# Margilan: 2,000 years of Uzbek silk

> Margilan in the Fergana Valley has been a silk-weaving centre since the 1st century CE. Two working workshops — Yodgorlik and Said Ahmad Hoja — welcome visitors and still make ikat by hand.

Margilan sits on the historic Silk Road roughly 400 km east of Samarkand, in the fertile Fergana Valley. Chinese historians describe it as a silk-producing town by the 2nd century BCE — before silk technology officially reached the Roman world.

The signature product is **atlas** and **adras** — vibrant multi-coloured ikat fabrics. Ikat is a resist-dye technique: the warp threads are bound and dyed one colour at a time before weaving, so the pattern is fully created before the weft even touches the loom. It's mathematically brutal — a single 30-cm-repeat design can require 50+ hours of pre-dye binding.

**Working workshops open to visitors:**

- **Yodgorlik Factory** — the largest, employs ~250 workers. Free tour showing the full process: cocoon boiling, thread reeling, warp binding, dye baths, hand-loom weaving. Retail shop at the end.
- **Said Ahmad Hoja workshop** — smaller and more personal, run by a UNESCO-recognised master. Ask specifically to see the ikat-binding room.

Prices for hand-woven pure silk atlas start around US $30–50 per metre; blended silk-cotton adras is cheaper. Machine-loomed silk exists but has a slightly duller sheen once you've seen the hand-woven version.

Every autumn the town hosts the **International Atlas & Adras Festival**, gathering weavers from Central Asia, Turkey and Japan.

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Keywords: Margilan, silk, ikat, atlas, Fergana, craft
Updated: 2026-08-15
Category: destinations
URL: https://uzbguidedtours.com/kb/kb-fergana-margilan-silk