Into the mosque of white gold

Uzbekistan, in Soviet Central Asia, is one of the oldest civilized regions of the world; within it lay the famous oasis cities of Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent. This land of mosques and minarets, of oriental people in multi-coloured robes, is also a modern republic, which owes its wealth to cotton – the white gold of Uzbekistan.

For centuries the exotic names of Samarkand and Bukhara have beckoned the traveller with their prospect of oriental mystery and splendour. The poet Flecker immortalized the golden road to Samarkand, but foreigners were forbidden. Today the traveller can fly in via Tashkent, the sprawling industrial capital of Uzbekistan – a Soviet republic nearly twice the size of Great Britain, and three hours ahead of Moscow Time.

Alas, for the legend! Samarkand, one of the oldest cities of Central Asia, now makes chemical, tractor part and cinema apparatus. Its 200,000 inhabitants are mainly Uzbecks, Tadzhiks from the neighbouring republic, and Russians who conquered the area for the Tsarist Empire in the 1860s. It boasts the republic’s largest university, with 10,000 students, a Gagarin Street, and a Park of Rest and Culture with a Hall of Crazy Mirrors. Yet the turquoise-tiled mosques and mausoleums still reflect the splendours of the fourteen-century conqueror Tamerlane, who made his native town a magnificent capital and lies buried beneath a tomb made of the largest block of jade in the world.

Bukhara, world-famous for the Turkmen carpets once sold in its great bazaar, remains one huge museum. It is a maze of dusty, unpaved alleyways between whitewashed, windowless adobe walls. The one-storey Uzbek houses are built round shady countryards, where fruit grows in the scorching summer.

The Turkic-speaking, traditionally Muslim Uzbeks, 6 million altogether are a delightful, lively people, with pale mahogany skin and half-moon eyes. Many younger men wear European dress while retaining the tubetyeka – the embroidered Uzbek skullcap; while almost all the bearded, turbaned elders wear the khalat-a brightly patterned robe sashed at the waist – and long, soft leather boots. Most Uzbek women wear ankle-length silk or cotton dresses of zigzag turquoise, plum-red or yellow patterns, and have their silky black hair in waist-length plaits.

In summer months, Uzbek men relax in the chaikhanas, the open-air tea-houses in the shade of trees. There they sit cross-legged on carpeted platforms above cooling streams, drinking green tea and betting on quail fights.

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