Margilan

Margilan is one of the oldest towns of the Fergana Valley, and local tradition dates it to antiquity, linking its foundation to the campaigns of Alexander the Great; the valley it stands in was the country the Han Chinese called Dayuan, whose horses drew their armies west in the 2nd century BC. Its documented importance begins with the Silk Road: caravans crossing between Kashgar and the cities of the Zarafshan passed this way, and Arab geographers of the 10th century already name it as a town of the valley.

Silk is the thread running through its history. Mulberry trees grew along the irrigation canals, silkworms were raised in village houses, and the town's weavers developed the resist-dyed warp technique known as ikat, whose blurred patterns give khan-atlas and the heavier half-silk adras their rippling edges. Under the Khanate of Kokand, Margilan was a wealthy trading town of merchants and craft guilds, and it was annexed with the rest of the khanate by Russia in 1876. The Russians built their administrative centre not here but a few kilometres away, calling it New Margilan; that town is now Fergana.

Soviet rule industrialised the craft, building a large silk combine and collectivising the mulberry groves, while private weaving continued quietly in the mahallas. The town gained a reputation both for religious conservatism and for trade, and its markets did well from the informal economy of the late Soviet years. Since independence the hand workshops have revived, partly through international interest in natural dyes and ikat, and silk-making has been recognised as living heritage.

The town's identity is bound up with cloth. Khan-atlas, the bright silk whose pattern is dyed into the warp threads before weaving, is worn across Uzbekistan in dresses and coats, and Margilan is where much of it is made; adras, the sturdier mix of silk and cotton, is used for coats and cushions. Hand workshops pass the skills through families, and the dyer, the warp-tier and the weaver are separate trades. Suzani embroidery and skullcap making are practised here too.

Margilan has long been considered one of the more devout towns of a devout valley. Mosques anchor the mahallas, Friday prayers are well attended, and dress in the street is modest; women more often wear the atlas dress and headscarf than in Tashkent. The mahalla committee organises weddings, funerals and mutual support, and its approval matters in family affairs.

Hospitality follows valley custom. Guests are seated at a dastarkhan spread with bread, sweets, nuts and fruit before anything cooked appears; tea is poured by the youngest present, the first cups returned to the pot; bread is torn by hand and never set upside down. Weddings are large and start early, often with a plov served to hundreds before noon, and the whole street takes part. Visitors who show interest in the looms are usually invited in.

About 250,000 people live in Margilan, in a town that runs almost without a break into the surrounding villages and into the city of Fergana to the south. Most families live in courtyard houses in the mahallas, several generations together, with newer apartment blocks in the districts at the edge. The Fergana Valley is the most densely populated part of Uzbekistan, and land, water and housing are under constant pressure.

Work is in textiles above all — the silk combine and smaller factories, the hand workshops, and the trade in cloth through the markets — alongside farming in the irrigated fields around the town, small-scale commerce and public employment. Wages are low, and a great many households have a son or husband working in Russia, Kazakhstan or Tashkent; the money sent home pays for building and for weddings.

Days begin before dawn in summer, with bread and the market early, work through the morning, a long pause at the hottest hours and a second round of activity in the evening, when the streets fill again and families visit. The market days at Kumtepa set the rhythm of the week. Water for irrigation, winter gas and power supply, and the future of hand weaving against cheap machine-printed cloth are the recurring local concerns.

Margilan eats the food of the Fergana Valley, and its cooking is plainer and less elaborate than Samarkand's. Plov is made in the valley manner, the rice cooked together with the meat, carrot and onion in one cauldron so that it absorbs the stock and darkens, and served at midday. Wedding plov is made in enormous quantities and served early in the morning to guests who then go to work.

Lagman is the town's other staple: wheat noodles pulled by hand and served in a broth with mutton, peppers and tomato, or fried with the same ingredients. Samsa baked on the wall of a tandoor, filled with lamb and onion or with pumpkin in autumn, are sold hot through the morning; manti, large steamed dumplings, and chuchvara, small ones in soup, appear on most tables. Shurpa, a rich mutton and vegetable soup, is winter food, and shashlik is grilled over charcoal at every market.

Bread is baked in the tandoor as obi non, round loaves stamped in the middle, with patterned versions for holidays. The valley's orchards supply apricots, cherries, grapes, pomegranates and melons, eaten fresh in season and dried for the winter, and heaps of dried fruit and nuts fill the bazaar rows. Green tea is drunk all day, sweets and halva are served with it, and the teahouse remains the main place to sit and talk.