In Tashkent, the oldest manuscript of the Quran is kept, known as the Quran of Uthman (or the Samarkand Kufic Quran). It is housed in the Muyi Mubarak Madrasa, located within the Hazrati Imam complex. It is believed that this manuscript was written in the 7th century, and some traditions claim that it is stained with the blood of the third caliph Uthman.

One of the most captivating places in Tashkent, shrouded in an aura of mystery. Palace chambers, cast-iron spiral staircases, vibrant wall colors, exquisite stained glass, delicate wrought-iron grilles, tall spires of decorative towers – it seems that this gem of 19th-century architecture was hosting lavish balls not long ago. Despite the restricted access to the territory, which is assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for receptions, it is worth taking some time to walk around it and examine the architecture unusual for Asia. This place breathes history, and that history is astonishing and unique.

A monument of pre-revolutionary Russian architecture in Tashkent, a chapel over the mass grave of soldiers who died during the conquest of Tashkent by the Russian Empire.

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Ismail Al-Kaffal Al-Kabir ash-Shashi lived on the planet more than a thousand years ago. But there is no person in modern Tashkent who does not know the respectful title "Hazrati Imam" (Holy Imam), by which the townspeople named him back in the 10th century. Over the ten centuries that have passed, in the syllable-swallowing Tashkent dialect, "Hazrati Imam" came to sound like "Hast-Imam" and even "Hastimom."

"What has been done in Parkent amazes even the most sophisticated imagination. Architect Viktor Zakharov and his colleagues managed to design a complex that, in the unity and integrity of form and content, can be considered unsurpassed. A verbal portrait, no matter how detailed, cannot replace the immense impression from the sight of the grandiose structures of the complex with fantastic shapes, erected on the ancient land of Uzbekistan," — thus described the impressions of the heliocomplex "Sun" by cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov in the magazine *Architecture of the USSR*. This unique structure, built in the mountains near Tashkent, became one of the last grand construction projects of the Soviet era.

Khoja Nasreddin raised his hand, calling for silence and attention. — You have gathered to mourn me, oh people of Noble Bukhara! Do you not know that I am immortal! I am Khoja Nasreddin, master of myself, And I say — not lying — I will never die! A beggar, barefoot and naked, I am a cheerful wanderer. I will live, I will sing, and look at the sun, Beloved son of the people and protected by fate, I laugh at the sultan, at the emir, and the khan!