Termez is the great surprise of southern Uzbekistan, a destination for curious travellers willing to stray from the classic Samarkand and Bukhara route. Here, at the country's southern tip, on the banks of the broad Amu Darya that separates Uzbekistan from Afghanistan, layers of history spanning more than two and a half millennia sit on top of one another: the city that Alexander the Great founded (or refounded), the Greco-Bactrian golden age when the Greek and Eastern worlds embraced, the great Kushan empire under which Buddhism flourished, and centuries of Islam that left behind mausoleums and shrines.
The treasure of Termez is its Buddhist past. Before Islam reached Central Asia, this region (ancient Bactria, later Tokharistan) was one of the great centres of Buddhism, and from here the religion spread to China along the Silk Road. Sites such as Fayaz Tepe and Kara Tepe, with their monasteries, stupas and rock-cut cells, and the huge Zurmala stupa bear witness to that extraordinary era when people here prayed to the Buddha surrounded by art with Greek roots. The excellent Termez Archaeological Museum brings together the best of those finds.
This guide helps you plan a visit that combines Buddhist archaeology, Greco-Bactrian history and Islamic heritage, with the added twist of being right on the Afghan border. We explain how to get there (the overnight train from Tashkent is a great option), which sites to see and in what order, what everything costs, what precautions to take near the border and how to make the most of the best museum in the south of the country. Termez rewards travellers who make it this far with an incredibly rich history and almost no tourists.
Termez is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia. Its origins go back more than 2,500 years, and tradition links it to Alexander the Great, who around 329 BC is said to have founded or refounded one of his 'Alexandrias' here on the Oxus River (the Amu Darya). It was a prosperous Greco-Bactrian city where Greek, Persian, Indian and Chinese civilisations met, and under the Kushan empire (1st–4th centuries AD) it became a major centre of Buddhism, with monasteries and stupas from which the religion travelled to China. With the arrival of Islam it became an important medieval city, famous for scholars such as the mystic Al-Hakim al-Termezi. Genghis Khan razed it in the 13th century, and it was later reborn. Today, as the capital of southern Uzbekistan on the border with Afghanistan, it keeps that dual Buddhist and Islamic legacy, unique in the country. Its history, from Alexander to the Kushans and on to Islam, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The less-travelled Uzbekistan: Termez and its Buddhist legacy on the Afghan border, Nurata with its fortress attributed to Alexander the Great and its sacred spring, and Lake Aydarkul with its yurt camps in the heart of the Kyzylkum Desert.
Read the history of The south and the Kyzylkum deserts →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
At the far southern tip of Uzbekistan, where the broad Amu Darya river separates the country from Afghanistan, lies a city that has seen almost everything Central Asian history has to offer. Termez is more than two and a half thousand years old, and in that time it has been a Greek city and a Persian one, a capital of Buddhism and a sanctuary of Islam, razed by the Mongols and reborn again and again. Few places in the world pack so many civilisations into a single patch of ground.
What makes Termez unique is that here, for centuries, worlds we tend to picture as separate came together: Alexander's Greeks, the Buddhist kings of India, the Persians, the nomads of the steppes and the caravan traders of the Silk Road. In its temples people prayed to the Buddha before images carved in the Greek manner; in its mausoleums lie the mystics of Islam. Exploring Termez means following that long conversation between civilisations, written in mud-brick stupas and brick portals.
The recorded history of Termez begins with one of the greatest figures of Antiquity. Around 329 BC, during his lightning conquest of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great reached these lands on the upper Oxus (the ancient name of the Amu Darya) and subdued the regions of Bactria and Sogdiana. Tradition holds that he founded or refounded one of his many 'Alexandrias' here, this one on the banks of the Oxus, on or near the site of present-day Termez, as a strategic stronghold controlling the river crossing and the routes to India and the north.
After Alexander's death his generals divided up the empire, and these lands ended up as part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, an extraordinary Hellenistic state that, thousands of kilometres from Greece, kept the Greek language, art and institutions alive while blending them with local cultures. Bactria was known as 'the land of a thousand cities', and Termez flourished as one of its centres: it minted coins, traded with India, Persia, China and the Mediterranean world, and was a meeting point of civilisations. Shortly afterwards, that blending would give rise to one of the most fascinating artistic and religious phenomena in history: Greco-Buddhist art.
Ancient Termez reached its peak under the Kushan Empire, between the 1st and 4th centuries AD. The Kushans, a people of nomadic origin from the steppes, unified a vast territory stretching from northern India to Central Asia, and under their rule the region enjoyed a golden age of prosperity, trade and culture. Termez, at the heart of that empire, became a large city and an important religious centre.
The Kushans, and above all their great king Kanishka, were patrons of Buddhism, and with their backing the religion spread across Central Asia and from here on to China, following the caravan routes. Termez filled up with monasteries, temples and stupas: complexes such as Fayaz Tepe and Kara Tepe, with their monks' cells, shrines and great stupas (like the monumental Zurmala stupa), bear witness to that splendour. It was a time when Buddhism, Iranian cults and other religions lived side by side here in a climate of remarkable tolerance.
The most astonishing thing about that Buddhism was its art. Heirs to Greco-Bactrian Hellenism, the region's sculptors portrayed the Buddha and the bodhisattvas using Greek techniques and models: serene faces with classical features, robes with 'Greek-style' folds, an aesthetic that specialists call Greco-Buddhist or Gandhara art. Many of these sculptures and reliefs, found at the Termez sites, are now kept in its Archaeological Museum and are extraordinarily beautiful: tangible proof that here East and West didn't just trade, they created together.
The Buddhist world of Termez came to an end with the Arab expansion. In the 7th and 8th centuries the armies of the caliphate conquered Central Asia and brought Islam with them, which gradually replaced the earlier religions. The Buddhist monasteries were abandoned, and over old Bactria, now called Tokharistan, a new Islamic civilisation took shape. Far from declining, Termez remained a prosperous and important city, the hub of a rich farming and trading district on the banks of the Oxus.
Medieval Islamic Termez was a notable centre of culture and spirituality. It produced renowned scholars and mystics, the most famous of whom was Abu Abdullah al-Hakim al-Termezi, a 9th-century theologian and Sufi mystic, one of the great figures of early Sufism, whose mausoleum is still a place of pilgrimage today. The city filled with mosques, madrasas and mausoleums, and an influential family of sayyids (descendants of the Prophet) built the impressive Sultan Saodat funerary complex, which kept growing over the centuries.
That prosperity was shattered in the 13th century. In 1220, during Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion, Termez was besieged, taken and razed, and much of its population was massacred, as happened to so many cities in the region. The old city by the river was left in ruins. It was later reborn on a slightly different site and carried on under the Timurids and later dynasties, but never again with the weight it once had.
In modern times, Termez's position on the border once again shaped its destiny. With the Russian conquest of Central Asia in the 19th century, the city ended up on the edge of the empire, facing an Afghanistan that served as a buffer state with British India, in the middle of the 'Great Game'. Under Soviet rule Termez became a major military base and the main crossing point into Afghanistan: the so-called 'Friendship Bridge' was built here over the Amu Darya, and across it marched the Soviet troops who invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and, ten years later in 1989, those who withdrew after a disastrous war. For decades the border zone was militarised and closed to tourism.
With Uzbekistan's independence in 1991, Termez became the capital of Surxondaryo province, the southernmost in the country. The border with Afghanistan has remained sensitive, especially during periods of conflict and instability on the other side of the river, which is why some archaeological sites close to the border line require special permits to visit.
In recent decades, however, Uzbekistan has begun to showcase Termez's exceptional heritage. The opening of a modern Archaeological Museum in 2001, the protection of the Buddhist sites and better transport links have gradually opened the city to cultural tourism. Today Termez is still a little-visited, almost secret destination for travellers looking for something different: the traces of Alexander, the Greek face of the Buddha and the mausoleums of Islam's mystics, all in one city on the banks of a river that is still a border between worlds, just as it was two and a half thousand years ago.
