Uzbekistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia. It is itself surrounded by five landlocked countries: Kazakhstan to the north; Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Tajikistan to the southeast; Afghanistan to the south, Turkmenistan to the south-west. Its capital and largest city is Tashkent. Uzbekistan is part of the area known as Turkestan as well as a member of the Organization of Turkic States and TÜRKSOY. Its majority native and titular ethnic group are the Uzbek people, a Turkic people. While the Uzbek language, a Turkic language, is the majority native and spoken language in Uzbekistan, Russian, a foreign language, is widely used as an inter-ethnic tongue and in government due to the country's Soviet and Russian Imperial past. Russians also form a significant minority ethnic group. Additionally, there are significant Tajik, Karakalpak, and Kazakh minorities, along with numerous smaller groups. Islam is the majority religion in Uzbekistan, most Uzbeks being Sunni Muslims."Chapter 1: Religious Affiliation". The World's Muslims: Unity and Diversity. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 9 August 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2013. In ancient times it largely overlapped with the regions known as Sogdia, Bactria, Khwarazm, Transoxiana, and Khorasan.
The first people recorded in Central Asia were Scythians who came from the northern grasslands of what is now Uzbekistan, sometime in the first millennium BC; when these nomads settled in the region they built an extensive irrigation system along the rivers. This section incorporates text from the following source, which is in the public domain: Lubin, Nancy (1997). "Uzbekistan", chapter 5 in Glenn E. Curtis (Ed.), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan: Country Studies. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. . pp. 375–468: Early History, pp. 385–386. At this time, cities such as Bukhoro (Bukhara) and Samarqand (Samarkand) emerged as centres of government and high culture. By the mid-1st Millennium BC, the Bactrian, Sogdian, and Khwarezmian peoples dominated what is now Uzbekistan. Other Iranic peoples, such as the Saka, Yuezhi, Parthians, Persians, and Iranian Huns would later migrate into and control these territories, in addition to Non-Iranic peoples such as the Greeks and Göktürks, prior to the advent of Islam. As China began to develop its silk trade with the West, Iranian cities took advantage of this commerce by becoming centres of trade. Using an extensive network of cities and rural settlements the Sogdian intermediaries became the wealthiest of these Iranian merchants. As a result of this trade on what became known as the Silk Road, Bukhara, Samarkand and Khiva eventually became extremely wealthy cities, and at times Transoxiana (Mawarannahr) was one of the most influential and powerful Persian provinces of antiquity. A remote part of the First Persian Empire, the area was briefly conquered by Alexander the Great, and its parts were known as Sogdia, Bactria, Khwarazm, Khorasan, and Transoxiana in ancient times. It, or parts of it, then passed through the Seleucid Empire, Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Kushan Empire, Hephthalite Empire, Kidarite Empire, Parthian Empire, and Sasanian Empire. As Turkic peoples arrived in the area and began to replace Iranic peoples, a process which would not be largely complete until the beginning of the Early Modern Period, the Sogdian city-states became a part of the First Turkic Khaganate and Western Turkic Khaganate.
Long before Islamic invasion and conquest, the region as a whole and in part was ruled by various Hindu, Hellenist, Buddhist, Ancient Iranian Religious, Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Tengrist rulers for several centuries. These dynasties included the Achaemenid, Macedonian, Seleucid, Greco-Bactrian, Kushan, Hephthalite, Kidarite, Parthian, and Sassanian Empires and the First and Western Turkic Khaganates, and this period is well known for the exchange, intermixing, syncretism, and flourishing of science, art, culture, and religion. The Church of the East was also a significant presence. The area is widely considered to have experienced a golden age during this time. The principal ethnic groups during this era were Iranic and, towards the end of the period, Turkic peoples, with significant influence by Greeks, Indo-Aryans, Chinese, Tocharians, Proto-Mongols, and Tibetans as well, and the most prominent religions were Hinduism, Ancient Hellenism, Buddhism, Ancient Iranian Religion, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, the Church of the East, and Tengrism.
The Early Muslim conquests and the subsequent Samanid Empire converted most of the people, including the local ruling classes, into adherents of Islam. This period saw leading figures of the Islamic Golden Age, including Muhammad al-Bukhari, Al-Tirmidhi, al Khwarizmi, al-Biruni, Avicenna and Omar Khayyam. Innovations in science, such as the development of chemical processes by Jabir ibn Hayyan and astronomical studies by Ibn Al-Haytham, were also prominent during this period. The local Khwarazmian dynasty and Central Asia as a whole were decimated by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, after which the region became dominated by Turkic peoples. The city of Shahrisabz was the birthplace of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who in the 14th century established the Timurid Empire and was proclaimed the Supreme Emir of Turan with his capital in Samarkand, which became a centre of science under the rule of Ulugh Beg, giving birth to the Timurid Renaissance. The territories of the Timurid dynasty were conquered by Uzbek Shaybanids in the 16th century, moving the centre of power to Bukhara. The region was split into three states: the Khanate of Khiva, Khanate of Kokand and Emirate of Bukhara. Invasions by the Mughal emperor Babur towards the southeast led to the subsequent conquest of Northern India and the foundation of the Mughal Empire.
All of Central Asia Proper was gradually incorporated into the Russian Empire during the 19th century, but notably not Afghanistan or the Tarim Basin, which are also often considered part of Central Asia, nor Eastern Iran, Western Pakistan, Dzungaria, Mongolia, or Tibet, sometimes also included, and Tashkent became the political center of Russian Turkestan. In 1924, national delimitation created the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic as an independent republic within the Soviet Union. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991.
Prehistory
In 1938 A. Okladnikov discovered the 70,000-year-old skull of an 8- to 11-year-old Neanderthal child in Teshik-Tash in Uzbekistan. After this Central Asia was occupied by the Scythians, Iranian nomads who arrived from the northern grasslands of what is now Kazakhstan sometime in the first millennium BC. These nomads, who spoke Iranian dialects, settled in Central Asia and began to build an extensive irrigation systems along the rivers of Central Asia and built cities such as Bukhara (Bukhara) and Samarqand (Samarkand), these places became extremely wealthy points of transit of the Silk Road between China and Europe, and became centers of government and culture.
Early history
By the fifth century BC, the Bactrian, Soghdian, and Tokharian states dominated the region. As China began to develop its silk trade with the West, Iranian cities took advantage of this commerce by becoming centers of trade. Using an extensive network of cities and settlements in the province of Transoxiana (Mawarannahr was a name given the region after the Arab conquest) in Uzbekistan and farther east in what is today China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Soghdian intermediaries became the wealthiest of these Iranian merchants. Because of this trade on what became known as the Silk Route, Bukhara and Samarqand eventually became extremely wealthy cities, and at times Transoxiana was one of the most influential and powerful Persian provinces of antiquity.Lubin, Nancy. "Early history". In Curtis..Alexander the Great conquered the region in 328 BC, bringing it briefly under the control of his Macedonian Empire.
The wealth of Transoxiana was a constant magnet for invasions from the northern steppes and from China. Numerous intraregional wars were fought between Soghdian states and the other states in Transoxiana, and the Persians and the Chinese were in perpetual conflict over the region. The Chinese in particular sought the Heavenly Horses from the region, going so far as to wage a siege war against Dayuan, an urbanized civilization in the Fergana Valley in 104 BC to obtain the horses.In the same centuries, however, the region also was an important center of intellectual life and religion. Until the first centuries after Christ, the dominant religion in the region was Zoroastrianism, but Buddhism, Manichaeism and Christianity also attracted large numbers of followers.
In the seventh century AD, the Soghdian Iranians, who profited most visibly from this trade, saw their province of Transoxiana (Mawarannahr) overwhelmed by Arabs, who spread Islam throughout the region. Under the Arab Abbasid Caliphate and (starting from the mid-9th century), the Persian Samanid Empire, the eighth to tenth centuries were a golden age of learning and culture in Transoxiana.
Buddhism Traces of Buddhism have been found in all five former Soviet Central Asian republics. But Michael Barry Lane who is UNESCO's representative in Uzbekistan explains why so many Buddhist sites are concentrated around Termez, the former northern capital of ancient Bactria, a historic region that included southern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and northern Afghanistan: "The main inspiration for the Buddhist culture transmitted to China and Japan was the Greco-Buddhist culture – or Hellenistic culture – which flourished in Gandahara, in today's northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, from about the first century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. The trade route from Gandahara to the northwest also left a lot of influences and a lot of vestiges along the Amu Darya River in Central Asia. And the center of this region was Termez". Founded 2,500 years ago in the foothills of Nepal, Buddhism spread to Gandahara. From there, the religion traveled along trade routes to reach Parthia in modern Turkmenistan and northeastern Iran, and Bactria. Mostly from Bactria, Buddhism arrived to Sogdia in central Uzbekistan and northwestern Tajikistan. Later, in the seventh century, Buddhism continued its route to southern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan.
Turkic Khaganate
In 563–567, the territory of modern Uzbekistan became part of the Turkic Khaganate.Klyashtornyy S.G., Savinov D.G. Stepnyye imperii drevney Yevrazii. SPb.: Filologicheskiy fakul'tet Sankt Petersburg, 2005 In 630 and 658, the Eastern and Western Turkic Khaganate were conquered by the Tang Dynasty of China.