Navruz
21 March, the spring equinox — a New Year welcomed with cauldrons of sumalak, green samsa, street festivities and neighbourhood clean-ups.
Maqom and musical heritage
The subtle modes of Shashmaqom, Hoji Abdulaziz and his ‘Samarkand Ushshoq’, and the Sharq Taronalari festival — Samarkand’s musical memory.
© AIDEPCUL, CC BY 4.0
Shashmaqom and Samarkand
Shashmaqom — ‘six maqoms’ — is a classical suite of instrumental and vocal music that took shape in Bukhara. It is played on the long-necked tanbur and dutar, the bowed sato and gʻijjak, the nay flute and the doira frame drum, while the vocal sections set ghazals by Hafez, Navoi, Fuzuli and other poets. In 2008 Shashmaqom was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In the 1920s Samarkand, too, opened music schools to train maqom performers.
The towering figure of Samarkand’s maqom tradition is Hoji Abdulaziz Abdurasulov (1852–1936) — singer, tanbur and dutar player and composer. He sang maqom in both Uzbek and Tajik, and the climaxes he added to the melody Ushshoq made it famous as ‘Ushshoqi Hoji’ or the ‘Samarkand Ushshoq’. He was recorded on gramophone discs from 1909 onwards. Samarkand’s music college bears his name, a singing competition in his honour has been held in the city since 1997, and his house became a museum in 2019.
Sharq Taronalari and today’s stage
Since 1997 Samarkand has hosted the biennial Sharq Taronalari (‘Melodies of the East’) international music festival, with traditional musicians traditionally performing on the Registan in front of its three madrasas. The 13th edition in 2024 moved to the Eternal City complex and drew more than 300 performers from over 70 countries.
At weddings and street festivities the karnay, surnay, nogʻora drums and doira still rule. To hear local music live, keep an eye on festival and evening concert listings.
Traditions
Traditions
Mahalla and hashar
The neighbourhood community gathered around its guzar square, which shares weddings and funerals and keeps its streets in shape through hashar — the backbone of Samarkand life.
Hospitality and the dastarkhan
‘A guest ranks above your father’: in a Samarkand home the guest takes the seat of honour, and bread, tea, sweets and hot dishes reach the dastarkhan in turn.
Weddings (toʻy)
From matchmaking to the bride’s bow — an Uzbek wedding is a chain of rituals, and in Samarkand its story reaches back to the age of Timur.
Ramadan and the Eids
Iftar evenings in the month of fasting, the sweet table of Eid al-Fitr and the sacrifice of Eid al-Adha — festivals whose dates move each year with the lunar calendar.
The teahouse and the gap
Every mahalla’s teahouse is the daily club of its men, while the gap is a long-standing custom of friends taking turns to host one another.
