Uzbekistan

The lands of modern Uzbekistan formed the core of two ancient regions: Bactria, south of the Oxus (Amu Darya), and Sogdiana, centred on the fertile valley of the Zeravshan River. Settled by Iranian-speaking peoples and probably between roughly 1000 and 500 BCE, Sogdiana passed under the rule of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with its chief city Maracanda — the ancestor of Samarkand — guarding the route to the steppe. Bukhara too rose in this period as a centre of trade and crafts on the caravan roads that linked China with the Mediterranean world.

In 329 BCE the armies of Alexander the Great pushed beyond the Oxus into Sogdiana, capturing Maracanda and reaching the Jaxartes (Syr Darya), the boundary of the old Persian realm. Sogdian and Bactrian resistance, led by the chieftain Spitamenes, proved fierce, and it took Alexander two hard years to subdue the region. He sealed his conquest in 327 BCE by marrying Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian noble Oxyartes — a union meant to bind conqueror and conquered. After his death the region passed through Hellenistic, Kushan and Sasanian hands.

Through late antiquity the Sogdians became the supreme caravan merchants of the Silk Road. From the fifth to the eighth centuries their language served as a lingua franca of trade across Inner Asia, and Sogdian colonies stretched along the routes to China. Goods, faiths and ideas — Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Manichaean and Nestorian Christian — flowed through Samarkand and Bukhara, making this corridor one of the most cosmopolitan in the pre-modern world and laying the foundations for the cities' later splendour.

Turning points

1. c. 1000–500 BCEFormation

   Sogdiana settled and under Achaemenid rule

   The Zeravshan valley of Sogdiana, centred on Maracanda (Samarkand), is settled and passes under the Achaemenid Persian Empire; Bukhara grows as a Silk Road trade and crafts centre.

   [1] [2]

2. 329 BCEWar & Rupture

   Alexander the Great conquers Sogdiana

   Alexander the Great captures Maracanda (Samarkand) and advances to the Jaxartes, overcoming two years of fierce Sogdian resistance under Spitamenes.

   ↗See the data

   [2] [3]

3. 327 BCEPolitics & Power

   Alexander marries Roxana of Bactria

   To cement his conquest, Alexander marries Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian chieftain Oxyartes, symbolising the union of Macedonian and Central Asian peoples.

   [4]

4. 5th–8th centuries CEEconomy & Trade

   Sogdians dominate Silk Road trade

   Sogdian merchants from Samarkand and Bukhara become the leading caravan traders of the Silk Road, their language a lingua franca of Inner Asian commerce and culture.

   ↗See the data

   [1]

Figures of the era

In the early eighth century the Umayyad general Qutaybah ibn Muslim led Arab armies across the Oxus into Transoxiana — 'that which lies beyond the river' — taking Bukhara and then Samarkand between roughly 706 and 712, and pushing on into Khwarezm and the Fergana Valley. Islam slowly took root among the region's Iranian and Turkic peoples. In 751 an Arab Abbasid force defeated the armies of Tang China at the Battle of Talas, fixing the eastern limit of the Islamic world and, by tradition, carrying the secret of papermaking westward from Chinese prisoners taken in the fight.

From the late ninth century the Persian Samanid dynasty, ruling from Bukhara, presided over a brilliant flowering of culture. Under the Samanids Bukhara rivalled Baghdad as a cultural capital of Islam, its court fostering Persian poetry, philosophy, history and science alongside Arabic religious learning. The tomb of Ismail Samani, a masterpiece of tenth-century brickwork still standing in Bukhara, embodies the confidence and refinement of this age, when the foundations of a distinctly Iranian Islamic civilisation were laid.

Two giants of the era were born in these cities. The hadith scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari, born in Bukhara in 810, compiled the Sahih, a collection of the Prophet Muhammad's sayings revered by Sunni Muslims as second in authority only to the Qur'an. The polymath Avicenna (Ibn Sina), born near Bukhara around 980, served at the Samanid court and wrote the Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopaedia used in Europe and the Islamic world for centuries. Bukhara's libraries and madrasas made it, in the words of contemporaries, a dome of Islam and a fountain of learning.

Turning points

1. c. 706–712 CEReligion

   Arab conquest of Bukhara and Samarkand

   The Umayyad commander Qutaybah ibn Muslim takes Bukhara and Samarkand and annexes Transoxiana, beginning the Islamisation of the region beyond the Oxus.

   [5] [6]

2. 751 CEWar & Rupture

   Battle of Talas

   Abbasid Arab forces defeat the army of Tang China at the Battle of Talas, confirming Islam's hold on Central Asia and, by tradition, spreading papermaking westward.

   ↗See the data

   [5]

3. 810–870 CEReligion

   Imam al-Bukhari and the Sahih

   Muhammad al-Bukhari, born in Bukhara, compiles the Sahih, accepted by Sunni Muslims as the most authoritative collection of the Prophet's sayings after the Qur'an.

   [8]

4. 9th–10th centuries CECulture & Ideas

   Samanid Bukhara, a centre of the Islamic Golden Age

   The Persian Samanid dynasty makes Bukhara its capital, a rival to Baghdad whose court fosters Persian literature, science and the refined art and architecture of the Islamic Golden Age.

   [7] [6]

Figures of the era

In 1220 the armies of Genghis Khan descended on Transoxiana, sacking Bukhara and Samarkand and inflicting a catastrophe from which the region took generations to recover. The Mongol conquest folded Central Asia into the vast Mongol world, and the lands of the Oxus eventually passed to the Chagatai khanate, the ulus of Genghis Khan's second son. For more than a century the old cities lived under Turco-Mongol rule, their trade revived along the Silk Road even as political power fragmented among rival nomadic dynasties.

Out of this world rose Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, born near Shakhrisyabz around 1336. By the 1370s he had seized power in Transoxiana, and from his capital at Samarkand he carved out an empire stretching from Anatolia and the Caucasus to the frontiers of India, his campaigns as renowned for their brilliance as for their brutality. Timur lavished the spoils of conquest on Samarkand, summoning artists and craftsmen from across his domains to adorn it with mosques, madrasas and the towering Bibi-Khanym mosque, making it the most important economic and cultural centre of Central Asia.

Under Timur's successors the region entered what scholars call the Timurid Renaissance. The most remarkable of them was Timur's grandson Ulugh Beg, who governed Samarkand and was himself a gifted astronomer. Around 1428 he built a great observatory there and compiled astronomical tables of such accuracy that they were still consulted in seventeenth-century Europe. The Registan square, the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis and Ulugh Beg's madrasa crowned Samarkand's golden age — an artistic and scientific flowering whose monuments form the core of the city's UNESCO World Heritage listing.

Turning points

1. 1220 CEWar & Rupture

   Genghis Khan sacks Bukhara and Samarkand

   The Mongol armies of Genghis Khan storm Transoxiana, destroying Bukhara and Samarkand in a devastation from which the oasis cities took generations to recover.

   ↗See the data

   [2] [9]

2. c. 1370 CEFormation

   Timur takes power and makes Samarkand his capital

   Timur (Tamerlane) seizes control of Transoxiana and makes Samarkand the capital of an empire reaching from Anatolia to India, adorning it as the cultural heart of Central Asia.

   [10] [2]

3. 1399–1404 CECulture & Ideas

   The Bibi-Khanym mosque and Timurid Samarkand

   Timur summons artisans from across his conquests to build the monumental Bibi-Khanym mosque and other masterpieces, making Samarkand one of the great cities of the medieval world.

   [11] [10]

4. c. 1428 CECulture & Ideas

   Ulugh Beg builds his observatory

   Timur's grandson Ulugh Beg, ruler and astronomer, builds a great observatory at Samarkand and compiles star tables so accurate they were used in Europe two centuries later.

   [12]

Figures of the era

At the turn of the sixteenth century the Uzbeks — Turkic-Mongol tribes from the steppes north of the Aral Sea, who took their name from Öz Beg Khan of the Golden Horde — moved south into Transoxiana. Under Muhammad Shaybani Khan they ejected the last Timurid sultans from Samarkand and Herat around 1500–1510, founding the Shaybanid dynasty that ruled from Bukhara. The settled Iranian population and the incoming nomads gradually merged, and the region took on the Uzbek identity it bears today.

Over the following centuries power crystallised into three rival states. The khanate (later emirate) of Bukhara, ruled successively by the Shaybanids, Astrakhanids and Manghits, remained the religious and commercial heart of the region. The khanate of Khiva governed the Khwarezm oasis to the west, while the khanate of Kokand rose in the Fergana Valley in the eighteenth century. Their courts patronised mosques, madrasas and caravanserais, but they also warred constantly with one another and depended heavily on the slave and caravan trades.

The architecture of these khanates still defines Uzbekistan's historic cities. The walled inner town of Khiva, the Itchan Kala, with its minarets, madrasas and the palaces of Alla-Kulli-Khan, survives as one of the most complete ensembles of Central Asian Islamic architecture and is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Yet by the nineteenth century the khanates, fragmented and turned inward, were ill prepared to resist the southward advance of the expanding Russian Empire.

Turning points

1. c. 1500–1510 CEPeoples & Migration

   Shaybanid Uzbeks conquer Transoxiana

   Muhammad Shaybani Khan leads the Uzbeks south, expelling the last Timurids from Samarkand and Herat and founding the Shaybanid dynasty ruling from Bukhara.

   ↗See the data

   [13] [14]

2. 1512 CEFormation

   The khanate of Khiva is founded

   A branch of the Shaybanid dynasty establishes the khanate of Khiva in the Khwarezm oasis, one of the three Uzbek states that would endure until the Russian conquest.

   [15] [16]

3. 17th–19th centuriesCulture & Ideas

   Islamic monuments of Bukhara and Khiva

   The khanates raise the madrasas, minarets and palaces that survive in the historic centres of Bukhara and the walled Itchan Kala of Khiva, today UNESCO World Heritage sites.

   [17] [16]

4. early 18th centuryPolitics & Power

   The khanate of Kokand emerges

   A third Uzbek state, the khanate of Kokand, rises in the fertile Fergana Valley, completing the trio of khanates of Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand.

   [14]

Figures of the era

Russia's conquest of Central Asia came swiftly. Imperial forces stormed Tashkent in 1865 and Samarkand in 1868; Bukhara was forced into protectorate status in 1868 and Khiva in 1873, while the khanate of Kokand, after an uprising, was abolished and annexed in 1876. The region was organised as the governor-generalship of Russian Turkestan. Russian settlers arrived, railways were built, and the colonial administration began to expand cotton cultivation to feed the empire's textile mills, binding the local economy ever more tightly to a single crop.

After the Russian Revolution and a period of upheaval, Soviet power was consolidated in Central Asia. The national delimitation of 1924 carved the region into ethnically defined republics, and the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was created, becoming a full union republic of the USSR in 1925. Soviet rule brought mass literacy, industrialisation and the emancipation of women, but also collectivisation, the suppression of Islam, political purges and an ever-greater fixation on cotton, the 'white gold' that the central planners demanded in ever-rising quantities.

The cost of that demand was an ecological catastrophe. To irrigate the expanding cotton fields, Soviet planners diverted vast volumes of water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the rivers feeding the Aral Sea. From the 1960s the sea began to shrink; by the 1980s little or no river water reached it at all. Once one of the world's largest inland seas, the Aral lost most of its area and volume, leaving a salt-encrusted desert, ruined fisheries and a public-health crisis across the Karakalpak region — often described as one of the worst human-made environmental disasters of the twentieth century.

Turning points

1. 1865 CEColonisation

   Russia takes Tashkent

   Russian imperial forces storm Tashkent, beginning the conquest of the Uzbek lands; Samarkand falls in 1868 as the empire pushes into Central Asia.

   ↗See the data

   [18] [19]

2. 1868–1876 CEColonisation

   Khanates absorbed into Russian Turkestan

   Bukhara (1868) and Khiva (1873) become Russian protectorates and Kokand is annexed in 1876, completing the conquest and the creation of Russian Turkestan.

   ↗See the data

   [18] [19]

3. 1924–1925 CEPolitics & Power

   Creation of the Uzbek SSR

   The Soviet national delimitation of 1924 carves Central Asia into ethnic republics; the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic is created and becomes a union republic of the USSR in 1925.

   [19] [18]

4. 1960s–1980sCatastrophe

   Cotton monoculture and the death of the Aral Sea

   Soviet irrigation for cotton diverts the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and the Aral Sea shrinks drastically from the 1960s — a notorious man-made environmental catastrophe.

   ↗See the data

   [20] [19]

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Supreme Council of the Uzbek SSR declared independence on 31 August 1991, marked thereafter as Independence Day on 1 September. A referendum on 29 December confirmed the decision, and Islam Karimov, the republic's last Communist leader, became the first president of independent Uzbekistan. The United States recognised the new state in December 1991 and established formal diplomatic relations in February 1992. Karimov inherited the most populous country in Central Asia and the daunting legacy of a cotton-dependent, environmentally scarred economy.

Karimov ruled for a quarter of a century with a firm grip, prizing stability and order above political and human rights. His government suppressed opposition and independent Islam and controlled the press, and his rule was marked by tragedy in May 2005 at Andijan, when security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters, with rights groups estimating that hundreds were killed. The cotton harvest, meanwhile, continued to rely on the mass mobilisation of citizens, drawing sustained international criticism over forced labour.

When Karimov died in 2016, his prime minister, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, succeeded him and surprised observers by launching a programme of reform under the banner of a 'New Uzbekistan'. He floated the currency, eased restrictions on trade and the press, released political prisoners, improved relations with neighbours, and — after years of pressure — moved to dismantle the system of forced labour in the cotton fields, which monitoring groups judged largely ended by the early 2020s. Significant restrictions on freedoms remain, but in the 2020s Uzbekistan has reopened to the world, courting investment and tourism around the very Silk Road heritage that first made it famous.

Turning points

1. 1 September 1991Independence

   Uzbekistan declares independence

   The Supreme Council of the Uzbek SSR declares independence on 31 August 1991; 1 September becomes Independence Day, and a December referendum confirms it with Islam Karimov as first president.

   ↗See the data

   [21] [22]

2. May 2005Politics & Power

   The Andijan events

   Government forces open fire on protesters in the city of Andijan; rights groups estimate that hundreds of civilians were killed, drawing international condemnation of Karimov's rule.

   [22]

3. 2016 CEPolitics & Power

   Mirziyoyev succeeds Karimov and opens reforms

   After Islam Karimov's death, Shavkat Mirziyoyev becomes president and launches a 'New Uzbekistan' programme of economic liberalisation and cautious political opening.

   [23]

4. by 2022Economy & Trade

   End of systemic forced labour in cotton

   After sustained reforms and international monitoring, civil-society groups conclude that Uzbekistan has dismantled the systemic state-imposed forced labour in its cotton harvest.

   ↗See the data

   [24]

Figures of the era