Tamerlane's forgotten southern city — Kashkadarya oasis and the Silk Road between Samarkand and Afghanistan
Qarshi (also known as Karshi, historically Nasaf) is a city of 280,000 in Uzbekistan's Kashkadarya region, an oasis city on the ancient Silk Road route between Samarkand and the Hindu Kush, surrounded by the cotton and wheat plains of southern Uzbekistan. It served as one of Timur's (Tamerlane's) favourite cities and contains an intact 17th-century caravanserai, a covered bazaar, and a minaret of the Timurid period — relatively overlooked because Samarkand and Bukhara dominate the tourist narrative of Uzbek history. Qarshi is also the gateway to the Kitob-Shakhrisabz region (Shakhrisabz, Tame…
Nasaf (ancient name for the Qarshi region) was a prosperous agricultural and commercial city in Sogdian and early Islamic Central Asia, known for its textile production and position on the Silk Road between the Transoxiana cities and Bactria (northern Afghanistan). Timur (Tamerlane) was born in Shahrisabz (near Qarshi) in 1336 and the city was part of his Timurid core territory — he began his political career here and maintained strong connections to the Kashkadarya region throughout his imperial expansion. The Soviet era transformed Qarshi into a major cotton-processing city and military avi…