The silk capital of the Silk Road — the Yodgorlik Silk Factory where artisans weave ikat on hand looms using cocoons boiled in open cauldrons, the Ferghana Valley's mulberry orchards, and the most technically demanding textile tradition in Central Asia
Margilan (population 200,000) is the oldest and most historically significant city in the Ferghana Valley of eastern Uzbekistan — 7km from Fergana city, 80km from the Kyrgyz border at Osh, in the fertile Ferghana plain between the Tian Shan and Gissar mountain ranges. Margilan is the historical center of the Uzbek silk weaving tradition: the city has produced silk textiles since at least the 10th century CE, and the Margilan ikat (the atlas and adras ikat traditions — ikats made from pure silk or silk-cotton blends, using the resist-dye technique in which the silk threads are bound and dyed b…
Margilan's silk tradition dates to at least the 6th century CE, when the Ferghana Valley was the easternmost point of the Byzantine silk trade network and a node on the overland Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean. The Ferghana Valley silk was distinct from Chinese silk in its dyeing technique: while Chinese silk was typically dyed after weaving, the Central Asian ikat tradition (called 'abr' in Persian — cloud, for the cloud-like bleeding of the dye patterns at the warp thread boundaries) dyes the threads before weaving, creating the characteristic soft-edged geometric patterns tha…