Hissar

Hissar stands in the fertile valley of the Kafirnigan, beneath the mountains that bear its name. Its fortress guarded a district known in earlier medieval sources as Shuman. The town lay among the settlements of the upper Oxus basin, where cultivated valleys opened into high mountain country.

By the time of Timur the place was known as Hisar-i Shadman, the “fortress of Shadman”, or simply Hissar. Its rulers and the powers of Bukhara contested control of the surrounding lands in the centuries that followed. Across from the fortress gate stands an old madrasa dating from the sixteenth century; another madrasa was built in the eighteenth. Their presence beside the citadel reflects the town's place as a centre of learning as well as government.