50 Fun Facts About Uzbekistan

Besides Uzbekistan, which is the only other doubly landlocked country, with every neighbour landlocked too?

Liechtenstein, wedged between Switzerland and Austria, is the only other doubly landlocked country: both of its neighbours are themselves landlocked, just as all five of Uzbekistan's are.

Which of these countries does NOT share a border with Uzbekistan?

Uzbekistan touches all four other Central Asian republics plus a short stretch of Afghanistan, but never reaches Iran.

Which Uzbek city's walled inner town, Itchan Kala, was Uzbekistan's first UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Khiva's Itchan Kala, the mud-walled inner town packed with madrasas, minarets and the khans' palace, entered the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1990, the first site in Uzbekistan to do so.

What is Uzbekistan's signature rice, meat, carrot and onion dish?

Plov, called osh or palov in Uzbek, is rice cooked in a kazan with mutton, carrots and onions; traditionally it was cooked by men, and Uzbek palov culture joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2016.

What is Uzbekistan's national hot drink, offered to every guest without milk or sugar?

Green tea (kok choy) is poured for every guest, usually without milk or sugar; chaikhana teahouses are social hubs, and Tashkent is the exception where black tea is preferred.

Manti, chuchvara and somsa are all what?

Somsa are baked in a clay tandoor, manti are steamed and chuchvara are tiny boiled dumplings; mutton is the usual filling.

Which conqueror from Transoxiana sacked Delhi in 1398 and crushed the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402?

Tamerlane, the Western form of Timur-i Lang ('Timur the Lame'), sacked Delhi in 1398 and routed the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402; his 1941 exhumation confirmed a pronounced limp.

Timur's birthplace Kesh, 80 km south of his later capital, is which modern town?

Shahrisabz, 'green city', is modern Kesh; its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and holds the ruined gateway of Timur's enormous Ak-Saray palace.

At the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur captured which Ottoman sultan?

Bayezid I, 'the Thunderbolt', was taken prisoner at Ankara and died in Timur's captivity in 1403; his sons then fought an eleven-year civil war, the Ottoman Interregnum, until 1413.

Timur died in February 1405 while marching to invade which empire?

Timur was leading his army against Ming China when he fell ill at Otrar (Farab) on the Syr Darya in February 1405; his body was carried back to his capital for burial.

Two days after Soviet scientists opened Timur's tomb on 20 June 1941, what happened?

Nazi Germany invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941; legend holds that an inscription in the tomb warned that whoever disturbed it would unleash an invader more terrible than Timur, and Timur was reburied in November 1942.

How did the reign of astronomer-ruler Ulugh Beg, Timur's grandson, end in 1449?

His star catalogue was the most accurate produced for a century, but he was a poor ruler; his son Abd al-Latif rebelled and had him beheaded.

The Registan, a square framed by three tiled madrasas, is the centrepiece of which city?

The oldest of the three, the Ulugh Beg Madrasa (1417–20), predates the other two by two centuries; the square was also used for royal proclamations and public executions.

In which city does the 12th-century Kalyan Minaret, nicknamed the 'Tower of Death', stand?

The Kalyan Minaret has stood in Bukhara since 1127; Genghis Khan is said to have spared it while razing the city in 1220, and condemned criminals were thrown from its top.

The squat turquoise-tiled Kalta Minor in Khiva got its name, meaning 'short minaret', because of what?

The Kalta Minor was left unfinished: Muhammad Amin Khan began it in 1852 intending the tallest minaret in the Muslim world, but he died in 1855 and work simply stopped.

As of 2024, how many UNESCO World Heritage Sites did Uzbekistan have?

Uzbekistan had seven World Heritage Sites in 2024: five cultural, including the Zarafshan-Karakum Silk Road corridor added in 2023, and two natural, the Western Tien-Shan and the Cold Winter Deserts of Turan.

In 1960 the Aral Sea ranked where among the world's largest lakes?

In 1960 the Aral Sea was the world's fourth-largest lake, covering 68,000 square kilometres; since then it has shrunk to roughly a tenth of that area and split into separate lakes.

Soviet irrigation schemes for which thirsty crop are blamed for draining the Aral Sea?

Cotton was the crop: Soviet planners diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya into canals to irrigate it, and for decades Uzbekistan's harvest was picked by conscripted state employees and students.

The former Aral Sea fishing port of Moynaq became known for what?

Moynaq is known for its ship graveyard on dry land: rusting trawlers lie on the sand of the Aralkum Desert, the seabed exposed as the shore retreated more than 100 kilometres from the town.

Which autonomous republic occupies the north-west of Uzbekistan beside the shrunken Aral Sea?

Karakalpakstan, the autonomous republic of the north-west, takes in the dried Aral seabed; Karakalpak is a Kipchak Turkic language closer to Kazakh than to Uzbek, and the region bears the worst salt and dust storms.

Which metal is mined at Muruntau, one of the world's largest open-pit mines?

Gold: Muruntau, in the desert near the mining town of Zarafshan, has been worked since 1967 and is among the largest open-pit gold mines on Earth; the state firm Navoi Mining runs it.

Which desert covers much of Uzbekistan between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers?

The Kyzylkum, 'red sand', fills the land between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya; the Karakum, 'black sand', lies across the border in Turkmenistan.

The Amu Darya, on Uzbekistan's southern border, was known to the ancient Greeks as what?

The land between it and the Syr Darya (the Jaxartes) is Transoxiana, 'beyond the Oxus', the historic heart of the country.

Khazret Sultan, Uzbekistan's highest peak on the Tajik border, rises to roughly what height?

Khazret Sultan reaches 4,643 m in the Gissar Range on the country's south-eastern frontier; most of Uzbekistan, by contrast, is flat desert and steppe.

Which conqueror seized Persia's north-eastern provinces, in modern Uzbekistan, in 329–327 BC?

Alexander the Great spent 329–327 BC subduing fierce local resistance north of the Hindu Kush, then married Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian noble Oxyartes, in 327 BC.

Which Iranian people of Transoxiana produced the Silk Road's wealthiest merchant middlemen?

The Sogdians, an Eastern Iranian people of the oasis cities of Transoxiana, dominated the caravan trade, and Sogdian served as the Silk Road's lingua franca from China to Persia for centuries.

Legend says the Islamic world's first paper mill used Chinese prisoners captured at which battle of 751?

At Talas in 751 the Abbasid army defeated Tang China, and legend says captured Chinese papermakers then set up the Islamic world's first paper mill in Transoxiana; the battle fixed the limit of Chinese influence in Central Asia.

The word 'algorithm' comes from the Latinised name of which 9th-century mathematician?

Al-Khwarizmi, born in Khwarazm in today's western Uzbekistan, wrote the treatise whose title gave us 'algebra'; medieval translators rendered his name as 'Algoritmi', hence 'algorithm'.

Babur, a descendant of Timur born in the Fergana Valley, founded which South Asian empire?

Babur founded the Mughal Empire after taking Delhi at Panipat in 1526; his candid memoir, the Baburnama, written in Chagatai Turkic, never stops pining for the melons of home.

The fertile, densely populated Fergana Valley is divided between Uzbekistan and which two neighbours?

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan share the Fergana Valley with Uzbekistan; Soviet-drawn borders left a tangle of enclaves such as Sokh, and the valley holds about a quarter of Uzbekistan's population.

Which of these was NOT one of the emirate and two khanates that ruled today's Uzbekistan before the Russian conquest?

Kashgar lies in Xinjiang, China, and was never one of the three; the emirate and the two khanates fought each other constantly, which made the Russian advance of the 1860s and 1870s far easier.

What name is given to the 19th-century Anglo-Russian rivalry for influence over Central Asia?

The Great Game was the Anglo-Russian contest for Central Asia; about 3,200 km of largely unmapped territory separated British India from Russia's outposts at its start, and the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention is usually taken as its end.

In which year was the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic created?

The Uzbek SSR was carved out in the national delimitation of October 1924, when Stalin redrew Central Asia into republics along ethnic lines; it joined the USSR as a union republic the following May.

Much of Tashkent's old city was destroyed on 26 April 1966 by what?

A shallow earthquake centred beneath the city struck early on 26 April 1966, levelling much of the old town; Tashkent was then rebuilt as a showpiece Soviet capital of wide boulevards and concrete.

Leaders of which two countries signed a 1966 peace agreement in Tashkent, mediated by Soviet premier Kosygin?

India and Pakistan signed the Tashkent Declaration on 10 January 1966, ending their 1965 war; Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died in the city that same night.

Why did the Tashkent Metro, Central Asia's first, ban photography until 2018?

The metro doubled as a nuclear bomb shelter, so its ornate stations were classed as military installations; it opened in 1977 as the seventh metro in the USSR.

Who was Uzbekistan's first president, in power from independence in 1991 until his death in 2016?

Islam Karimov ran the republic's Communist Party from 1989, was made president of the Uzbek SSR in 1990 and led independent Uzbekistan from 1991 until his death in 2016, winning every vote by lopsided margins.

Which long-serving prime minister became Uzbekistan's second president in 2016 and began an 'Uzbek Spring'?

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, prime minister from 2003, took over on the death of the first president in 2016; he made the currency freely convertible in 2017, mended fences with the neighbours and even lifted the metro photography ban.

In which Fergana Valley city did troops fire on protesters in May 2005, killing at least 187?

Andijan, 13 May 2005: the official toll was 187, witnesses put it in the hundreds, and the fallout led Uzbekistan to evict the United States from its Karshi-Khanabad airbase.

In 1993 Uzbekistan adopted which alphabet, replacing the Cyrillic imposed in 1940?

Latin was actually a return: a Latin alphabet had been used from 1926 until the Soviet switch to Cyrillic in 1940, and Cyrillic stayed in everyday use for decades after the 1993 decree.

What is the currency of Uzbekistan?

The som has been Uzbekistan's currency since July 1994, when it replaced the transitional som-coupon at 1 to 1,000; it became freely convertible at market rates in 2017.

Uzbekistan's national football team qualified for its first ever World Cup for which tournament?

Uzbekistan booked its place at the 2026 World Cup in June 2025, the first Central Asian nation to reach the finals; its previous best was a semi-final at the 2011 Asian Cup.

Uzbekistan's team won gold at the 2022 Olympiad in Chennai in which game?

Uzbekistan won the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai in 2022, led by teenager Nodirbek Abdusattorov; Rustam Kasimdzhanov had been FIDE world champion in 2004.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Uzbekistan won five gold medals in which sport, topping its medal table?

The country had already topped the boxing standings in Rio 2016 with three golds, two silvers and two bronzes.

Oksana Chusovitina, who has competed at eight Olympic Games, represents Uzbekistan in which sport?

She won team gold for the Unified Team in 1992 and was still competing at 46 in Tokyo, decades past most gymnasts' retirement.

Kurash, whose international federation is headquartered in Uzbekistan, is a modernised form of what?

Kurash is a modernised form of traditional Uzbek wrestling: bouts are fought standing, with throws only and no groundwork, and it has been contested at the Asian Games since 2018.

Uzbekistan celebrates its Independence Day on which date?

Independence was declared on 31 August 1991 after the failed Moscow coup, and 1 September, the following day, was proclaimed Independence Day.

The Savitsky Museum, famed for its hoard of banned Soviet avant-garde art, is in which city?

Nukus holds the Savitsky Museum, founded in 1966, where Igor Savitsky amassed thousands of banned Soviet avant-garde works far from Moscow's eye.

Which variety of Persian is widely spoken in Bukhara and the city of the Registan?

Tajik, the Central Asian form of Persian, is the everyday language of much of both old Silk Road cities; official figures count ethnic Tajiks at about 5% of Uzbekistan, while unofficial estimates run far higher.

Besides Tashkent City and Karakalpakstan, how many regions (vilayats) make up Uzbekistan?

Uzbekistan has 12 regions (viloyatlar), from the Fergana Valley in the east to Khorezm in the west, alongside the capital city and the autonomous republic; each region is divided into districts called tumans.