Rishtan District

Location and history

Rishtan District was formed in 1926; it was merged with Sokh District in 1959, and Sokh separated again in 1990. It borders Bagdod to the north, Oltiariq to the south-east, Uzbekistan and Uchkuprik districts to the west, and Kyrgyzstan to the south. Its centre is the town of Rishtan, about 50 km west of Fergana.

Rishtan was a sizeable town in the 10th century, later shrank to a village and flourished again in the 18th–19th centuries thanks to pottery. One theory derives its name from Sogdian 'rush', 'red earth', a nod to the colour of the local clay known as khoki surkh. The 12th-century jurist Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani is also believed to have been born here.

What it is known for

Rishtan is one of Central Asia's leading centres of glazed ceramics; by the early 19th century it had more than a hundred pottery workshops. Today you can watch pots being thrown, painted and fired — and buy them — in the home workshops of Rustam Usmanov, Alisher Nazirov and other masters. The Khoja Ilgor Mosque of 1905 is a fine example of the Fergana multi-column iwan mosque.