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Andijan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Andijan (Andijon in Uzbek; also Andizhan, Andizan, Андижан) is the fourth-largest city in Uzbekistan, and the capital of the Andijan Province. It is located in the east of the country, at , in the Fergana Valley, near the border with Kyrgyzstan on the Andijan-Say River. It has a population of 323,900 (1999 census estimate).
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Andijan was an important stop on the Silk Road, lying roughly mid-way between Kashgar and Khodjend. Destroyed by Genghis Khan, it was rebuilt by his grandson Kaidu Khan in the late 13th century, and became the capital of Ferghana for the next three centuries. It is best known as the birthplace of Zahiruddin Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty in South Asia, in 1483. He was fond of the place, and wrote in his memoirs that
| “ | Game and Sporting birds are plentiful in Andizhan. The Pheasants get extremely fat, and it is said that not even four people can finish eating a stew made from just one. The people are Turks. Among the city folk and merchants, there is no one who does not know Turki language. The people's pronunciation is like the literary language since the works of Mir Ali-Sher Nawa'i, although he was raised in Herat, are in this language. Among the people there is much beauty. Khwaja Yusuf, who is famous for music, was from Andizhan. The air is unwholesome, and in the autumn the inflammation of the eyes, called aqrab by physicians, is rampant.[1] | ” |
He is also very complimentary about the melons and apricots of the city.
From the mid-eighteenth century Andijan was a part of the Khanate of Kokand. Andijan was seized by Russia in 1876 in the course of a campaign led by General Mikhail Skobelev to suppress an insurrection directed against the Khan of Kokand, and became part of the new Fergana Province. In 1898 it was the scene of another uprising, this time against the Russians, led by an Ishan from the nearby village of Min-Tyube. A thousand of his Murids attacked the Russian garrison in the early hours of the morning, killing a few soldiers, but the rebellion was easily suppressed.[2] In 1902 most of Andijan was levelled by a severe earthquake, and consequently there are few buildings of historical interest left.
During the Soviet Union, Andijan was separated from its historical hinterland when the present borders were created, dividing Ferghana Valley between three separate Soviet republics. Andijan itself became part of the Uzbek SSR. The borders did not make a great deal of difference during the Soviet period, as the entire region was developed to grow cash crops such as cotton and silk.
In the 1990s, though, the Andijan and the surrounding region became much more unstable. Poverty and an upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism produced tensions in the region which resulted in riots in Andijan in April 1990 in which the homes of Jews and Armenians were attacked. The town, and the region as a whole, suffered a severe economic decline following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Repeated border closures badly damaged the local economy, worsening the already widespread poverty of Andijan's inhabitants. Islamic fundamentalists established a presence in the city. In May 2003, a local man named Azizbek Karimov was arrested and accused of carrying out terrorist bombings on behalf of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. He was convicted and executed in April 2004.
Andijan is an industrial center in an irrigated area that produces fruits, cotton, Uzbek Ikat and silk.
- ^ The Babur-nama Ed. & Trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (New York) 2002 p4
- ^ Beatrice Forbes Manz “Central Asian Uprisings in the Nineteenth Century: Ferghana under the Russians” Russian Review Vol.46 (1987) pp267-281