Tashkent

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and also of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2006 was 2.1 million.

In medieval times the town and the province were known as "Chach". Later, the town came to be known as Chachkand/Chashkand, meaning "Chach City." After the 16th century, the name was steadily changed slightly from Chachkand/Chashkand to Tashkand (“Tash” in Turkic language means “stone” and “kand” means “city”) and then to Tashkent. Tashkent is located in a well watered plain to the west of the last Altai Mountains on the road between Shymkent and Samarkand. Tashkent sits at the confluence of the Chirchik River and several of its tributaries and is built on deep alluvial deposits (up to 15 metres). It is a lively tectonic area suffering large numbers of tremors and some earthquakes. One earthquake in 1966 measured 7.5 on the Richter scale. The local time in Tashkent is UTC/GMT +5 hours.