1938 – 2016
Islam Karimov
First President of the Republic of Uzbekistan
A Samarkand-born statesman who led Uzbekistan as its first president from 1990 to 2016. He is buried in Samarkand beside the Hazrat Khizr Mosque.
© Helene C. Stikkel, Public domain
From Samarkand to Tashkent
Islam Abduganievich Karimov was born in Samarkand on 30 January 1938, into a family of office workers. He graduated from the Central Asian Polytechnic Institute as a mechanical engineer in 1960 and from the Tashkent Institute of the National Economy as an economist in 1967. He worked at a Tashkent agricultural machinery plant and as an engineer at the Chkalov aircraft factory, then from 1966 at the republic's State Planning Committee, rising to first deputy chairman.
In 1983 he became finance minister of the Uzbek SSR; from 1986 to 1989 he was first secretary of the Kashkadarya regional party committee, and from June 1989 first secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan. On 24 March 1990 the republic's Supreme Soviet elected him president.
The independence years
Uzbekistan declared independence on 31 August 1991, and on 29 December that year Karimov won a nationwide presidential election. A 1995 referendum extended his term, and he was re-elected in 2000, 2007 and 2015. His rule is judged very differently: official historiography presents him as the founder of independent statehood, while international human rights groups and Western governments sharply criticised the conduct of elections, the curbs on political freedoms and the human rights record.
Several Samarkand projects are linked to his initiative: the memorial complexes of Imam al-Bukhari at Khartang (1998) and Imam al-Maturidi at Chokardiza (2000), the Sharq Taronalari international music festival held on the Registan since 1997, and the celebration of Samarkand's 2,750th anniversary in 2007.
Death and memorials
Karimov died in Tashkent on 2 September 2016. After a funeral ceremony on the Registan on 3 September, he was buried beside the Hazrat Khizr Mosque near Shah-i-Zinda. In September 2017 a statue of him was unveiled near the Registan, close to the neighbourhood where he was born and grew up, and on 30 January 2018, his 80th birthday, a mausoleum and memorial complex — designed in consultation with UNESCO — opened over his grave.
