishtan a short way east, woodcarving and ganch plasterwork of the kind that decorates the palace ceilings, knife-making, and embroidery. Kokand has hosted an international handicrafts festival since 2019, bringing artisans from many countries to the city. Music at weddings and holidays draws on the maqom tradition and on valley folk singing, with the surnay and doira leading processions.

Social life is organised by the mahalla, the neighbourhood association that runs weddings, funerals, and mutual help, and its committees carry real weight. The valley is more conservative than Tashkent: dress is modest, Friday prayers are well attended, alcohol is drunk more discreetly, and hospitality is emphatic — a visitor who stops to look at a courtyard gate is likely to be asked in for tea. Elders are greeted first, and the right hand, or both hands, is used to give and receive.

About 250,000 people live in Kokand, making it one of the larger cities of the Fergana Valley, in a district where villages and fields begin immediately beyond the last streets. Most families live in single-storey courtyard houses in the mahallas, with Soviet apartment blocks in the newer districts, and households are large by national standards; land and housing are scarce in the most densely settled part of the country.

The economy mixes industry, farming and trade. Chemical and fertiliser plants, a cotton mill and food processing date from Soviet planning; the surrounding district grows cotton, wheat, fruit and vegetables under irrigation; and the bazaar is the city's commercial heart. Many households depend on a member working in Tashkent, Russia or Kazakhstan, and remittances show in the newly built houses and wedding halls.

The day starts early, with bread bought hot and the market busiest before the sun gains strength, and slows in the middle of hot afternoons before reviving in the evening, when families walk in the park around the palace. Water for irrigation, gas and electricity supply in winter, and work for young people are the everyday concerns, and the city empties a little in summer as families visit relatives in the hills.

Kokand eats the food of the Fergana Valley. Plov here is made in the valley style, with the rice cooked together with the stock, meat, carrot and onion so that it takes on a deep colour, and it is eaten at midday rather than in the evening. Lagman, hand-pulled wheat noodles served in a spiced broth with mutton and peppers or fried as quruq lagman, is a valley staple, brought by Uyghur and Dungan settlers and now thoroughly local.

Bread is the fixed point of every meal: obi non baked on the wall of a tandoor, round and stamped in the centre, with the valley's own patterned versions sold at the bazaar. Samsa, pastries of lamb and onion or pumpkin baked in the same tandoors, are eaten standing up through the morning. Other everyday dishes include shurpa, a fatty mutton and vegetable soup; manti, large steamed dumplings served with sour cream; chuchvara, small dumplings in broth; and shashlik grilled to order.

The valley's orchards supply the rest: apricots fresh and dried, cherries, grapes, pomegranates and the melons that are piled in the markets from late summer. Kokand has a particular name for its halva and its sweets, sold in slabs at the bazaar alongside sugared nuts and dried mulberries. Green tea is drunk through the day, poured for guests before anything else arrives, and the teahouse is as much a meeting place as somewhere to eat.