Baxt

Baxt, written Bakht in Russian-style romanization, is a city in Sirdaryo District of Sirdaryo Region in Uzbekistan. It began in 1899 as a settlement serving a passing loop on the Central Asian Railway between Samarkand and Tashkent, and the loop became a railway station in 1916. The station was first named Velikoalexeyevskaya after the Russian prince Alexey; in 1963 the settlement and station were renamed Baxt, a Persian word meaning happiness, and in 1980 it was granted town status. Its population was estimated at 9,100 in 1968 and 17,500 in 2016. The M34 highway between Tashkent and Dushanbe passes through it, and in the 1970s it had a construction materials plant and a cotton purification factory.