Fergana Valley Silk Road city — samsa from the tandoor, chaikhana culture, and the world's best apricots
Namangan is Uzbekistan's third-largest city and the economic centre of the Fergana Valley — a densely settled valley between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that has been one of Central Asia's most fertile and productive regions since the Silk Road era. Namangan's food culture is distinct from Tashkent's: the samsa here are larger and flakier (baked in enormous communal tandoors), the lagman noodles are hand-pulled, and the valley's apricots, figs, and pomegranates are the finest in Central Asia. The old city chaikhana culture — tea houses with carved wooden columns around a pool — is still the soc…
Namangan was an important Silk Road waypoint from at least the 10th century and grew wealthy on silk weaving — the Fergana Valley's Margilan silk is still the finest handwoven ikat silk in Central Asia. The city was taken by the Kokand Khanate (18th century), absorbed by the Russian Empire in 1876, and became a Soviet industrial city. Its role as a centre of Islamic scholarship in the Soviet period shapes its conservative religious culture today.