The capital of Uzbekistan, and Central Asia’s premier metropolis, Tashkent betrays little of 2.000-year history at the crossroads of ancient trade routes. Romantic notions of a Silk Road oasis lie buried beneath the avenues of socialism. Yet this modern city of 2.3 million people, the fourth largest in the CIS after Moscow, St Petersburg, and Kyiv, holds much to arrest the curious traveler, from imposing squares, monumental architecture, and fine museums, to the mud-brick maze of the old Uzbek town, autumn colors on dappled poplar lanes and the sweet spray of fountains on burning summer days.
The Tashkent oasis lies on the Chirchik River, within sight of the foothills of the western Tian Shan. Mountain meltwater feeds the river, in turn feeding the Syrdarya on whose middle reaches once lay the principality of Chach. Archeologists battling myth and legend call its first capital Kanka, a square citadel founded between the fifth and third centuries BC, eight kilometers from the Syrdarya. By the seventh century AD, after the Sakas, Sassanians, and Hephthalites, prominence shifted to the fertile Chirchik valley, focusing on trade between Sogdian settlers and Turkic nomads. Over 50 irrigation canals nurtured more than 30 towns as Chach blossomed into an exporter of cattle, horses, gold, silver, and precious stones. The seventh-century remains of the ruler’s fortress were found at Mingur-yuk, ‘thousand apricot orchard’, now deep in the Russian quarter of Tashkent. In 751, invading Chinese troops executed the prince of Chach, provoking the Arab invaders to crush them at Talas. Thereby the supremacy of Islam was established and Chinese hopes of Central Asian hegemony were terminated.
Under Samanid rule in the ninth century the capital became known as Binkath, Arab pronunciation turned Chach to Shash and city walls fortified its mosques. Merchants rested their caravans here after the hazardous journey from China over steppe and mountain, before continuing to Samarkand and Bukhara. Arab visitors described a verdant place of vineyards, bazaars, and craftsmen. Karakhanid rule from the late tenth century maintained such prosperity and bequeathed a new, Turkish name: Tashkent, “stone village”.