Uzbekistan History, Language and Culture

The territory of modern-day Uzbekistan and its close neighbours have seen many empires rise and fall. The Sogdians, the Macedonians, the Huns, the Mongolians, the Seljuks, the Timurids and the Khanates of Samarkand, Bukhara Khiva and Khorezm all held sway at one time or another.

Central Asia really came of age with the development of the Silk Road from China to the West, the most valuable trading route of its day. The riches that it brought were used to build fabulous mosques and madrassars (Islamic colleges), most of which were destroyed by the Mongol hordes in the 13th century. Much of the damage was repaired and under Timur the Lame, many new cities were built in the 14th century. Timur conquered all before him and, at its height, his empire stretched to Moscow and Baghdad and as far west as Ankara in Turkey.

After his death, the empire crumbled and Central Asia was split into warring Khanates. The Russians had long had their eyes on the lands over their southern border, ever since Peter the Great sent his first military mission to Khiva in 1717, but it was to be another 150 years before they started to make any real headway.

In 1865, Russian General Konstantin Kaufmann took Tashkent and signed agreements with the Khans. However, following the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks were resisted in Central Asia by bands known as Basmachi until the 1930s when they were finally suppressed and Moscow took control.

The history of Central Asia under Soviet rule is one of exploitation. Uzbekistan was turned into a cotton monoculture and most of the product was processed north of the Urals, in Russia and Ukraine. Intensive cotton cultivation in Uzbekistan has in fact been linked to the drying out of the Aral Sea, one of the biggest ecological disasters in Central Asia.

Did you know?
• Muslims constitute some 90% of Uzbekistan's population. 
• Uzbekistan has the largest armed forces in Central Asia, with some 68,000 servicemen.
• Around a third of the country's population is aged under 14.