Travel Guide Marguilan

11 km north of Ferghana, Marguilan was an important stage on the Silk Road, the last one before the crossing of the Pamir towards China. A merchant and very religious city where one counted, in the XIXth century, more than 200 mosques and very numerous madrasas, almost all disappeared under the Soviet occupation. Its economy is essentially based on silk weaving. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were four large factories in Marguilan run by master craftsmen. A wave of arrests and deportations led to the closure of these manufacturing units in the 1930s. In the late 1950s, artisans were grouped into two large "combines": the Khan Atlas factory and the Sholk kombinat. The two weaving factories, which employed 8,000 and 12,000 workers respectively, have been operating in slow motion since the fall of the USSR. Today, some craftsmen have returned to traditional methods and work on their own, supplying all the tourist stores in Samarkand and Bukhara with silk. But beware, the quality is very variable: take the time to visit the workshops to familiarize yourself with the production methods and to glean some tips to distinguish the good silk!