February 17, 2021
A multivolume set of books on Uzbekistan s cultural treasures is shown at a conference in Tashkent. (Photo by Larry Luxner)
Uzbekistan’s Alisher Navoiy National Library is named after him. So is a metro station in Tashkent, the nation’s capital. Not to mention Navoi International Airport, as well as Uzbekistan’s second-largest province, Navoiy home to a million people and even a 41-mile-wide crater on the planet Mercury.
We’re talking here, of course, about 15th-century poet, statesman and scholar Alisher Navoiy considered the father of Uzbek literature.
On Feb. 9, the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Washington hosted a webinar to discuss the legacy of this famous man, who was born Feb. 9, 1441, exactly 580 years ago.