Uzbekistan

Heart of the Silk Road — Samarkand, Bukhara and the empire of Timur.

Uzbekistan occupies the historic heart of Central Asia, the land the Greeks knew as Sogdiana and Bactria, where the oasis cities of Samarkand and Bukhara grew rich as crossroads of the Silk Road. Conquered by Alexander the Great and later by Arab armies, the region became a jewel of the Islamic Golden Age under the Samanids of Bukhara before the Mongols of Genghis Khan laid it waste. From this turmoil rose Timur (Tamerlane), who made Samarkand the dazzling capital of an empire and patron of a cultural renaissance. After centuries under the Uzbek khanates, the Russian conquest and Soviet rule reshaped the land into a cotton monoculture that drained the Aral Sea, until Uzbekistan declared independence on 1 September 1991 and, after the long authoritarian rule of Islam Karimov, began a cautious reformist opening under Shavkat Mirziyoyev.