Namangan (uzb. Namangan) is the administrative center of the Namangan region, the Republic of Uzbekistan. The second most populous city in Uzbekistan after Tashkent.

Geography
Namangan is located in the northern part of the Ferghana Valley, 200 km southeast of Tashkent (about 300 km by road). Altitude 476 m above sea level.
The Davlatabad district of Namangan city was abolished in 2003 and is directly subordinated to the khokimiyat (administration) of the city.
The territory of the city until 2016 was 101.5 km², in 2016 parts of the territory of Namangan, Uychi and Yangikurgan regions were annexed to the city, as a result of which the area of ​​the city increased to 145 km².

History
City Founding
It is believed that the name "Namangan" comes from the Persian "Namak kan" (نمک‌کان) - "salt mine". Archaeological excavations have shown the presence of a settlement on the territory of the modern city (near the stone bridge across Namangansay) in the first centuries of our era. According to legend, there was a lake on the territory of the settlement, where table salt was mined. The first mention of the actual settlement of Namangan dates back to the end of the 15th century, and since 1610, Namangan has become a city. In 1620, residents of Akhsikent, destroyed by an earthquake, moved to Namangan.
The digging of the Yangiaryk Canal in 1819-1821 played a huge role in the development of Namangan. The Russian traveler and geographer A.F. Middendorf, who visited Namangan in 1878, wrote:
How did one of the last creations, Yangiaryk, in the Namangan district, come true? From each yard they demanded one worker; armed with his ketmen, he had to work on his grubs for 15 days on the construction of a water canal. After 3 years, a small flow of water was achieved, and then, in the next 10 years, the channel was widened and deepened
A.F. Middendorf. Essays on the Ferghana Valley, St. Petersburg, 1882.
Namangan was known as a craft center, where potters, weavers, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, dyers, jewelers, printrs, and shoemakers lived. Horticulture and sericulture were developed, trade flourished with China, Bukhara and neighboring nomadic tribes. Being part of the Kokand Khanate, Namangan experienced endless civil strife, devastating wars and raids that undermined the city's economy. In 1843, son Kokand ruler Sheralikhan Khudoyarkhan was a bek in Namangan. In 1845, Musulmankul took the 16-year-old Khudoyar from Namangan to Kokand and proclaimed him Khan.

Within the Russian Empire
Endless intrigues, coups and the riots that followed led Namangan to join the uprising against Khudoyarkhan in 1873-76. Tsar Alexander II, supporting Khudoyarkhan, sent troops to suppress the uprising. On September 26, 1875, General Skobelev, having crossed the Syr Darya, occupied the city. However, a month later, in October, the rebels captured Namangan and the Russian garrison, fortified in the citadel, barely repelled the rebel attacks. Then Skobelev, pulling up additional forces, subjected Namangan to artillery bombardment, and having driven the rebels out of the city, he finally annexed it to the Russian Empire. After the inclusion of the territory of the Kokand Khanate into the empire, the city became the center of the Namangan district of the Fergana region.
With the accession to Russia, industrial, commercial and banking capital began to rapidly penetrate into Central Asia. According to statistics, in 1892, 28 different enterprises operated in the Namangan district, employing 704 workers. The cotton processing industry developed rapidly. The largest scale of production was distinguished by 20 ginneries, which produced 81.5% of the total gross industrial output.
In connection with the development of the cotton-processing industry, the demand for raw cotton has increased enormously. In 1892, the gross cotton harvest in the county amounted to 22.6 thousand tons from 21.5 thousand hectares, the yield was 10.5 centners. There were 10 cotton-cleaning plants in Namangan, of which 4 were steam, the rest were water; two lard factories, 8 soap factories, 10 tanneries, one vodka factory; 15 flour mills, 65 oil mills, 3 mills, 9 pottery, 2 brick and 4 iron-smelting workshops.
The development of industry was also reflected in the growth of the population of Namangan. If, according to the 1897 census, 62,017 people lived in it, then in 1910 there were already 75,580 people. Namangan ranked first in the Fergana Valley in terms of the number of schools and maktabs. The city successfully operated 1 parish school, 1 Russian-native elementary school with evening courses for adults and 68 Muslim maktabs. There was a hospital with 20 beds.
In 1912, Namangan was connected by railway with Kokand. Namangan has become one of the industrial centers and the second city after Tashkent in the Turkestan Governor General, in terms of population. At that time, many buildings and structures were built, among them the mausoleum of Khojamny-Kabra and the madrasah of Mulla-Kyrgyz.
On October 22, 1908, along with other coats of arms of the Fergana region, the coat of arms of the city of Namangan was approved. His description was:
In the scarlet shield are three silver silkworms curled into a ring. In the free part, the coat of arms of the Fergana region.

Under Soviet rule
Since the end of 1917, armed clashes between the Bolsheviks and counter-revolutionary forces periodically took place in the city. In April 1920, Namangan was visited and stayed for several days by the commander of the Turkestan Front and a member of the commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for Turkestan M.V. Frunze. Together with him, the chairman of the commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for Turkestan affairs Sh.Z. Eliava, the chairman of the Margilan union "Koshchi" Yuldash Akhunbabaev arrived in Namangan. Around the middle of 1923, the Red Army managed to suppress the Basmachi movement in the county.
As a result of the national-state delimitation in 1924, 10 volosts (Chatkal, Alabukinsky, Aimskaya, etc.) were separated from the territory of the Namangan district, which became part of the Kyrgyz Autonomous Republic.
In 1926 the city experienced a strong earthquake. Collectivization, which began in 1927, was accompanied by mass discontent among the population and armed uprisings that continued until the end of the second five-year plan (1937).
In 1930, there were 17 schools of the first stage and two schools of advanced type in Namangan: one seven-year and one nine-year, 307 schools for the elimination of illiteracy worked. There were 2 kindergartens, 2 orphanages and 6 playgrounds. A pedagogical technical school and a medical workers' faculty worked in the city. There were 7 clubs, 31 red corners, 2 libraries, 3 cinemas and 1 zoo museum. On June 15, 1932, at the initiative of the famous Uzbek poet and educator Khamza Hakim-zade Niyazi, a regional musical and drama theater named after Alisher Navoi was opened in Namangan, which functions to this day.
March 10, 1941, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was the Namangan region was formed as part of the Uzbek SSR, and the city of Namangan became its administrative center.
In 1941-1943, the design institute of all-Union significance GIPROIV and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Artificial Fiber (VNIIV) were evacuated in Namangan. Also, from September 1942 to the spring of 1945, in Namangan, as well as Fergana, Andijan and Uchkurgan, the Armavir Military Aviation School of Pilots /AVASHP/ was temporarily based, which later merged with the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots. During the war, the Namangan chemical plant produced lines for parachutes. About 24 thousand Namangan people died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
From December 3 to 5, 1990, riots on ethnic grounds took place in the city. On December 2, local hooligans started a quarrel and a fight with the military on the bus. During the riots, 5 servicemen of the Soviet Army were killed, whom the hooligans burned on the same bus where the fight was arranged. Three civilians were also killed. According to other sources, the instigators of the quarrel and fight were the servicemen themselves, who, in a state of intoxication, began to molest women and girls. The events received coverage in the all-union media; The newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" wrote about these events in the article "Black apples of Namangan".
In 1990, the first official training center of oriental medicine in the USSR was opened in Namangan for the training of non-contact massage specialists, using the method of Juna Davitashvili, with the issuance of an official document at the ONIL DD IOF of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Industrial Research Laboratory "Remote Diagnostics" of the Institute of General Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) The organizer was Madaminov Takhir Kasymovich.

Independent Uzbekistan
After Uzbekistan gained independence, Namangan remained the regional center of the Namangan region. In the first half of the 1990s, non-governmental pseudo-Islamic organizations (Tovba, Islom Lashkarlari) functioned in the city. These organizations aimed to build the so-called "caliphate" in the Ferghana Valley. This led to a tense social atmosphere in the city. However, by the mid-1990s, the authorities managed to restore order in the city. Prominent activists of the pseudo-Islamic movement were forced to flee the country and the influence of gangs began to wane.

Religion
Islam
Namangan is a city with strong Muslim traditions. Even during the years of Soviet power, Namangan Islamic scholars occupied leading positions in the religious institutions of Bukhara and Tashkent, worked as imams in the largest mosques in Central Asia. During the period 1990-92, dozens of mosques were erected by the population of the city. In 1997, their number in the city reached 270, and over 690 throughout the Namangan region. During the October Revolution of 1917 there were more than 400 of them with a population of 180 thousand people.
In the late 1980s, with the intervention of third forces, ideas alien to the Namangan people of politicizing religion and using it