One can easily think that Kashkadarya is a remote and almost medieval region. In fact, on the contrary – it is one of the most populous (almost 3 million inhabitants) and rich regions of Uzbekistan, and most of it is a fertile steppe with oil and gas fields that give Uzbekistan 90% of production. The capital of Kashkadarya is Karshi (254 thousand inhabitants), another example of a “non-tourist” Uzbek regional center (like Gulistan, Jizak, Navoi, Urgench, Nukus), and moreover – one of the most interesting such examples.
Karshi is a very ancient city, which has undergone several reincarnations for more than two thousand years. History has not preserved the Sogdian name of the original city on the way from Bactria to Merv, now the settlement of Erkurgan in the immediate vicinity, that was known to the Greeks as Xenippa – it was a stronghold of the revolt of Spitamen against Alexander the Great, but it was destroyed much later, in the 6th century, during the campaign of the Turks against the Ephthalites, the then masters of Bactria, who came there as the “White Huns”.
But the oasis did not dry up, the trade route was too important to be cut off, and almost immediately the neighboring Nakhshab, known as Nasaf to the Arabs who conquered this region in 699, came to life. Nasaf was not even a city, but rather a polycentric agglomeration with a fortress in Nakhshab proper and the huge trading villages of Kasbi and Bezda on the Great Silk Road. Somewhere between 1318-25, Karshi was added to them: in the language of the time, this word meant “palace”, “castle” or “stake”, which was set up in the oasis by Chagatai Khan Kebek, a descendant of Chagatai, who was killed here by conspirators.
By the beginning of the 19th century the name Nasaf remained only for the bekstvo (small feud region) in the Kashkadarya valley, and Karshi, having subjugated other villages of the oasis, grew into the city N2 of the whole Bukhara emirate, in 1860s with 25 thousand population 2-3 times exceeding Samarkand. In 1916 the Bukhara Kagan-Termez railroad passed through Karshi, and in 1919 Mahmud-khoja Bekbudi, a Tajik-Uzbek writer and educator, was executed here by the order of the last emir, after whom the city, which entered the USSR in 1924 together with the Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic, was renamed in 1926-37.
By the standards of Uzbekistan, the city is quite large, and it is organized very simply: from the station to the north leads a long-long Uzbekistan Street, on which are strung the New City and the Old City. Basically, if you are a tourist just stroll along this street and you will get the impression of the city. At the place where a small and muddy Kashkadarya river crosses Uzbekistan Street is the most interesting construction of the city, the Nikolaev Bridge:
It is 122 meters long with 10 arches, 8 meters wide, 5 meters high above the water, and it has been known since the 16th century, when Abdullah Khan II launched a natural state program of infrastructure development throughout the Bukhara Khanate, building hundreds of bridges, dams and sardobas. But the khanate was steadily declining, most of those structures by the 19th century came into disrepair, and even this single surviving bridge is not by chance called Nikolaevsky – it was thoroughly repaired in 1914 by Russian engineers. The pavilions on the edges are replicas: the originals were demolished in 1960, as they were in some way interfering with the public transportation running on the bridge at that time.
The Kashkadarya River below the dam in its natural channel. And such a river gives the name to a whole region.
The square below is nothing else but the local Registan: it is not a proper name, but just a designation of the main square in medieval Turkestan cities. Karshi’s Registan, of course, is not as grandiose as the one in Samarkand, but unlike Tashkent’s or Bukhara’s, at least it has been preserved in principle. The most part of it is a lawn, behind Uzbekistan Street there is a bazaar, which was an attribute of any Registan originally, but on the edges, as in Samarkand, there are madrasahs. At its best times the ciy had as many as 7 (!) of them. The foundations belong to the madrassahs of Shir-Muhammed (1865), Khoja-Kurban and Sharapa-khoja (early 18th century), demolished under the Soviets:
Four more have survived. Abdulaziz Madrasah (1909) on the north side of the square
The miniature Klychbai madrassah is on the eastern side:
It now houses the library of the Altyn-Meros Cultural Foundation:
In the south of the square is the larger Bekmir madrassah (1903):
Some of its cells are now used to sew suzane, others to fix computers:
But the most interesting Odin-madrassah stands on the corner of Registan, built in the 16th century on the site of that very “karshi” of Kebek Khan. But most importantly, among the hundreds of madrassas in the Bukhara Emirate, it was the only one for women:
And behind Odina lurks also a sardoba, i.e. an underground water tank, part of the same “state program” of Abdullah II:
Its building is completely typical – it is very impressive that in the East of the 16th century they already possessed a serial construction of technical objects. But unlike other sardobas (for example, in Malik Rabat or in Bukhara), which are full of water, it is possible to descend into the Karshi’s one – under the dome there is absolutely amazing acoustics with the thunder of footsteps and sighs.
Of course Karshi is a historical city, but the trouble is that except for the Nikolaev Bridge there is hardly anything unique here. There is a small park with an artificial lake and – the main “feature” – an ice-cream parlor in an old Yak-40 airplane. Around a kilometer from here on the parallel street passing behind the bazaar you can find a huge Friday mosque called Kok-Gumbaz (Blue Dome) 1590th years of construction.
The courtyard of the mosque with an old tree. It is believed that it was built on the site of the Namazgoh mosque – such mosques were usually located outside the city and were intended for the largest open-air worship services, but the city by the 16th century itself sprawled and surrounded the mosque.
The next interesting object is in the New Town, two kilometers away from the mosque. This is the “war memorial” or “Mound of Glory” (this is its official name). Perhaps, it is the most interesting construction in Karshi after the Nikolaev Bridge.
At sunset the rotunda with stained-glass windows looks amazing, and you feel either in a temple or in a theater of light and shadows, where your imagination draws music a la Shostakovich to the history unfolding around you.
The monument is also a viewing platform.
