Pastdargom District

Setting and nature

Pastdargom District spreads west and southwest of Samarkand, bordered by the Akdarya and Ishtikhan districts to the north, Kattakurgan and Nurobod to the west and Kashkadarya Region to the south. With 400,000 people it is the region's second most populous district after Urgut, with one town, 12 urban-type settlements and 100 mahallas. The land is a plain tilting from east to west; to the southeast it climbs into the western foothills of the Zarafshan Range, and to the southwest it fades into the edges of the Karnab and Karshi steppes. The climate is sharply continental, though the mountains soften the winters: January averages −2 °C, July 27 °C, and around 330 mm of rain falls a year.

The name means 'Lower Dargom', the lands along the lower course of the Dargom canal. This ancient waterway, nearly 100 km long, leaves the Zarafshan at a dam near Ravotkhoja, and its name even appears in accounts of the Battle of Qatwan in 1141. The Eski Anhor canal, carrying water south to Kashkadarya, and the Karadarya also cross the district.

History

The district was formed on 29 September 1926 and between 1929 and 1938 bore the name of the Soviet leader Akmal Ikramov; it absorbed Chorkhin District in 1957 and Guzalkent District in 2001. Its centre, Juma, grew up around a railway station and became a town in 1973; today lines to Samarkand, Karshi and Navoi meet here. The Eski Juma Friday mosque of 1890 is still in use.

This corner of the valley has been farmed since antiquity: the protected mound of Durmontepa dates to the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE, while Qoshtepa and Uchtepa belong to the 3rd–8th centuries CE. The village of Khonchorbog, at the foot of the Zarafshan Range, stands on the site of a 16th-century garden associated with Abdullah Khan II; archaeologist Ivan Sukharev surveyed its 19 hectares of ruins in 1936. Juma is also the hometown of judoka Diyora Keldiyorova (born 1998), Olympic champion at Paris 2024.

Economy

Fifty mahallas specialise in crops such as grapes, vegetables, pulses and melons, and forty-one in livestock, while cotton gins operate in Juma and Chorkhin. The district's signature trade is furniture: in Qoraguppa mahalla, 106 of 784 households turn out about 200,000 pieces a year, and a dedicated furniture centre is being built around them. An industrial zone hosts textile, pharmaceutical and building-materials plants, the Samarkand–Navoi–Bukhara road runs through the district and the Ulugbek logistics centre operates here. A Senate decision of August 2026 transferred 1,242.3 ha of the district to the city of Samarkand.

Getting there

Juma is 24 km from Samarkand, about half an hour by car on the Samarkand–Juma–Kattakurgan road. Buses and shared minibuses run frequently, and trains stop at Juma station. Teahouses along the Dargom and the foothills around Khonchorbog make pleasant spots to linger.