# Istaravshan

Istaravshan (Tajik: Истаравшан; Persian: استروشن; Russian: Истаравшан) is a city in the northern foothills of the Turkistan mountain range in the Ferghana Valley of Tajikistan. It is an old city that is home to the beautiful Abdullatif Madrassah and Mosque.

## Understand

In 2000, the Tajik government changed the name of the city from earlier Uroteppa (Tajik: Ӯротеппа; Ura-Tyube, Russian: Ура-Тюбе).
Istaravshan is a city-museum, an ancient center of trade and crafts, and one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, dating from the 6th century BCE.
In 2020, it was home to 273,000 people.

## Get in

Istaravshan does not have an airport, and the main routes to the city are road connections.
The city is on the main road connecting Tajikistan's two largest cities, Khujand and Dushanbe.
It's 48 km from the Khavast station, 78 km southwest of Khujand, and 268 km from Dushanbe.

## See

* Old city: The “old part” complex with monuments and quarters is a historical cultural monument of the 12th-19th centuries and occupies a vast area. The territory is divided into commercial, residential and industrial quarters. The complex is surrounded by 2 rows of high massive walls with a total length of 6.4 km. At the end of the 19th century, the city had 7 gates. The citadel was the place of settlement of the ancient settlement of Kalai Mug. The city had 60 mosques, 8 madrasas, 7 baths, many shops, workshops and caravanserais.
* Mug-Teppa settlement: A unique monument of the Achaemenid period with a peculiar architectural and material culture. It is an archaeological monument of the 12th-4th centuries BCE. Its area is 18 hectares, on the banks of the Nijon River. The object is fortified with a defensive wall with a horseshoe-shaped citadel. The early layers of the settlement date back to the 7th-4th centuries BCE with dwellings of the semi-dugout type. The walls are reinforced with rectangular bricks.
* Museum of Local History (музей исторического профиля в Истравшане), st. Oli Somon, 18. The museum occupies the building of the former Orthodox Church, built in 1865-1867. It was one of the first brick buildings in the city, along with the governor's house, a school and a number of administrative buildings, all of which are well preserved and adorn one of the central parts of the city, which many residents continue to call the "Russian quarter".
* Alley of National Heroes: This place was a dilapidated school building named after Gorky No. 1, they studied the language of Forsey.
* Tree Garden Museum: An ethnographic museum in the hollow of an ancient tree, which houses dozens of different exhibits that tell the history of this area and people.
* Museum of weapons, craft workshops

### Religious monuments

* The Khazrati Shoh Ensemble consists of three religious buildings:
** Mausoleum of Khazrati Shoh;
** Mausoleum of Khudoyor Valami;
** Mosque Namazgoh.
* Mausoleum of Sari Mazor — built of burnt bricks. The building consists of a square domed room with a cruciform shape. In the gurkhon (burial ground) there is a ganch gravestone
* Mausoleum of Ajinakhon - presumably, a noble woman named Bibi-begimdzhon, a descendant of Makhdumi Khorazmi, was buried here
* Mausoleum Chor-Gumbaz — refers to the architectural structures of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. On one of the wooden parts of the ceiling there is an inscription: "1321 Hijri", which corresponds to 1903
* Mausoleum of Abdulkodyr Dzheloni — on the territory of an ancient cemetery, is an architectural monument of the 16th century and is a small monumental, domed, brick building from a square room.

### Mosques

* Khavzi Sangin - Sangin domed mosque (12th-16th centuries), which means "Stone" in translation, so-named because the walls of the mosque are up to half lined with stone. It got its name from the hauz (reservoir), the banks of which were reinforced with stone
* Mosque of Abdulatif Sultan - is considered one of the main attractions of the ancient city, which is also called "Kok-Gumbaz", "Blue Dome" for its color
* Bobo-Toga is an architectural monument of the 16th-19th centuries and is a two-chamber portal-dome structure. According to legend, the mausoleum was erected over an unknown grave
* Mavlono Usmoni Charkhi is located in the depths of the Obodi quarter. It is an architectural monument of the 19th century and, according to its plan, represents a square single-column honaka. The mosque is surrounded on three sides by a columned aivan.

## Buy

Istaravshan is one of the largest centers of crafts, in particular, in wood carving, pottery and the manufacture of national leather. Istaravshan has been one of the three centers of artistic embroidery for several centuries.

## Eat

Meals for tourists are organized in restaurants and teahouses, which provide national dishes (pilaf, kurutob, shish kebab, beef and lamb shurpa, mastoba, manti, shakarob, sambus and others).

## Connect

Tourist services (transfer, booking, services of guides and guides, accommodation and meals) are provided to tourists by travel companies of the Republic of Tajikistan, which have their branches throughout the country.