Uzgen (redirected from Ozgon)

Uzgen 

a city and administrative center of Uzgen Raion, Osh Oblast, Kirghiz SSR. Situated on the right bank of the Karadar’ia River of the Syr Darya basin, 44 km northeast of the Karasu-Uzbekskii railroad junction and 68 km from the city of Osh. Located on the Osh-Karakul’dzha highway. Population, 29,000 (1976). Food processing is Uzgen’s leading industry.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, Uzgen was a major city on the trade route from Fergana to Eastern Turkestan. It arose in the last centuries before the Common Era and played an especially important role during the rule of the Karakhanids in the tenth to 12th centuries.

Architectural monuments dating from the 11th and 12th centuries have been preserved in Uzgen, including a minaret with an octahedral foundation and a round column ornamented with 12 bands of patterned masonry. There are also three domed mausoleums—a central one (in ruins), a northern one, and a southern one—adjoining one another; decorative elements include patterned masonry and carved ganch (seeGANCH) and terra-cotta. Several examples of unglazed and glazed painted pottery from the tenth to 12th centuries and fragments of glassware have been found on the site of medieval Uzgen.

REFERENCES

Zadneprovskii, Iu. A. “Arkheologicheskie raboty v Iuzhnoi Kirgizii v 1954 g.” In the collection Trudy Kirgizskoi arkheologo-etno-graficheskoi ekspeditsii, vol. 4. Moscow, 1960. Pages 214–46.
Nusov, V. E. Arkhitektura Kirgizii s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei. Frunze, 1971. Pages 17–29.