Tashkent

Tashkent began as Chach, an oasis settlement on the Chirchiq river watered by canals, trading with the steppe nomads to the north and with the Sogdian cities to the south-west. Arab armies took it in the 8th century, when the name shifted towards Shash and then Tashkent, the "stone city" in Turkic. It was ruled in turn by the Samanids, the Karakhanids, the Khwarazmshahs, the Mongols and the Timurids, and under the Shaybanid Uzbeks in the 16th century it gained the Kukeldash madrasa that still stands above Chorsu. It was never a capital of empire like Samarkand or Bukhara, but it sat where the caravan roads met, and it grew rich on trade and craft.

In the early 19th century the Khanate of Kokand took the city and walled it. Russian troops under General Chernyayev stormed it in May 1865, and Tashkent became the seat of the Governor-General of Russian Turkestan. The Russians built a new town of avenues, churches and villas east of the old walls, leaving the mahalla quarters largely intact, and the railway arrived in 1889. In April 1918 the city became the capital of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and later of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Evacuation during the Second World War pushed the population past a million and brought Russian and Ukrainian industry, Polish refugees and much of the Soviet film industry.

On 26 April 1966 a shallow earthquake destroyed much of the centre, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless though killing comparatively few. Brigades from across the Soviet Union rebuilt the city to a new plan of broad avenues, squares and standard apartment districts, and the metro followed in 1977. Independence in 1991 brought new ministries, monuments and names; since the late 2010s glass towers, new parks and large-scale clearance of old housing have again changed the centre.

Tashkent is the most cosmopolitan city in Central Asia. Uzbek and Russian are both heard constantly, and the city is home to Tatars, Kazakhs, Armenians, Ukrainians and the Koryo-saram, Koreans deported from the Soviet Far East in 1937, whose salads and pickles are now a fixture of every bazaar. Russian remains a language of business and higher education, while Uzbek in the Latin alphabet dominates signage and official life.

The city sets national fashion in music, clothes and weddings. Uzbek pop and estrada fill the taxis, classical maqom and Alisher Navoi's poetry are taught in the conservatoires, and the opera and ballet theatre has been at work since it opened in 1947. Football is followed closely, with the national team playing at the Milliy Stadium, and kurash, the local jacket wrestling, is a point of pride.

Everyday manners follow the mahalla, the neighbourhood community that organises weddings, funerals and disputes and still carries real authority. Elders are greeted first and served first; a hand on the heart accompanies a greeting; bread is broken by hand, never cut, and never left face down. Weddings are large, early and public, often beginning with a dawn plov for hundreds of guests; the government has at times legislated to limit their size and cost. Tea is offered to every visitor, and the first cup is poured back into the pot several times before being served.

About three million people live in the city, making it the largest in Central Asia, and the metropolitan area is larger still. Most live in apartment districts built after 1966 — Chilanzar, Yunusobod, Sergeli and others — in blocks around courtyards, shops and schools, while the older mahallas of low courtyard houses survive in patches near the old city. Rents and property prices have risen sharply, and the demolition of older housing for new towers is among the most contested issues in the city.

Tashkent holds the ministries, the universities, the banks and most large businesses, and draws workers from the whole country, especially the crowded Fergana Valley. Government service, trade, construction, transport and a growing technology and service sector provide the work; remittances from Uzbeks working in Russia and Kazakhstan matter here less than in the provinces but still matter. Wages are low by international standards and many households run a second job.

The day starts early, with bread bought fresh in the morning and offices open by nine, and the streets stay busy well into the evening in summer, when families sit out in the parks after dark. Winter brings smog trapped over the city, and air quality, water supply and the loss of old trees to road widening are regular complaints. At weekends those who can drive north-east to the mountains and the Charvak reservoir.

Plov, called palov or osh, is the centre of the city's food. Tashkent's own style is a wedding plov, to'y oshi, cooked at dawn in cauldrons over wood, with rice coloured by carrots and onion and topped with mutton, chickpeas, quail eggs and slices of sausage; the plov centres serve it by the plate until the cauldrons are empty, usually in the early afternoon. The city's other signature is norin, cold hand-cut noodles tossed with thin slices of boiled horse meat and onion, a Central Asian dish long associated with Tashkent.

Bread is central: obi non, round loaves stamped in the middle and baked on the walls of a tandoor, are sold hot everywhere and differ from town to town. Samsa, flaky or tandoor-baked pastries filled with lamb and onion or pumpkin, are eaten at any time of day. Lagman, hand-pulled noodles in broth or fried with vegetables, came with Uyghur and Dungan settlers; manti, large steamed dumplings, and chuchvara, small ones in soup, are everyday food; shashlik is grilled to order over charcoal. Shurpa, a fatty mutton and vegetable soup, and mastava, a rice soup with sour milk, fill the winter table.

Green tea is drunk through the day, often with sugared nuts or halva. Korean salads and kimchi sold in the bazaars have become part of the local diet, and Russian, Georgian, Turkish and Korean restaurants are common. Melons, grapes, apricots and pomegranates arrive in season in great quantity, and are dried for the winter. Local beer and brandy are produced, and coffee houses have spread quickly among younger people in the past decade.