Urgench

Urgench is a young city with an old name. The original Urgench — Gurganj, later Konye-Urgench — rose between the tenth and fourteenth centuries as the capital of Khwarazm, a centre of science and trade whose court drew the polymath al-Biruni, and it was destroyed by the Mongols in 1221. That older city lies some way to the north-west, in what is now Turkmenistan.

When the Amu Darya shifted its course in the sixteenth century, old Urgench was left without water and was abandoned. The present city is much younger: New Urgench was founded by Russians in the second half of the nineteenth century on the site of a small trading station of the Khanate of Khiva, beside the Shavat canal, and it took the old name. It stayed a modest place while Khiva held the court and the monuments, but the Russian protectorate imposed on the khanate in 1873 and the cotton trade that followed gave it a role on the route by which cotton left the oasis.

The modern city is largely a Soviet creation. The Khorezm People's Soviet Republic, which had succeeded the Khanate of Khiva in 1920 with its capital at Khiva, was divided between the Uzbek and Turkmen republics in 1924, and Urgench became the administrative centre of the Uzbek side of the oasis, rebuilt on a grid of wide avenues with government buildings, a theatre, factories and blocks of flats. Irrigation canals were dug or enlarged across the oasis, cotton processing and food industries were established, and an airport and railway connected the region to the rest of the country. Since independence it has remained the region's administrative and transport centre, with Khiva next door taking the visitors.

Urgench is the administrative capital of Khorezm, and the region's cultural identity is strong. The local Uzbek dialect belongs to the Oghuz branch and sounds closer to Turkmen than the speech of Tashkent; Khorezmians notice the difference and are quick to explain it. The region's emblematic dance is the lazgi, fast and built on shoulder and hand movements, added to the UNESCO list of intangible heritage in 2019 and performed at weddings and on stage in the city's theatre.

Local pride rests heavily on the scholarly past of Khwarazm. Al-Khwarizmi, whose name lies behind the word algorithm, is generally held to have come from Khwarazm, and al-Biruni, the astronomer and geographer who died around 1050, was born at Kath in the same oasis; both are commemorated in statues, institutions and school lessons, and so is Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, the Khwarazmian ruler who fought the Mongols. The university carries much of the region's intellectual life, and the theatre stages Uzbek drama and Khorezm music.

Everyday custom is like the rest of Uzbekistan but with a Khorezm accent. Weddings are large and public, with music, dancing and hired halls, and the mahalla organises celebration and mourning alike. Tea is the first thing offered to a guest and refusing it outright is rude. Ramadan is observed by many without much visible restriction on daily life, and religious practice is generally quiet and private.

About 145,000 people live in Urgench, the capital of the Khorezm region. It is an administrative and service centre: the regional government, the university, hospitals, schools, the airport and the railway provide much of the work, alongside cotton processing, food industries, construction and trade. The oasis around the city is intensively farmed with cotton, rice, wheat, vegetables, fruit and the melons for which Khorezm is known, and canals from the Amu Darya run through the fields and into the city itself.

Life follows the heat: early starts, a quiet afternoon in summer and streets that fill again in the evening as families walk the avenues and the parks. Most people live in apartment blocks or courtyard houses with a vine and a small garden. Marriage remains early and families are large by European standards, and the mahalla is the unit that organises neighbourhood life.

The region's difficulties are those of the lower Amu Darya. Water is over-allocated upstream, soils have grown saltier, and the drying of the Aral Sea to the north has made summers hotter and dust more frequent. Wages are low, and many young people work seasonally or long-term in Tashkent, Kazakhstan, Russia or South Korea, sending money home; their remittances pay for much of the new building on the edges of the city. Tourism benefits Urgench indirectly, since most visitors land here on their way to Khiva.

Urgench eats Khorezm food, which stands slightly apart from the rest of Uzbekistan. The dish most associated with the region is shivit oshi, noodles coloured bright green with dill and served with a meat and vegetable stew. Tukhum barak, boiled pastry parcels filled with beaten egg and eaten with sour cream, is another Khorezm speciality found only here, and both appear on menus in the city as well as in Khiva.

The staples are shared with the rest of the country. Plov of rice, meat, carrot and onion is cooked in a kazan over a wood fire for weddings and guests; shurpa, a mutton broth with vegetables, and grilled shashlik are everyday fare; manti, large steamed dumplings, and lagman noodles fill out the table. Bread is obi non, baked against the wall of a clay tandir, stamped in the middle and bought fresh each morning, and somsa stuffed with lamb and onion comes from the same ovens. Fish from the Amu Darya is fried or grilled when it is available.

The oasis is famous for its melons and watermelons, stacked by the road and in the bazaar from August, and for apricots, grapes, pomegranates and rice grown with canal water. Green tea is drunk constantly, poured back into the pot before serving and set before a guest with bread, dried fruit and sweets.