Navruz
21 March, the spring equinox — a New Year welcomed with cauldrons of sumalak, green samsa, street festivities and neighbourhood clean-ups.
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.
© Sinchalak Musulmon, CC BY-SA 4.0
From matchmaking to the bride’s bow
An Uzbek wedding is not a one-day party but a sequence of rites: matchmaking, betrothal, the viewing of the bride, the fotiha toʻy blessing feast, the girls’ gathering called qiz oshi, the religious marriage, the bride’s move to her new home and the kelin salom. Most of them are still observed, though every region — sometimes every village — has its own variations.
On the wedding day or the eve before, the wedding plov is cooked and hundreds of guests gather at dawn for nahor oshi, the morning plov. In the evening the groom and his friends arrive at the bride’s house to the blare of karnay horns and surnay pipes; she takes leave of her parents, asks for their blessing and is escorted to the groom’s home to the song ‘Yor-yor’. Next morning comes kelin salom, when the veiled bride bows to her new in-laws and relatives, who reward her with gifts.
Samarkand weddings, then and now
Samarkand weddings have a royal pedigree. In September 1404 Timur staged lavish celebrations in the meadows of Konigil, just outside the city, for the weddings of six of his grandsons, Ulugh Beg among them; foreign envoys attended, including the Castilian Clavijo. Ulugh Beg later held the circumcision feast of his younger son Abdulaziz at Konigil too, with food for the whole populace.
Today most Samarkand weddings take place in banqueting halls with live music and dancing, and regulations encourage families to celebrate modestly. Autumn is wedding season, when flower-decked convoys honk their way through the city every evening.
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.
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.
Maqom and musical heritage
The subtle modes of Shashmaqom, Hoji Abdulaziz and his ‘Samarkand Ushshoq’, and the Sharq Taronalari festival — Samarkand’s musical memory.
