Kokand is an ancient and beautiful city, which sometimes gets lost amid more lush Bukhara or Samarkand, but definitely worth visiting .During the eponymous Khanate, Kokand flourished, and it is still visible from its magnificent architectural heritage of those times - tiled mosques, tombs, madrassahs .After the decline caused by the collapse of the Union, the city for a long time remained without due attention of the authorities, but at the beginning of the millennium the situation began to improve little by little .Many old buildings have been restored, and modern high-rise buildings have also grown in the center .In a word, once the most "Europeanized" Uzbek city becomes modern .

How to get to Kokand

There is no airport in Kokand, so it is necessary to go here by ground transportation, for example, from Fergana or Khujand .It is easy to get to the city by car and from Tashkent .Local residents gladly pick up a few passengers, organizing a kind of transfer by taxi, which leaves very cheap .The journey takes three and a half hours, but the path lies through the mountain pass, which in bad weather can be closed .But good travelers are waiting for beautiful views and the opportunity to buy delicious and inexpensive products from mountain residents directly at the route .

A bit of history

The first written references to Kokand date back to the 2nd century BC .e .However, he gained fame only in the 10th century: then the settlement turned out on the Great Silk Road from China to India and from Persia, which made it a rather significant shopping center .In the 13th century, the city was destroyed by Mongolian tribes and for a long time lost its importance .In the 18th century the city was reborn and became the capital of the Kokand Khanate, and this was the period of the real heyday of Kokand .Here two important roads merged leading to the Fergana Valley from Tashkent and Khujand .In Kokand, a fortified citadel was built and a huge number of mosques were built, making it the center of pilgrimage and having the most important religious significance for the entire region .At the end of the 19th century, Kokand was taken by the Russian general Skobelev, and the city withdrew to the Russian Empire as part of the Fergana region .Different masters and rulers in their own way reshaped the city, which has so far retained many historical buildings and architectural evidence of the old epochs .

Entertainment, excursions and attractions of Kokand

The bulk of the architectural wealth of Kokand refers to the period of the Kokand Khanate, by the 18-19th centuries .One of the most expressive attractions can be considered the palace of Khudoyar Khan, famous for his ferocity and the tenacity of the ruler .This complex was built in 1871 g .and is a real magnificent eastern palace, as if from the tales of "A thousand and one nights" .In the middle of the symmetrical wide facade is a portal with a high pointed arch, on both sides of which and at the corners of the building are high minarets .The palace has about 100 rooms, and the area it occupies is 4 hectares .More than 16 thousand .builders worked on its creation literally under a whip, and the result was a surprisingly colorful exterior and inside construction, richly decorated with tiles from ceramics, with azure domes, mosaic arches and ornamental patterns everywhere .Now, alas, of the seven inner courtyards and a huge number of halls, only 2 courts and less than 20 halls have been preserved; But the palace of Khudoyar Khan still impresses .Today the museum of the history of the region is opened in it .

A significant historical attraction can be considered Damai Shahon, khan's tomb .The date of its foundation is 1825 g ., the time of the enlightened rule of Umarkhan, and since then there have appeared several tombs and sarcophagi, where the rulers of Kokand are buried .This is a low-rise building with a beautifully decorated facade, decorated with ornaments and wooden carvings, on which one can read the surahs of the Koran in Arabic and the poetic lines of the authorship of the Khan poet .When the tomb was built, the mosque-aivan, next to the cemetery .

Another construction of the same kind is the beautiful mausoleum of Madari-khan with a central turquoise dome, also built in 1825 .Unlike the generic Damayi Shahon, this tomb was intended exclusively for one burial: the mother of the ruling khan, Umarkhan .The portal, also tiled, differs somewhat from other samples of Kokand architecture with its color range: it uses not only traditional colors of white and blue gamma, but also yellow-red and green patterns .Near the mausoleum you can see a white stone monument erected in honor of the wife of Khan, Nadira, also a poetess executed by Bukhara emir .

The legacy of Kokand as a Muslim center was reflected in a number of preserved religious buildings, some of them impress with their appearance .Beautiful and graceful mosque Jami stands on Joros square .Destroyed by the Mongols, it was rebuilt in the early 19th century by Umarkhan, and to this day one can admire the skillful painted columns of aivan and khanaka with a richly decorated vault .On the walls of the mosque, there is a thin carving of carvings, and in the center of the courtyard there is a slender, lonely minaret with a height of more than 20 m with a dome .

Also in the city you can see several ancient madrassas .Madrassah of Norbut-Biya, built in the 18th century, stands not far from the Jami mosque .This one-storey, but powerful building with a double central arch and stocky towers, which today fulfills its direct purpose - is an educational institution .Madrasah Emir, also built in the 18th century, can be proud of an exquisite mosque that tourists can see from the inside .And one more small but interesting madrassah Kamol-kaki is to the west of the Jami mosque .It was built in the first half of the 19th century from baked bricks and decorated, like other traditional buildings, with an ornamental portal .

There is an Orthodox church in Kokand. The Church of Our Lady of Kazan was built in 1908, and the bells on the belfry were cast from old cannons. The biggest of them was "General Skobelev", a bell weighing 300 poods. After the establishment of Soviet power, the temple was destroyed, and a new one was built as early as 1945

A museum opened in 1959 in his native home was dedicated to a native of Kokand Khamza Khakimzade Niyazi. This poet won a certain recognition in the years of Soviet power as a talented writer, playwright and musician, the spokesman of the people's will. And in the madrassah of Mien Hazrat, built in the late 18th century, today opened the museum of Aminhuji Mukimi, the famous poet. The exposition of the museum includes not only objects related to the creativity and hujra of the poet, but also in principle related to the local poetry of that time.

At the beginning of the 20th century, various "capitalist" institutions appeared and flourished in Kokand. The buildings that they occupied, can still be seen on Soviet Street - for example, this is the "Russian-Aziatskiy Bank" built in 1910. Nearby is the stunning private residence of the merchant Vadyaev, the richest man in all of Turkestan. Now the mansion is occupied by the city administration. And opposite the mansion is the city telegraph in the same old and interesting building.

Ancient bridges of the city are also noteworthy. So, the Yalongoch-ota bridge on the Kokand-say river, built of bricks, with arched spans, is covered with an entertaining urban legend. Its name translates as "Naked Dervish", since the bridge was built on the money that such a dervish gathered alms. A similar story is connected with the construction of the Charhna-Kuprik bridge, financed by a simple spinner: the name of the bridge is translated - "The Bridge of Spinning". Looks beautiful and the old Stone Bridge - so much that Umarkhan posed on it for photography.