One of two doubly landlocked countries sits on the Silk Road
Uzbekistan, a Central Asian republic bordered by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth. Eastern Iranian Scythian kingdoms rose in Khwarazm, Sogdiana, and Bactria by the eighth to sixth centuries BCE before Achaemenid incorporation.
Today the republic is a secular, semi-presidential state made up of twelve regions, the city of Tashkent and the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan. Cotton exports and large power stations anchor an economy moving toward market rules, and in September 2017 the currency became fully convertible at market rates. Under Soviet rule the name was usually written in Cyrillic.
The origin of the word Uzbek is disputed. One reading combines Turkic uz, own, with beg, master, to mean independent or one’s own leader; another ties it to the legendary Oghuz Khagan, or to oghuz, tribe, plus bek. Some scholars link it to Özbeg Khan of the Golden Horde, whose people moved into the region in the sixteenth century. Every version shares the Turkic title beg, and the country name Uzbegistán first appears in that century in the Tarikh-i Rashidi.
Nomadic Scythians from the Eurasian steppe arrived during the first millennium BC, settled along the rivers and dug extensive irrigation. Those early kingdoms later fell under Achaemenid Persia, and by the fifth century BC Bactrian, Sogdian and Tokharian states dominated. Bukhara and Samarkand grew into seats of government and learning.
When China’s silk began flowing west through Transoxiana, Sogdian middlemen became the richest merchants on the route, and at times the province, also called Mawarannahr, was among the most powerful of the ancient world. Other names for the region include Turkestan and Bukhara. In the fourteenth century it was the birthplace and capital of Tamerlane, whose Timurid Empire stretched between the Black and Arabian seas and east to Delhi.
Source: Uzbekistan
