50 Fun Facts About Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is one of two doubly landlocked countries, with every neighbour landlocked too. Which is the other?

None of Uzbekistan's rivers reaches an ocean either; they drain into closed basins like the Aral Sea.

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.

Uzbekistan is the most populous country in Central Asia. Roughly how many people live there?

That is more than the other four Central Asian republics combined, and Tashkent is the region's largest city.

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

Cooking it was traditionally men's work, and the fat from a sheep's tail often goes in; it was not everyday food for ordinary people until the 1930s.

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

Teahouses called chaikhanas are social hubs; the capital 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.

By what name is Timur, the 14th-century conqueror based in Transoxiana, known in the West?

It comes from Timur-i Lang, 'Timur the Lame'; the 1941 exhumation of his skeleton confirmed he would have walked with a pronounced limp.

Timur was born near Kesh, about 80 km south of his future capital. What is that town called today?

Its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and holds the ruins of Timur's enormous Ak-Saray palace.

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

The sultan died in captivity, triggering a twelve-year Ottoman civil war known as the Interregnum.

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

He fell ill in camp beyond the Syr Darya and died at Farab without ever reaching the border; his body was taken back to his capital.

Soviet scientists opened Timur's tomb, the Gur-e-Amir, on 20 June 1941. What happened two days later?

Legend says an inscription warned that whoever disturbed the tomb would unleash an invader more terrible than Timur; Stalin reportedly had him reburied.

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?

Genghis Khan is said to have been so impressed by it that he ordered it spared while his men razed the city; the Red Army raised its flag from the top in 1920.

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

The khan who commissioned it in 1852 wanted the tallest minaret in the Muslim world; he died in 1855 and work simply stopped.

How many UNESCO World Heritage Sites does Uzbekistan have?

Five are cultural, including the walled inner town of Khiva and the Zarafshan-Karakum Silk Road corridor, and two are natural.

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

It covered 68,000 square kilometres; it has since shrunk to about a tenth of that and split into separate lakes.

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

Uzbekistan is still one of the world's biggest exporters of the fibre, and its harvest was long picked by conscripted state employees.

The former Aral port of Moynaq, once employing about 30,000 people, became known for what?

The shoreline retreated 30 to 90 km from the town; rusting trawlers sit on the sand of the Aralkum Desert.

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

Its people speak a Kipchak Turkic language closer to Kazakh than to Uzbek, and it has borne the worst of the salt and dust storms.

Uzbekistan ranks around seventh in the world for mining which metal?

About 80 tonnes a year come out of the ground, much of it from the vast Muruntau open pit in the desert.

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

The name means 'red sand'; 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?

It sits in the Gissar Range; most of the country is flat desert and steppe, and summer highs average around 40 °C.

Which conqueror seized the Persian provinces of Sogdiana and Bactria, in modern Uzbekistan, in 327 BC?

Local resistance was so fierce that his army bogged down for years, and he married the Sogdian noblewoman Roxana there.

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

Their language served as the trade lingua franca along the route from China to Persia for centuries.

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

The clash between the Abbasids and Tang China fixed the boundary of their influence in Central Asia for good.

The word 'algorithm' derives from the name of which 9th-century mathematician from Khwarazm?

'Algebra' also comes from the title of his book on solving equations; al-Biruni was another great scholar from the same region.

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

He wrote a candid memoir, the Baburnama, in Chagatai Turkic and never stopped pining for the melons of home.

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

Soviet-drawn borders left a tangle of enclaves there, and the valley holds a large share 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?

The three 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?

At its start about 3,200 km of largely unmapped territory separated British India from the Tsar's outposts; the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention is usually taken as its end.

In which year was the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic created?

Stalin's national delimitation carved Central Asia into republics along ethnic lines; over 1.4 million people from Uzbekistan later fought in the Red Army in World War II.

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

The city was rebuilt as a showpiece Soviet capital, which is why so much of it is wide boulevards and concrete.

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

Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died in the city the night after signing it.

The Tashkent Metro, Central Asia's first, banned photography until 2018. Why?

It opened in 1977 as the seventh metro in the USSR; its ornate stations were classed as military installations.

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

He had run the republic's Communist Party since 1989 and won every subsequent election with more than 90% of the vote.

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

He made the currency freely convertible, 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?

Witnesses put the toll in the hundreds; 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?

It was actually a return: a Latin alphabet had been used from 1926 until Soviet authorities switched to Cyrillic; both scripts remain in daily use.

What is the currency of Uzbekistan?

It replaced the Soviet rouble at par in July 1994 and only became fully convertible at market rates in September 2017.

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

It became the first Central Asian nation to reach the finals; the team's previous best was an Asian Cup semi-final in 2011.

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

Rustam Kasimdzhanov was FIDE world champion in 2004, and teenagers Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov have since won world titles.

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?

Bouts are fought standing, with throws only; the sport is now contested at the Asian Games.

Uzbekistan celebrates its Independence Day on which date?

Independence was declared on 31 August 1991 after the failed Moscow coup, and the following day was proclaimed the national holiday.

Central Asia's first high-speed railway, launched in 2011, links Tashkent with which city?

The Spanish-built Talgo 250 trainset on the route is named Afrosiyob, after the ancient site of the destination city.

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

Ethnic Tajiks are concentrated in both historic Silk Road cities and are estimated at a quarter or more of the national population.

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

Each region is further divided into districts called tumans.