Samarkand is a major city in southeastern Uzbekistan in the Zerafshan River valley, about 270 kilometers from the capital Tashkent, with a population of 882,000 as of 2026, the country's second largest after Tashkent. It prospered for centuries as a crossroads of the Silk Road between China, Persia and Europe; Alexander the Great captured it in 329 BC under the name Maracanda, and in 1370 the conqueror Timur made it his capital, rebuilding the city and drawing artisans from across his empire to make it a center of the Timurid Renaissance. UNESCO inscribed its historic core as a World Heritage Site in 2001 for landmarks including Registan Square.
Facts
Area (sq km) Founding YearWikipedia infobox states Settled: 8th century BC. Recorded as a representative year (750 BCE) within that century, not an attested exact year. Population Estimate Year Elevation (m) Latitude39.650556 degrees north 1 Elevation Band Climate Zone In the Other Atlases
Site Of
Also in Divinity Atlas: which is located in this subject.
Source Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (Wikipedia)Infobox: birth_placeQuote, Infobox: birth_place
Samarkand, Samanid Empire (modern-day Uzbekistan)
Also in Divinity Atlas: which is located in this subject.
Source Omar Khayyam (Wikipedia)Article textQuote, Article text
In about 1070 he moved to Samarkand, where he started to compose his famous Treatise on Algebra under the patronage of Abu Tahir Abd al-Rahman ibn ʿAlaq, the governor and chief judge of the city.
Sources
1. Samarkand (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia, it has a population of 882,000 inhabitants as of 2026, making it the second-largest city in Uzbekistan after Tashkent.
Infobox: area_total_km2
120
Infobox: elevation_m
705
Wikipedia REST summary, coordinates
{"lat":39.65055556,"lon":66.96527778}
Infobox (wikitext), established_date
established_date = 8th century BC
View the Source 2. GeoNames: Samarkand - GeoNames
GeoNamescities500 record 1216265
39.65456 66.96445 P PPLA UZ 10 595200 703 Asia/Samarkand
Place record, elevation
Elevation ca. 703 m
View the Source 3. Koeppen-Geiger map (Kottek et al., University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna): World Map of the Koeppen-Geiger Climate Classification, present climate data
Koeppen-Geiger map (Kottek et al., University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna)Koeppen-Geiger-ASCII.txt grid cell 39.75, 66.75Quote, Koeppen-Geiger-ASCII.txt grid cell 39.75, 66.75
39.75 66.75 Csa
Wikidata: Samarkand
- Wikidata Q5753, class allow-list match verified against P17/real-world identity (w-geo-qidcite-0926).
- In Group: Cities of Central Asia (World), Wikipedia infobox, country field
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