About Uzbekistan

Although the nowadays Jizzakh is most closely connected with Samarkand, historically it was not yet Sughd, and not Shash (where Tashkent is located), but Ustrushan - an ancient country near the northern foothills of Gissar in the present Sughd region of Tajikistan, Syrdarya and Djizak regions of Uzbekistan. The town was founded in the 10th century as a staging post on the Silk Road. The trade route from Ustrushana passing through Jizzakh was one of the most important in the Silk Road for the Ustrushan nephritis, so popular in the West. A well-preserved stone (not clay!) Muka fortress still remains in the Zaamin mountains as a reminder of those times.

The city of Gaza located in the plain was known from antiquity as a trading post and an important Silk Road junction on the road connecting Samarkand with Fergana Valley. This town is now associated by some historians with Jizzakh, the first reliable references to which under the current name can be found in the works of Arab geographers of the 10th century. But all this thousand years it was just a province, a powerful fortress on an important road, but not the capital or the fiefdom of some formidable khan. In the 19th century it was the center of Djizak disctrict (bekistan) of the Bukhara emirate. In October 1866, after a seven-day siege and a brutal assault, the Russian General Dmitri Romanovsky took the city under Russian control. 

As often happened in Russian Turkestan, the district Jizzakh was actually split into two different towns - the old and the new Russian one, in the vicinity of the railway station. Out of 15,000 of its population, 14,000 thousand were Sarts, whilst there were hardly 500 of European people. The buildings in the Russian part are scattered around the streets of Kushakov and Rashidov, in the triangle "railway station - Mount Etimtog - exit to Samarkand". This is the house closest to the station:

the bulding below was probably the district executive council 

since in the square opposite it there is a decapitated church of St. Nicholas (1900), closed in 1930.

Another church one, this time functioning is located further towards the exit from the city along Rashidov Avenue - it was founded in 1947 and built in 1975.

Overlooking the city is Etimtog Mountain, translated as Orphan Mountain, also know among the locals as Drunken Hill, identified by the restaurant-mill on top.

There are a number of cafes on and around the mountain, all specialising on the local delicacy - samsa! The role of the "capital of Samsa", as well as the "pilav's capital", is claimed by several cities, the most famous (and perhaps more successful in Tashkent) rival of Djizak in this respect is Gijduvan. But the Djizak samsa will without any doubt impress you - the size of a small loaf, hard and crispy on the outside, and so juicy inside, it is clearly not intended for eating on the go.

Almost nothing is left of Dzhizak's past: what you see is a 20th-century industrial town. Locals claim Dzhizak was merely earth and sky before the Rashidov era, when they say he even planned to make it the republican capital. Tree-lined avenues now mark a city devoid of antique appeal, but one which offers a quietly industrial picture of contemporary Uzbek life. There is no much to see in the town unless you are to be a rare species of true fan of Rashidov and his legacy.  Rashidov Square and the Rashidov Memorial Museum are both named in honour of Sharaf Rashidovich Rashidov despite his subsequent fall from favour.

At the centre of Rashidov Square there is president Rashidov's bust, Rashidov Garden adjacent to decaying oversized Hotel Uzbekistan. Rashidov Garden is featuring a chaikana and a two-storeyed madrassah founded in 1890 but used as a theatre in Rashidov's time. Independence restored it to religious use. Nearby is Rashidov's school and, a little further up Sharaf Rashidov Street, is the Sharaf Rashidov Memorial Museum (closed on Sundays), bursting with memorabilia from peasant childhood to Soviet statehood. Photos, paintings, embroideries and ceramics tell the official story. Pride of place goes to a stuffed crocodile presented by an admiring Fidel Castro.

Dzhizak's second most famous son, the gifted Uzbek poet and writer Hamid Alimjan (1909-1944). His life and works are on display in photos, paintings and literature in Memorial Museum up Sharaf Rashidov Street. In 1938 Alimjan wrote Zaynab and Aman, a story poem of love and women's liberation on a Soviet Uzbek collective farm. Promoting modernism over traditionalism, it was at heart a popular love story and the author's death six years later in a Tashkent traffic accident was much mourned. In 1958 his poetess widow turned the text into an opera.

Once at the top of Etimtog Mountain you can see another hill called Bogi-Shamol, or the Garden of Winds. There was originally built a monument of Friendship of Peoples. Now its central element is another Humo bird looking towards the Tamerlane Gate.

The two reasons you might come to (or through) Dzhizak are both located out of the city. Timur Darvaza (Timur's Gates) mark the narrow opening to the Zarafshan Mountains, the bottleneck that numerous soldiers have sought to defend (or at least died trying). Ulug Beg left an inscription here to mark his triumphant return home in 1425; other historic inscriptions are sadly hidden amongst the modern graffiti. Although the site itself is in some ways unimpressive (there are no structures to see), it's a place charged with history and you can easily appreciate its strategic importance in keeping invading hordes at bay. The Dzhizak-Samarkand minibuses pass right by, so it's easy to jump off, take a look, and hop back on the next one passing through.

The Zaamin National Park is 75km southeast of Dzhizak, along an uninspiring road that traverses a dusty steppe and former collective farms before taking a last minute turn up into the rolling hills and snow-capped mountains that ring Tajikistan. The oldest national park in Uzbekistan (founded in 1926), it covers around 460km2 of apricot orchards, juniper forest and alpine meadow and is crisscrossed by four rivers, the Aldashmansoy, Baikungur, Guralsh and Kulsoy.

Christened the V.I. Lenin Great Uzbek Highway, the four-lane M-39 strikes out southwest from Tashkent to follow silken routes to Samarkand, Shakhrisabz and, far to the south, Termez on the Afghan border. Some 64 kilometres from Tashkent, the road reaches Chinoz on the right bank of the Syr Darya. Here, in the last century, ferrymen rowed passengers on the hours crossing of the great expanse, while tsarist merchants pictured roaring river trade on Aral Sea steamships. The railway finally crossed the Syr Darya in 1895, linking Tashkent to Samarkand and the Trans Caspian line. Poor navigation on the shallow river forced abandonment of trade plans and Chinaz was turned to intensive cotton production, draining precious water resources. Earlier travellers bound for Dzhizak then faced a perilous journey across an arid zone the Russians called the Golodnya, or Hunger Steppe. The Buddhist monk Xuan Zang encountered it on his classic Silk Road pilgrimage from China to India in the seventh century:

We enter on a great sandy desert, where there is neither water nor grass. The road is lost in the waste, which appears boundless, and only by looking in the direction of some great mountain, and following the guidance of the bones which lie scattered about, can we know the way in which we ought to go.

Although irrigation and cultivation projects were underway in tsarist times, it took Soviet mass mobilization to effect the transformation one views today.

Getting there Dzhizak is just 203km and 95km from Tashkent and Samarkand respectively along the M39 or M34, but if you don't have your own vehicle then getting there can be a bit of a drag on account of the fact that the intercity bus stand is 10km out of the city on the M39 highway. The minibus ride to Tashkent takes 2,5 hours and costs US$3; the journey to Samarkand is just over an hour and costs US$2.