Uzbekistan brings centuries of Central Asian intellectual heritage to the world stage | CNN

A new institution in Tashkent opens as a monument to Central Asia’s role in the history of human knowledge. For centuries, the Silk Road carried not only goods but also ideas, art forms, and knowledge along its routes – many of which originated in the cities of what is now Uzbekistan. Today, that tradition of exchange is finding a new home in the Islamic Civilization Center, a 10-hectare complex celebrating the region’s identity rooted in Islamic culture, architecture, and scholarship. At the heart of the Islamic Civilization Center’s exhibition hall is one of the most significant objects in the Islamic world: the Uthman Qur’an, a 7th-century manuscript widely regarded as one of the oldest surviving copies of the holy text and listed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Displayed alongside it, and deeply venerated, is a fragment of the Kiswah – the silk cloth that covers the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s most sacred site. Both are exhibited together with more than 2,000 artifacts and manuscripts returned to Uzbekistan through a years-long repatriation initiative, led by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan. International auction houses including Sotheby’s and