Ferghana Valley

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Ferghana 
Valley
The Heart of Central Asia
With some twelve million inhabitants, the Ferghana Valley is one 
of the most densely populated places in the world. It is also the 
most volatile region of Central Asia. Not only is the area ethnically 
and linguistically diverse, it is politically divided, with parts ruled 
by three different states—Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the Kyrgyz 
Republic—whose distant capital cities all relegate Ferghana to their 
respective peripheries.
These complexities make a comprehensive, multidimensional 
understanding of the Ferghana region all the more elusive. In order 
to construct such an analysis, the Central Asia–Caucasus Institute 
assembled an international, interdisciplinary team of thirty scholars 
with the requisite expertise. Their carefully planned, collaboratively 
authored chapters cover the historical and topical terrain with 
unmatched depth and breadth and balance.

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S
tudieS
of
C
entral
a
Sia
and
the
C
auCaSuS
Books in this series are published in association with the Central Asia
–
Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center at the Johns 
Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies 
in Washington, DC, and the Institute for Security and Development Policy 
in Stockholm, under the editorship of Svante Cornell.

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Ferghana 
Valley
The Heart of Central Asia
Edited by
S. Frederick Starr
with Baktybek Beshimov,
Inomjon I. Bobokulov,
and Pulat Shozimov
M
.
E.Sharpe
Armonk, New York
London, England

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Copyright © 2011 by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute &
Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher, M.E. Sharpe, Inc.,
80 Business Park Drive, Armonk, New York 10504.
The EuroSlavic and Transroman fonts used to create this work are © 1986–2011
Payne Loving Trust. EuroSlavic and Transroman are available 
from Linguist’s Software, Inc., www.linguistsoftware.
com, P.O. Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 USA, tel [phone].