Samarkand, Bukhara & the Silk Road

The Zarafshan valley was the heart of Sogdiana. Samarkand, known to the Greeks as Maracanda, was already a walled city on the hill of Afrasiyab when Alexander the Great took it in 329 BC, and for centuries Sogdian merchants from here and from Bukhara ran caravan trade between China, Persia and India; murals of foreign envoys found at Afrasiyab show the city at its height in the 7th century. The Arabs conquered both cities in the early 8th century, and under the Samanids in the 9th and 10th centuries Bukhara became a capital of Persian literature and Islamic scholarship; Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was born near the city.

Genghis Khan's armies sacked both cities in 1220, though Bukhara's Kalyan minaret survived. Timur made Samarkand the capital of his empire from 1370, bringing craftsmen from conquered lands to build mosques and mausolea, and his grandson Ulugh Beg governed there as a scholar-prince, building a madrasa on the Registan and a great observatory.

From the 16th century the Shaybanid Uzbeks ruled from Bukhara, and the city remained the seat of a khanate and later the Emirate of Bukhara. Russia took Samarkand in 1868 and made Bukhara a protectorate; the Red Army captured Bukhara in 1920 and the last emir fled to Afghanistan. In Soviet times Navoiy grew as a mining city, and the Hunger Steppe of Jizzakh and Sirdaryo was irrigated for cotton.

Samarkand and Bukhara are historically Persian-speaking cities, and Tajik remains the everyday language of many families, alongside Uzbek and Russian. This double identity is a sensitive subject, but it runs through the region's music, poetry and humour. Bukhara was also home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Central Asia, the Bukharan Jews, most of whom emigrated after 1991.

Religion carries deep roots here: the shrine of Bahauddin Naqshband near Bukhara, founder of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, and the memorial complex of Imam al-Bukhari, the great collector of hadith, near Samarkand draw pilgrims from across the Muslim world. Nurata's holy spring is another pilgrimage site.

Crafts flourish: suzani embroidery in Bukhara, ceramics from Gijduvan, and paper made from mulberry bark by hand near Samarkand, and Sharq Taronalari brings musicians from around the world to the Registan.

Samarkand, one of the country's largest cities with more than half a million people, divides into the old town around the monuments and the Russian-era city of tree-lined avenues to the west. Bukhara is smaller and quieter, and its old centre is still lived in, with families in courtyard houses a few steps from the madrasas. Tourism is a major employer in both, with guesthouses, craft workshops and restaurants opening every year.

Beyond the cities the economy is very different. Navoiy region is the centre of Uzbekistan's gold industry, with the huge Muruntau open-pit mine in the Kyzylkum, while Jizzakh and Sirdaryo are flat irrigated farmland of cotton and wheat on the old Hunger Steppe, around the towns of Jizzakh and Gulistan. Herders still graze sheep and camels in the desert.

Days begin early at the bazaar and end with long evenings outdoors. Water shortages, the pressure of tourism on old neighbourhoods and the restoration of monuments are much-discussed issues.

Plov is made differently in each city, and cooks in Samarkand and Bukhara keep their own family and neighbourhood versions. Samarkand is famous across the country for its thick, glossy round bread, Samarqand noni.

Bukhara's markets sell samsa and shashlik, and halva in many varieties appears among the sweets. The Zarafshan valley grows grapes, apricots, peaches and melons, and dried fruit and nuts are sold in heaps in the Siyob bazaar in Samarkand.

Green tea is drunk everywhere. Samarkand's Khovrenko winery, the oldest in the country, founded in 1927, offers tastings of its dessert wines. In the desert, fermented camel's milk, chal, is a traditional drink.

Samarkand's Registan is the centrepiece: the Ulugh Beg madrasa of the 1410s and the 17th-century Sher-Dor and Tilya-Kori madrasas, the last with a gilded mosque interior. Nearby stand the vast Bibi-Khanym Mosque, Timur's ribbed-dome mausoleum, the Gur-e-Amir, the tiled avenue of Shah-i-Zinda, the Afrasiyab museum with its murals, and the remains of Ulugh Beg's observatory.

Bukhara's old town is best explored on foot: the Kalyan minaret and mosque, the Mir-i-Arab madrasa, the Ark fortress, the 10th-century Samanid mausoleum, the Bolo Hauz mosque, the domed bazaars, the four-towered Chor Minor and the Lyab-i Hauz pool. On the outskirts are the emir's summer palace, Sitorai Mohi Hosa, and the Naqshband shrine, with Gijduvan's potteries further out.

North of the Zarafshan, Nurata has its holy spring and ruined fortress, the Nuratau mountains shelter village homestays, and beyond them the Kyzylkum yurt camps sit near Lake Aydarkul. Between Samarkand and Bukhara stands Rabat-i Malik, and in the Zaamin National Park in Jizzakh juniper forests cover the Turkestan range.