TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - As an Iranian journalist visiting Tashkent, I found myself looking at the huge Islamic Civilization Center from two perspectives. I was a visitor discovering the depth of Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage. I was also an Iranian looking for familiar traces of a civilization that has never respected the borders drawn on today’s maps.

I found those traces in the manuscripts, the art and the names of scholars whose lives and work connected Central Asia with Iran and the wider Islamic world. Their presence raised a question that followed me through the galleries: How can a country preserve its own national history while showing that its greatest cultural achievements were often shared with others?

The Islamic Civilization Center offers one ambitious answer. Officially opened in March 2026, the complex stands beside the historic Khast-Imam ensemble, one of Tashkent’s most important religious and cultural sites.

My guide throughout the visit was Mr. Ozod Kuvondikov, Head of the Information Service of Uzbekistan’s Committee on Interethnic Relations, who had also assisted me during earlier visits to other attractions in the capital. He spoke English quite well and approached his role with professionalism, patience and a clear knowledge of the places he introduced me to.

A building designed to tell a story

Even from kilometers away, the center is difficult to overlook. Its four monumental entrance portals, each approximately 34 meters high, draw on architectural traditions from different parts of Uzbekistan. The eastern entrance recalls the Ulugbek Madrasah on Registan Square in Samarkand. The western portal reflects the religious architecture of Bukhara, while the northern and southern entrances incorporate references to other historic regions and cities, including Khiva, Shakhrisabz, Karakalpakstan, Kokand, Tashkent and Termez.

Together, the entrances form an architectural map of the country. They suggest that Uzbekistan’s heritage cannot be reduced to a single city, dynasty or style. It developed through many regional traditions, each contributing its own forms, colors and artistic vocabulary.

Above the complex rises a central dome more than 60 meters high. The building covers more than 40,000 square meters of interior space, making room for exhibition galleries, research facilities, a library, educational areas and conference facilities. Official descriptions place the complex among the country’s largest recent cultural projects.

Inside, the scale becomes more apparent. Broad halls lead into exhibition spaces, and the building’s pale surfaces and monumental proportions give visitors room to pause rather than hurry from one display to another.

Yet the center’s most interesting feature is not its size alone. It is the way the building attempts to turn history into a continuous narrative.

Instead of presenting the past as a series of unrelated treasures, the main exhibition follows a chronological route. It begins with the ancient civilizations of Central Asia, moves through the region’s pre-Islamic heritage, enters the period of scientific and cultural flourishing between the eighth and 13th centuries, and then follows the artistic and political achievements associated with the 14th to 16th centuries. The final section turns to contemporary Uzbekistan and its vision of a new cultural renaissance.

This arrangement makes an important point: the story of Islamic civilization in Central Asia did not begin with the arrival of Islam, nor did it end with the decline of a particular dynasty. It emerged from earlier societies and continued through centuries of exchange, adaptation and intellectual work.

The Hall of Fame: scholars beyond borders

One of the first spaces to command attention is the Hall of Fame, where huge mosaic panels vividly portray some of the most influential thinkers in the history of the Islamic world.

The figures include Avicenna, known in the Islamic intellectual tradition as Ibn Sina; Al-Khwarizmi, whose work helped establish the foundations of algebra; Al-Biruni, the scholar whose investigations ranged across mathematics, astronomy, geography and other fields; and Al-Farabi, the philosopher often called the Second Teacher after Aristotle.

The portraits are assembled from thousands of small pieces of tile. Viewed from a distance, they form monumental images. Seen more closely, they reveal the patience and precision required to bring so many individual pieces into a single composition.

The effect is both artistic and symbolic. Each scholar is presented as an individual whose ideas helped shape a much larger intellectual world.

A peek into the ancient world

The center’s historical journey reaches back much further than the Islamic period. In the galleries devoted to pre-Islamic heritage, archaeological objects present Central Asia as a place of human settlement, artistic production and cultural contact stretching back thousands of years.

Among the countless objects described in the exhibition material are stone tools and arrowheads associated with the Obi-Rahmat site, dating to approximately 80,000 years ago. There are also gold ornaments and other finds linked to ancient Bactria, a historical region that included parts of present-day Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

One striking exhibit is the sculpted head known as the Head of the Kushan Prince, dated to the first or second century CE and discovered at Dalverzin-Tepa in southern Uzbekistan. Its features and surviving detail offer a glimpse of the artistic culture that developed under the Kushan Empire, whose territories connected parts of Central and South Asia.

Nearby, a deer sculpture dating to the first millennium BC recalls the symbolic importance of animals in ancient artistic traditions. Its presence gives the gallery a different character from the displays of manuscripts and religious objects elsewhere in the building. Here, visitors encounter societies whose beliefs and artistic languages developed long before the emergence of Islam.

The objects also challenge the idea that the history of Uzbekistan can be understood only through the history of the Uzbek state, which is modern in its present form. The territory has been home to many peoples, languages, religions and political systems. Sogdian, Bactrian, Khwarazmian, Persian, Turkic and other cultural traditions all formed part of the wider historical landscape.

For an Iranian visitor, this part of the exhibition feels especially close. Ancient Bactria and the surrounding regions were linked to the Iranian cultural world through language, religion, trade and political contact. These connections were neither simple nor unchanging, but they formed an important part of the history of the lands that now make up modern Iran and its neighbors.

When technology brings history closer

The chronological galleries are supported by a range of digital installations. Multilingual screens provide information about objects, while digital reconstructions place historic buildings and cities within their former settings. Interactive displays allow visitors to explore historical periods in ways that would be difficult to achieve through labels and glass cases alone.

Some of the most engaging features use artificial intelligence to animate portraits of scholars and present their discoveries in a more personal format. Rather than simply reading a short biography, visitors can encounter a digital representation of a historical figure explaining aspects of his work.

Such displays can make a difficult subject more accessible, especially for younger visitors or people unfamiliar with the history of Islamic scholarship. Mathematics, philosophy and astronomy may seem distant when presented only through dates and technical terms. A digital guide can help turn them into stories about human curiosity, disagreement and discovery.

One of the most effective installations is an interactive map of the Silk Road. The historic trading network is often represented in books as a series of lines connecting distant cities. Here, its routes become visible paths of movement and exchange, helping visitors understand how merchants, religious teachers, diplomats, artists and ideas travelled between regions.

The Silk Road was never a single road with one fixed route. It was a changing network of overland and other connections that linked East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe across many centuries. Its importance lay not only in the goods that moved along it but also in the knowledge and artistic practices that accompanied them. That is way it sometimes referred to as the Silk Roads NOT the SilK Road.

Looking at the map, I thought about how often the history of our region is divided into national chapters, even when the historical evidence points towards constant interaction. The roads that connected Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva also linked them to cities farther south and west, including those of historical Iran.

Other interactive features make the experience more playful. Visitors can try a virtual archery simulation or explore an installation demonstrating how bellows supply air to a traditional tandoor oven. In the gallery devoted to contemporary Uzbekistan, Humo AI acts as a digital assistant, answering questions about the center and the country’s history.

These activities may seem far removed from ancient manuscripts, but they serve a useful purpose when they encourage visitors to ask questions. A museum is not only a place to look at the past. It can also be a place to discover how people lived, worked, cooked, travelled and understood their world.

The Quran Hall and a manuscript’s long journey

The most solemn space in the center is the Holy Quran Hall, which covers approximately 1,200 square meters and serves as the symbolic heart of the complex.

The room is monumental in scale. Pink marble lines the walls, while an extremely vast chandelier hangs overhead. Silk carpets bearing Quranic verses add another layer of craftsmanship to the setting.

Yet the central object is a manuscript, not the architecture around it.

Known as the Uthman Quran, the Osman Quran or the Samarkand Kufic Quran, the manuscript is traditionally associated with the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, and dated to the seventh century. It is among the most celebrated early Quranic manuscripts and was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 1997.

According to a widely circulated account, the manuscript was brought to Samarkand during the reign of Amir Timur in the late 14th century. It remained there for centuries before being transferred to St Petersburg under Russian imperial rule in the 19th century. After further movement during the revolutionary period, it returned to Tashkent in 1924.

Visitors are kept at a respectful distance from the manuscript, and photography of the original is restricted. Copies and multimedia displays help explain its history, its script and its importance. These limits are understandable: a fragile manuscript must be protected from excessive light, handling and other risks.

Standing in the hall, I was struck by the contrast between the immense space and the modest physical form of the object at its center. The chandelier, marble and carpets create a sense of grandeur, but the manuscript itself is made of pages bearing lines of writing. Its importance rests in the religious meaning attached to it, the history it has survived and the generations who have regarded it as a treasure.

Artifacts that cross cultural boundaries

Elsewhere in the center, the collection widens the story through religious objects, archaeological discoveries, manuscripts, textiles and works of art. Some items come from museums in Uzbekistan; others have been acquired through international auctions or cooperation with foreign institutions. In cases where originals remain abroad, the center uses scientific replicas to make important objects accessible to visitors.

Among the religious exhibits are a fragment of the kiswa, the cloth covering the Kaaba in Mecca, dating to 1859, and historic keys associated with the Kaaba. Such objects reflect the broad geography of Islamic religious life and the artistic traditions that developed around its most sacred sites.

The galleries devoted to the First Eastern Renaissance present manuscripts, coins, architectural models and finely made objects from the period between the eighth and 13th centuries. A copy of Imam al-Bukhari’s Al-Jamiʿ as-Sahih, a major collection of hadith, appears alongside a later manuscript of Al-Farabi’s philosophical work commonly known as The Virtuous City.

The presence of these works connects religious learning with philosophy, science and the study of society. Islamic intellectual history cannot be understood through theology alone. It also includes debates about medicine, mathematics, logic, astronomy, ethics and political life.

The section devoted to the Timurid period takes visitors into another world of artistic ambition. Amir Timur and his successors supported architecture, scholarship and the arts, creating a court culture that drew talent from across a wide region.

The displays include a decree associated with Timur, a silk robe from the first half of the 15th century and miniature paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries. Some of the miniatures are associated with Bukhara and Iran’s Shiraz, an important detail for anyone trying to understand the close relationship between Central Asian and Iranian art.

Shiraz was one of the major centers of Persian miniature painting, book production and calligraphy. Artists, techniques and visual ideas moved between workshops and courts, sometimes under the patronage of rulers whose political territories extended across regions that are now separate countries.

Looking at these paintings, I did not see a simple division between Uzbek and Iranian heritage. I saw an artistic language that had developed through a long conversation among masters, patrons and audiences. The works belong to specific places and periods, but their influence cannot be confined to a single modern border.

The same is true of Persian literature and architecture, which left deep marks across Central Asia. Persian was used widely as a language of literature and administration, while Turkic languages and traditions also played increasingly important roles in the region’s cultural life. These histories overlapped rather than replacing one another in a straight line.

For me, this is one of the center’s most valuable opportunities: to present Uzbekistan’s national history without separating it from the wider world that helped shape it.

A visitor’s experience

The center’s technology and monumental spaces can easily dominate first impressions. Yet the real test of a museum lies in what visitors take away from it.

During the visit, a middle-aged man who was there with his wife and daughter described the experience as something that went beyond looking at objects in display cases. The immersive galleries and multimedia installations, he said, allowed visitors to move through digital reconstructions of historic Uzbek cities and encounter scientific discoveries through digital representations of the scholars who made them.

I would not claim that every visitor responds to the displays in the same way. A conversation with one family cannot represent the views of everyone who enters the building. But the center’s combination of objects, interpretation and interactive learning gives it the potential to reach audiences with different interests and levels of historical knowledge.

Iran in the galleries and beyond them

As I moved through the center, my thoughts repeatedly returned to Iran.

This was not because the building was trying to tell Iran’s story. Its principal purpose is to present Uzbekistan’s heritage, and it does so through the country’s historic cities, archaeological sites, religious traditions and intellectual achievements. But the story it tells cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the larger cultural world in which those achievements developed.

The appearance of Persian miniatures from Shiraz is one example. The lives of scholars such as Avicenna and Al-Biruni are another. The wider influence of Persian literature, calligraphy, architecture and scholarship offers still more connections.

As I left the Islamic Civilization Center, one question stayed with me: Why has Iran, a country with such a rich and diverse historical heritage, not yet established a single public institution of comparable ambition, one that brings together its many civilizational periods through rigorous scholarship, modern museum design and interactive technology?

AM