Osh [key], city (1993 pop. 233,300), capital of Osh region, S Kyrgyzstan, in the Fergana Valley. Terminus of the Osh-Khorugh highway and Kyrgyzstan's second largest city, Osh has silk, cotton, textile, and food-processing industries; it also is a center of the illegal opium trade. One of the oldest settlements of Central Asia, Osh was for centuries a major silk-production center, strategically situated on a trade route to India. The old city adjoins the larger modern section. Sulayman Mt., or Taht-I-Suleiman [Solomon's throne], is a place of Muslim pilgrimage. Osh was the scene of violent Uzbek-Kyrgyz ethnic clashes in 1990 and again in 2010.
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