Kattakurgan

Kattakurgan is the region’s second city: 97,000 people, a market town grown from a 17th-century fort, cotton and oil-pressing industry, and a reservoir nicknamed the “Uzbek Sea”.

Setting and landscape

Kattakurgan lies on the flat floor of the Zarafshan valley, on the left bank of the Narpay canal, 480–490 metres above sea level. It is about 72 km north-west of Samarkand by road, on the highway and railway to Bukhara. A city of regional subordination with 36 mahallas, it also administers the settlement of Ingichka. In September 2025 the Senate enlarged its territory by 2,916 hectares taken from Kattakurgan and Nurobod districts.

The climate is continental, with hot, dry summers. South of town, in Kattakurgan District, spreads the Kattakurgan Reservoir, built in 1940–1951: 79.5 km² in area and holding up to 900 million m³ of water. Locals call it the “Uzbek Sea”. It was the first reservoir built in Uzbekistan and remains vital for irrigating the valley’s fields.

History

People have farmed this land since antiquity. West of the town lie the ruins of Sogdian Rabinjan, where, according to written sources, the Arabs executed Devashtich, ruler of Panjakent, in 722; the city declined amid the feuds of the 12th century. Modern Kattakurgan dates from the late 17th century: according to the historian F. F. Pospelov, a fortress was raised on a mound in 1683–1684. Legend credits three brothers, Farhod Otaliq, Allahnazar Biy and Sufi Olloyor, and the name itself means “great fortress”.

In the 18th and 19th centuries Kattakurgan was the seat of a bek of the Emirate of Bukhara. Ringed by a mud-brick wall, it had four gates: Samarkand, Bazaar, Bukhara and Aydarchavon. The Hungarian traveller Ármin Vámbéry wrote that the emirate’s finest bootmakers lived here. In 1868 the town passed to the Russian Empire and became a district centre on the Bukharan border. The railway brought a cotton gin in 1890 and an oil mill in 1896. In 1946, workers building the reservoir uncovered an underground Zoroastrian burial complex laid out like a labyrinth.

Economy and culture

Today Kattakurgan is the commercial and industrial hub of the western valley. Industry still revolves around cotton and oil: an oil-and-fat plant, cotton gins, dairy, meat and flour mills, a brickworks, art-ceramics workshops and a silkworm-egg (grena) plant, while tungsten ore is processed at Ingichka. The bazaar draws shoppers from the surrounding villages. A branch of Samarkand State University opened in 2021, and the Uzbek drama theatre bears the name of the poet and playwright Abdulhamid Majidiy (1902–1938).

A curious footnote: in 1970 a scene of the Soviet comedy Gentlemen of Fortune was filmed in the town’s detention centre.

What to see and getting there

Kattakurgan makes an easy stop between Samarkand and Bukhara: browse the central bazaar, look in at the Imperial-era Orthodox Church of St Vladimir and take in the wide views over the reservoir. From Samarkand it is about 1–1.5 hours by car on the M37; Kattakurgan station lies on the Samarkand–Navoi–Bukhara railway and is served by passenger trains.