Jahongir Urokboev was grazing cattle near the Sohib Ota cemetery in the Katta Saidov mahalla, Payaryk district, when he noticed a piece of iron lying in a ditch. Since Jahongir knew that I was studying history and archeology, he brought me the material he found and showed it to me. The two of us handed over the find to the Memorial Museum of the Victims of Katagon of Samarkand State University.

      For the sake of clarification, it was registered by the museum staff. The find was handed over to specialists for cleaning from rust and humus. It turned out that these were the remains of the Acier Universel brand, made in Belgium in 1894. The weapon was produced at the Cockerilla factory in Serana, Belgium. It is known that France and England supplied the leaders of the Uzbek national liberation movement with modern rifles through the territory of Afghanistan. On the other hand, at that time, tsarist Russia began to sell weapons bought in Belgium for 100 rubles. It is also possible that the firearms were seized as a result of countermeasures.

      At the end of the 19th century, a gun factory in Belgium produced 10,000 hunting rifles. In 1900, the plant was awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris. Since the butt of a hunting weapon is made of wood material, it rotted underground. Due to the fact that its barrel was made of thin metal, it has not reached us, only a mechanism made of thick steel has been preserved. We do not know how the weapon got into the territory of the Sohib Ota cemetery. But according to some scientific hypotheses, this place was once a city. Remains of ceramics, a metal arrowhead belonging to the Saka tribes, and a piece of clay from the Middle Ages burned in a fire were found here. It is known from history that during the times of the former union, people were resettled from here, land was taken from the peasants and turned into cotton fields.

 

Khamza Ishkuvvatov,

Post-graduate student of the Faculty of History of SamSU.