Juma Mosque

Kokand’s most impressive mosque, built by Umar Khan in 1812, is centred on a 22m minaret and includes a colourful 100m-long aivan (portico) supported by 98 red-wood columns brought from India and decorated in the diverse colour and carving of traditional Ferghana architecture. The mosque is located south from Mukimi Park along Turkestan (ex-Lenin) Street, where the road forks beside the Ghuldasta teahouse to cross the Kokand canal bridge that once divided old and new Kokand. Khamza Street runs through this former heart of Muslim learning. The chief survivor of those days is the Juma (Jami) Mosque, the khanate's main mosque for Friday worship.

Built by Omar Khan between 1809 and 1812 as a magnified version of the rural Ferghana design, it was shut in Soviet times and reopened after restoration in 1989. The entire complex has reverted to its former Soviet guise as a museum (9am-5pm), with one room housing a collection of suzani and ceramics from the region. 

Nearby is the Amin Beg Madrassah, built for one of Madali's sons in 1830, but often named after Khornol Khozi, the 1913 restorer responsible for the ornamental facade of coloured tiles. The madrassah reopened after independence, only to be closed again and reopen as a museum/shop.

There are three other madrassas of note in the town: the 18th-century Narbutabey Madrassa (Nabiev) has an attached graveyard which includes the Modari Khan Mausoleum where Omar Khan and his wife, the poet Nadira Beg, are entombed; the Dasturkahanchi, a madrassa for teenage girls first built in 1833 (originally for male students) where they now study embroidery and other sewing skills; and the 19th-century Sahib Mian Hazrat Madrassa (Muqimi), which houses a small museum to the Uzbek poet Mohammad Amin Muqimi (1850-1903).