Namangan

About Namangan

Namangan is a district-level city in eastern Uzbekistan. It is the administrative, economic, and cultural center of Namangan Region. Namangan is located in the northern edge of the Fergana Valley, less than 30 km from the border with Kyrgyzstan. The city is served by Namangan Airport.

Namangan has been an important craft and trade center in the Fergana Valley since the 17th century. Many factories were built in the city during Soviet times. During World War II, industrial production in Namangan increased fivefold compared with that of the 1920s. Currently, Namangan is mainly a center for light industry, especially in food. It is Uzbekistan's second largest city after Tashkent, with an officially registered population of 668,600 in the city in 2022. Uzbeks form the largest ethnic group.

The city takes its name from the local salt mines (in Persian: نمک‌کان (namak kan) — "a salt mine"). Babur mentioned the village of Namangan in his memoirs Baburnama. In his book A Brief History of the Khanate of Kokand (Russian: Краткая история Кокандского ханства) (Kazan, 1886), the Russian ethnographer Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin wrote that Namangan is mentioned in legal documents dating...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.