Khujand

Khujand is the second-largest city in Tajikistan and capital of its northernmost Sughd province, on the Syr Darya river at the mouth of the Fergana Valley. Its city-proper population was about 191,000 at the 2019 count, with an urban area of about 770,000. One of the oldest cities in Central Asia, dating back roughly 2,500 years to the Persian Empire, it was captured by Alexander the Great in 329 BC and renamed Alexandria Eschate, later passing through the Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire and the Russian Empire; it was called Leninabad from 1936 to 1991 before Tajikistan's independence in 1992. A major Silk Road city in its own time, Khujand remains a commercial hub linking northern and southern Tajikistan through the Anzob Tunnel and connecting to Uzbekistan and Russia by rail and air.