Tashkent is the capital city of Uzbekistan, in Central Asia — the largest city in that whole region, with over two million people. It sits in a green valley with mountains not far off, in a country that is otherwise mostly dry. It is very old: caravans on the Silk Road stopped there for well over a thousand years, going between China and the Middle East. Two later things shaped how the city looks now. A huge earthquake in 1966 flattened much of it, and it was rebuilt in the Soviet period, so a visitor sees wide straight streets, big square buildings, and a famously beautiful underground railway, next to old mosques and markets that survived. The name is used the way any capital's name is: for the city itself, and sometimes as a short way of saying that country's government — 'Tashkent has agreed to the deal.' In English it is pronounced with the stress on the second part, tash-KENT.