(Aulie-Ata until 1936, Mirzoian from 1936 to 1938), a city, administrative center of Dzhambul Oblast, Kazakh SSR. Renamed in honor of the Kazakh national poet Dzhambul Dzhabaev. Dzhambul is located on the left bank of the Talas River, at the intersection of the river and the railroad, 545 km west of Alma-Ata. A railroad branch 177 km long links Dzhambul with the city of Zhanatas. The population was 196,000 in 1971, as against 64,000 in 1939 and 113,000 in 1959.

Dzhambul was mentioned as early as the fifth century under the name of Taraz or Talas. From the tenth to the 12th centuries it was the capital of the Qarakhanid state. Incorporated into Russia in 1864, Dzhambul was important in pre-revolutionary times for trade with livestock and animal husbandry products. During the Soviet period Dzhambul has become an important center of the chemical industry, including the production of phosphatic fertilizer; of light industry, including a leather and footwear combine, a wool-washing factory, and factories producing furniture, clothing, haberdashery, and chrome-tanned leather and rubber products; and of the food industry, including sugar, meat, and liquor and vodka combines, a winery, a dairy plant, a fish packing plant, and a brewery. The city is also the site of a developing machine-building industry, including plants producing equipment for utilities and spare parts for agricultural machines. There are machine repair plants and a building materials industry. Dzhambul has three institutions of higher education: a technological institute of light industry and food processing, an institute of irrigation construction, and a pedagogical institute. The city’s other educational institutions include an accounting and statistics technicum, a chemical engineering technicum, and medical, pedagogical, and adult education schools. There is a museum of local lore and a drama theater.

Excavations have discovered burials in ossuaries of the seventh and eighth centuries, baths with ornamental walldrawings of the 11th and 12th centuries, and a water main. The Qarakhan mausoleum, built in the tenth and 11th centuries and reconstructed in the 20th century, has been preserved. The city center, with a radial ring plan, has been built west of the ancient fortified town, which is now a preserve. The most remarkable structures of the city center are the buildings of the chemical industry workers’ club (1954), of the oblast executive committee (1958), of the city committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan (1954), a hotel (1960), the House of Communications (1962), and a drama theater (1965). The city has erected monuments to V. I. Lenin, unveiled in 1959, and to Dzhambul, unveiled in 1963, made by the sculptor Kh. Naurzbaev. Mausoleums of Babadzhkhatun (tenth to 11th centuries) and of Aisha-Bibi (11th to 12th centuries) have been found in the village of Golovachevka near Dzhambul.

an urban-type settlement in Dzhezkazgan Oblast, Kazakh SSR. Located 128 km west of the Kiik railroad station (on the Karaganda-Mointy line). It is a site of nonferrous ore mining. The town was named in honor of the Kazakh folk poet Dzhambul Dzhabaev.