We saved the big city for last.

Tashkent is a thoroughly Russian creation. It was only a small town when the Tsarist forces first invaded, but it grew quickly with the arrival of the railroad. During the Bolshevik revolution, Tashkent was the most loyal to the communist cause, and the soviet government quickly established it as the capital of its holdings in Central Asia.

Independence left Tashkent as the capital of Uzbekistan, even though it is in one isolated corner of the country. The Uzbek government added a few monumental structures of its own, and the city now counts 2 million inhabitants, the largest in Central Asia.

With so little history, we allotted only a day and a half to Tashkent. Despite rainy weather, we walked around a lot, first to a disappointing history museum, then to the more interesting old town that still occupies a small section around the pre-soviet bazaar.

On the edge of the old town is the one really unique site, Khast Imom, the Islamic center of Uzbekistan. The huge mosque is new, but nearby is a 16th-century Timurid madrassa and a mausoleum of an early Islamic scholar.

But the most remarkable thing is a small building that holds a huge Koran reputed to be one of the five that Uthman, the third caliph, made to standardize and preserve the text in 651 AD. Most of the copies have been lost, but it is believed that this one fell into the hands of Timur during one of his 14th-century campaigns. The giant book then came to Samarkand, and after a brief interlude in St. Petersburg, it was finally sent to Tashkent. Although its authenticity as the oldest surviving Koran cannot be verified, it is clearly a very ancient copy, written on parchment in Kufic script without vowel markings. Photos were not allowed, but you can see fairly good pictures of the book and its text near the bottom of this external page.

On the morning of our second day, we visited a mildly interesting art museum, then took a taxi to the Kazakh border. This was the last border we needed to cross on foot, and we had no problems once I convinced the guard that our traveler’s cheques were not really money. We had made it through Uzbekistan without a single bribe.