Isfara
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Isfara Исфара |
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| Basic data | |||
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| State : |
 Tajikistan
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| Province : | Sughd | ||
| Coordinates : | 40 ° 8 ' N , 70 ° 38' E | ||
| Height : | 863 m | ||
| Area : | 832 km² | ||
| Residents : | 40,600 (2008) | ||
| Population density : | 49 inhabitants / km² | ||
| Postal code : | 735920 | ||
| Structure and administration | |||
| Community type: | city | ||
| Mayor : | Muhiba Jakubowa | ||
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Isfara ( Tajik / Russian Исфара ) is a city and the capital of the district of the same name in the province of Sughd in northern Tajikistan . The city, located in the fertile Ferghana Valley and on the Isfara River , is known for the cultivation of apricots and, as a border town, benefits from trade with neighboring Kyrgyzstan .
location
The city of Isfara is located in the south-western part of the Ferghana Valley at an altitude of 863 meters in a shallow depression of the Isfara River. The plain is surrounded on three sides by rocky and unpopulated mountains with sparse grass cover, which reach heights between 1500 and 2500 meters. On the Isfara, which flows from north to south parallel to the Kyrgyz border and - after it has crossed the city - along the Uzbek border, several villages line up between the fields. The main crops in the Isfara area are apricots. In 2010 apricot trees grew on 6,683 hectares. These produce a yield of five to eight tons per hectare.
The Isfara Valley is one of the most densely populated regions in Central Asia. However, there is not enough water for irrigation. Another agricultural valley stretches from Isfara on a tributary to the east. Navgilem is an eastern suburb that has merged with Isfara. Further east in this valley, which lies as a narrow strip of Tajikistan between the two neighboring countries, the villages of Kulkent and Tschilgasi (Chilgazi) follow.
Isfara is about 90 kilometers from the provincial capital Khujand . From the northwestern city of Konibodom , Isfara can be reached either on a 28-kilometer direct road with good asphalt pavement, which leads through uninhabited dry area, or on a somewhat poorer road further east in the Isfara Valley. On this route the distance to Khujand is 107 kilometers. The border crossing to Kyrgyzstan is located a few kilometers east in the Kyrgyz village of Kyzyl-Bel on the road to Batken . In the Isfara valley in a southerly direction, after 20 kilometers a road leads to the village of Chorkuh (Chorku) and on to the Tajik enclave of Woruch (Vorukh) in Kyrgyzstan .
The district ( nohiya ) Isfara with an area of 831.9 square kilometers includes the enclave Woruch. It borders on the Konibodom district in the north, Uzbekistan in the east and Kyrgyzstan in the south. The nine sub- districts (districts, jamoat ) with a total population of 202,600 given for 2002 are called Kulkent, Navgilem, Chonabod (Khonabad), Lakkon, Tschilgasi (Chilgazi), Surch (Surkh), Tschorku, Woruch and Schahrak.
The average temperature of the continental climate, which is dry in summer , is −7 ° C in January and 25 ° C in July. The annual mean precipitation is 200 millimeters.
history
In the vicinity of Isfara, 70 Kurgane were found on the edge of today's agricultural areas , which testify to a sedentary to semi-sedentary culture, which dates from the 2nd century BC. Until the first centuries AD buried her dead under burial mounds. The approximately 50 centimeter high Kurgane made of gravel, gravel and sand with a diameter of six to nine meters were laid out at a distance of five to ten meters on a hill on the edge of the valley.
Isfara is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia. In the 7th century, the poet Saifi Isfarangi lived here, whose work, written in Tajik, comprises over 12,000 lines. The Persian historian at-Tabarī (839-923) mentions Isfara, which was then called Asbara, in connection with the conquests of the Umayyad general Qutaiba ibn Muslim (670-715), who penetrated the Ferghana Valley in 712/3 before attempting an uprising was murdered against the caliph by his own troops. As a result, the Umayyads had to withdraw from the Fergana Valley and the indigenous Sogdians were able to regain power in parts of their territory in 721. According to Muslim geographers of the 9th and 10th centuries, like Asbara, other places in the Fergana Valley had Sogdian names. There was also a Turkish population group. After the Persian Samanids , the Turkish ruling dynasty of the Karakhanids followed in the 11th century . Buildings and tombstones of the Karakhanids from the 12th century have been preserved, including an Arabic inscription in Woruch dated 1041. Isfara was a trading post on the northern Silk Road at that time . The city produced a regional school for building ornamentation. The country's most important medieval wood carvings from the 10th century have been preserved in the Tschorkuh mosque.
The founder of the Mughal Empire in India, Babur (1482–1530), who came from the Ferghana Valley , referred to the inhabitants of the Isfara region as Persian- speaking Sarts (meaning Tajiks ) in his memoirs ( Baburnama ). In the 16th and 17th centuries, several mosques and madrasas were built in the city . In the 1750s, Uzbek rulers of the Ming conquered the Fergana Valley in the battle against the Chinese Qing dynasty . The local ruler Erdeni Bey (Irdana Bey) brought Isfara under the rule of the expanding Kokand Khanate after the Khanate had recovered from the numerous internal unrest and fights with all its neighbors in the previous decades. With more fights including against Uroteppa ( istaravshan weakened again), 1758 had Erdeni the supremacy accept the Chinese.
The area of today's Tajikistan and Uzbekistan became a Russian colony with new administrative borders in 1868 . The districts of Andijon , Kokand, Marg'ilon , Namangan , Osh , Chust and the Chemion district, which was renamed Isfara in 1879 , now belonged to the Ferghana Province within the General Government of Turkestan . Geographical, ethnic and other existing structures hardly played a role in the new division. A border change adopted in 1925 brought the Tajiks a majority in a region of Khujand (today Sughd ) in the western Ferghana Valley, which, in addition to the city of Khujand, consists of the cities of Isfara, Konibodom and the village of Asht further north.
Promoted by Russian immigrants, the Isfara Valley developed into a flourishing agricultural center from the end of the 19th century. In 1953, Isfara began to develop into an urban center. In the 1950s, industrial plants were established across the country; This program included a factory for electromagnets in Isfara in the early 1960s . The relatively well-paid work attracted migrants from Russia and Ukraine . Another important employer was the hydrometallurgical combine, which should have resumed operations in spring 2014 after its closure in the early 1990s. The opening of an airport in Isfara in the 1960s should serve the economic upswing, because despite a mountain road from Tashkent via Angren to Kokand, which was completed in 1959, the Fergana valley was still poorly developed. After independence, the airport ceased operations due to a lack of funds.
In 1989, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were interethnic conflicts in the Ferghana Valley. In the Isfara district, three Tajik villages were affected, the residents of which fought with villagers in the neighboring Kyrgyz Batgen district over possession of land and water. Several people died and dozens were wounded by bullets in the clashes over 100 hectares of land in Kyrgyzstan to be exchanged for 144 hectares of Tajikistan land. A meeting between the Kyrgyz and Tajik presidents to resolve the border conflict, planned for May 1991, did not take place.
In the Isfaratal there is the oldest known brown coal deposit in Central Asia, which is known as the Shurab Depot and has been exploited from 1902 until today. In the Middle Ages the coal from Isfara was melted down together with iron ore from Soch . According to historical sources, iron bars were sent from Isfara to the caliph in Baghdad in the 9th century in 1330 .
Militant fighters of the Islamic Movement Uzbekistan (IBU, Uzbek Oʻzbekiston islomiy harakati ), some of whom come from the Ferghana Valley and who were active in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, had a base of operations in Isfara. Two of its members were arrested in Isfara in February 2008. The leader of this group, Anwar Kayumov, who wanted to recruit new talent for the IBU in his hometown of Isfara, was arrested in Kabul in January 2009 .
Cityscape
At the 1989 census, the population was 34,000; at the 2000 census, the number had risen to 37,000. According to a calculation, 40,600 people lived in the city in 2008.
The center of the city is a large department store with an adjacent market on the east bank of the river. The market area is bordered by the bus stop for minibuses ( marshrutkas ) that go to Khujand and the surrounding villages. A few restaurants and shops are lined up along the main street, which runs north-south parallel to the river. There are one or two simple hotels and an internet café. To the west, the wide Rudaki Street leads over a river bridge past the city park, a statue of Lenin and modern business buildings to another park with a statue of Somoni. The direct road connection to Khujand branches off from this road. A second bridge crosses the Isfara River in the north of the city center next to the railroad tracks. The station there is used for freight traffic. In 2008, 36,000 tons of dried fruit (mostly apricots) and over 4,000 tons of canned food were sent to Russia.
Near the minibus station, on the road east towards Navgilem, there is a history museum that shows the history of the region. A well-known attraction of the city is the 16th century Abdullo Khan Mosque in the Navgilem district, three kilometers from the center. The Uzbek Abdullah Khan (1533–1598) was the last Khan of the Scheibanid dynasty. The visitor arrives from the street through a portal into a large inner courtyard, in the middle of which stands a brick minaret from the 19th century. The brick mosque with a dome in the middle above the rectangular prayer room has been completely restored. Its facade, which is oriented towards a central iwan- like portal, is sparsely ornamented, the interior, painted white, is completely unadorned. The other buildings around the inner courtyard used to house Koran students in a long row of chambers. A stream meanders through the rear area of the courtyard, which is laid out as a garden.
A historic building with a small museum is located only about 200 meters from the Abdullo Khan Mosque in the direction of the city center. Its veranda is decorated with colored carvings.
Half a kilometer east of the center on the road to Navgilem, behind a high wall, there is a district mosque from the 19th century with an open vestibule supported by four carved wooden columns. Its coffered ceiling is artistically painted. Such a design is also characteristic of the wooden porticoes of traditional teahouses ( Tschoichona ). There are some teahouses in the streets around the Hodschjon Mosque in the old town. The 18th century Hodschjon Mosque is the largest mosque in the city and is said to be able to accommodate up to 10,000 believers on Fridays. Your inner courtyard is made up of large trees. The paintings on the wooden ceilings have been carefully restored. In 1993 a 30 meter high minaret was built.
sons and daughters of the town
- Erkinchon Rahmatullozoda (* 1953), diplomat
literature
- Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2002, p. 173
- Robert Middleton, Huw Thomas: Tajikistan and the High Pamirs. Odyssey Books & Guides, Hong Kong 2012, pp. 180f
- S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley: The Art of Central Asia. (Studies of Central Asia and the Caucasus) ME Sharpe, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-7656-2998-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ High Value Agricultural Products (HVAPs). (PDF) Austrian Development Cooperation, 2012, pp. 17, 19
- ^ Madeleine Reeves: Black Work, Green Money: Remittances, Ritual, and Domestic Economies in Southern Kyrgyzstan. In: Slavic Review, Vol. 71, No. 1, spring 2012, pp. 108-134, here p. 116
- ↑ Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan, p. 173
- ↑ Boris Anatol'evič Litvinskij: Ancient and early medieval burial mounds in the western Fergana basin, Tadžikistan. (Materials for General and Comparative Archeology, Volume 16) CH Beck, Munich 1986, p. 139
- ↑ Abdukakhor Saidov: The Ferghana Valley: The Pre-Colonial Legacy. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley, p. 23
- ↑ Wilhelm Barthold : Farghana. In: Martinus Theodorus Houtsma u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopaedia of Islam . 1st edition, Volume 2, EJ Brill, Leiden 1927, p. 65
- ↑ Jonathan M. Bloom, Sheila S. Blair (Eds.): The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture . Volume 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, pp. 266, 431
- ↑ Victor Dubovitskii: The Rise and Fall of the Kokand Khanate . In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley, p. 31
- ^ S. Frederick Starr (ed.): Ferghana Valley: The Art of Central Asia, pp. 72, 112
- ↑ Isfara hydrometalurgical plant expected to be reintroduced into operation next month. Asia-Plus, March 13, 2014
- ↑ Pulat Shozimov: The Ferghana Valley During Perestroika, 1985–1991. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley , pp. 193f
- ↑ Shurab Deposit . ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Ministry of Energy and Industry of the Republic of Tajikistan
- ↑ Abdukakhor Saidov: The Ferghana Valley: The Pre-Colonial Legacy. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley , p. 18
- ↑ Bakhtiyar Babadjanov: Islam in the Ferghana Valley: Between National Identity and Islamic Alternative. In: S. Frederick Starr (Ed.): Ferghana Valley, p. 359
- ↑ Figures from the State Statistics Committee, Dushanbe, from January 1, 2008
- ↑ Sakhbon Qurbonov: Isfara railway station ships more than 36,000 tons of dried fruits to Russia in 2008. Asia-Plus, January 29, 2009
