Traditions of Samarkand
A Silk Road city of blue-tiled domes, bread stamped by hand and a long tradition of paper and silk.
Samarkand was one of the great cities of the Silk Road, capital of Timur in the fourteenth century. The Registan square, the Gur-e-Amir mausoleum and the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis are covered in blue and turquoise tile. Craft traditions of silk, paper, ceramics and bread-making continue.
Bread, silk and Nowruz
Samarkand bread, non, is baked in clay tandoor ovens and stamped with a pattern by a tool called a chekich. It is treated with respect, never put upside down on the table. Nowruz in March brings sumalak, a pudding of wheat sprouts cooked overnight with women singing around the pot, and large public games including kopkari, horseback goat grabbing.
At the table
A guest in an Uzbek home is seated at a low table of dried fruit, nuts and bread, and served green tea in small bowls. Plov, rice with carrot and lamb, is the great dish, cooked by men in giant cauldrons for weddings. Samsa pastries come hot from the tandoor.
Signature traditions of Samarkand
Also part of it, and being written: Plov (The Central Asian rice dish.), Sumalak (The Nowruz wheat pudding.), Samarkand paper (Silk-Road mulberry paper.), Suzani (Embroidered textile.).
A trail idea for Samarkand
- Registan Come in the evening for the lights.
- Siab Bazaar Buy bread, dried fruit and spices.
- Konigil paper mill See mulberry paper made by hand.
Written by the EveryParampara desk with AI assistance. Opening hours, markets and festival dates change; check locally before travelling. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
🇺🇿 Bukhara, UzbekistanAsrlar Sadosi
An annual outdoor festival celebrating Uzbek folk arts, sports, crafts, and heritageFestival
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Nowruz: Katzenfee50, CC0, source
- Asrlar Sadosi: Patisserie, CC BY-SA 3.0, source