History History

From 545 BC, the Persian king Cyrus the Great campaigned against the Scythian archers, subduing them after five years. Sogdiana, Bactria and Khorezm, three of the satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire, came to be known as Touran. By the time of the Achaemenid dynasty, the Persian Empire was already criss-crossed by a network of royal roads and boasted an elaborate courier system of relays and guard posts. Trade already existed in Eurasia. Lapis lazuli, copper and incense were traded.

In 330 BC, the Greek army captured the glorious cities of Susa, Persepolis and Babylon, and Alexander declared himself heir to the illustrious Cyrus. The Persian Empire, which had just fallen to the young conqueror, had unified the entire known East. In Central Asia, Alexander crossed the legendary Oxus, the flooded Amu Darya - so wide that the Greeks mistook the river for a sea - then seized Maracanda (Samarkand), where he met fierce resistance. Next came Tribactra (Bukhara). He then concluded a peace agreement with his Saka neighbors near Tashkent, and founded a new Alexandria at the northernmost point of his journey, on the site of present-day Khodjent in Tajikistan.

By 655, the Sassanid Empire had disappeared, paving the way for the Arabs to conquer what is now Central Asia. Samarkand fell for the first time in 712. Its prince capitulated, converted to Islam and declared himself a vassal of the Caliph. During this first Arab campaign in Sogdiana, Muslim troops reached the Syr Daria and captured Kesh (Tashkent) and Ferghana. To speed up conversions, the Arabs decided that converts to Islam would be exempt from taxation. The result was catastrophic for the governor's finances: after a wave of conversions, there were suddenly no taxpayers left. In Sogdiana, the situation became anarchic. Abu Salim, the new governor of Khorassan, settled the problem with a scimitar and destroyed the Chinese army (at Talas in 751) which, taking advantage of the general disorder, was attempting a breakthrough from the north.

The Samanid capital, Bukhara, became an important center of Islamic culture, and the city was nicknamed "the pearl of Islam". But the Samanids remained in power for only a short time, overthrown by one of their vassals from a Turkic family in Afghanistan, Mahmoud of Ghazni, at the end of the ^10th century. In the middle of the ^11th century, the empire controlled by Mahmoud of Ghazni was invaded once again by the Seljuks, who were in turn swept away by the Mongols.

In 1206, Genghis Khan became the supreme khan of all the Mongolian tribes combined. This was the start of an adventure that would lead a nomadic people of outstanding horsemen and archers, who knew nothing of writing, cities or agriculture, to create the greatest empire of all time. Mongolia became the base for the conquests of Genghis Khan, who led his first expeditions against China. At the end of this conquest, Genghis Khan turned his attention to the state of Khorezm, the main power of the Muslim East, stretching from the Aral Sea to the margins of India. An army of several hundred thousand men entered Khorezm in 1221. This first step into the Muslim world was followed by many others. His armies captured Khodjent, Nourata, Bukhara, Samarkand, Merv, Herat..

The peace, then the torpor that followed this destruction, was conducive to trade and evangelization. Many Westerners set out to discover these lands. Numerous embassies headed for the East. Genghis Khan's empire was so safe that it was said that a young girl carrying a gold plate on her head could cross it without fear... In 1272, two Venetian merchants, Nicolo and Matteo Polo, accompanied by their son and nephew Marco Polo, set off for China, the "land of the Sères". They crossed Central Asia via Balkh, Pamir and Kashgar. " The Devisement of the World " or "Book of Wonders" is Marco Polo's account of his twenty-five-year journey: a tale of fantastic characters and an adventure novel. It was a huge success, making Marco Polo an almost mythical figure.

Genghis Khan was long dead when, in the ^14th century, a new conqueror appeared: Timur, nicknamed Tīmūr Lang (Timur the Limping), a nickname that Europeans would transcribe as "Tamerlan". Claiming a distant kinship with Genghis Khan, Timur proclaimed himself emir of Transoxiana in 1370, and spent the rest of his life annexing neighboring states. Between conquests, Tamerlane would return to his beloved jewel city, Samarkand, the new capital of his empire. He adorned this capital with all its trappings: palaces, mosques, mausoleums, but above all he built a great bazaar, merchant domes and caravanserais.

This was a golden age for the Silk Road: everything could be found in Samarkand's markets. Fabrics were extraordinarily varied: multicolored silks, damasks, taffetas, satin sheets, gold-embroidered silks from China, velvets, precious woollen cloths from Europe, plain or printed cottons from India. Siberian furs, Tatar leather, Chinese porcelain, Damascus knives, rubies and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan, spices, fruit and vegetables were also on sale. Samarkand, with its gardens and dazzling blue domes, became a city of legend.

The Chaybanids, who called themselves Uzbeks, drove out the last Timurids and set up their capital in Bukhara, and the merchants followed suit. But Chaybani Khan's conquest, accompanied by the migration of an entire people, did not prevent Central Asia from falling into obscurity. The military collapse of the Timurid Empire was compounded by the commercial collapse of the great caravan routes, which had to compete with the sea routes. Goods destined for China now transited via Persian ports. With Central Asia no longer the gateway between East and West, revenues from trade taxes gradually declined. Revenues dwindled, and irrigation systems deteriorated for lack of the means to maintain them.

By the ^17th and ^18th centuries, the cities of Central Asia had lost all their lustre. Russian propaganda, seeking to justify its future conquest, portrayed the region as backward and feudal. There were three Uzbek khanates: Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand, eternal rivals disputing the entire area halfway between the two capitals, around and southeast of Khodjent. The Bukhara khanate opposed Khiva for the portion of territory south of the Amudarya, while the Khiva khanate attempted to defend itself against Turkmen raids to the west by regularly invading their territories. In fact, by the end of the ^19th century, the Russians had no trouble subduing the whole of Central Asia.

The Russian Empire laid the foundations for a policy that was pursued and amplified by the Soviets, tending to turn Central Asia into a zone of high agricultural yield, with an emphasis on cotton cultivation. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was seen by reformist Muslims as an opportunity to throw off the Russian colonial yoke. An independent government was set up in Kokand, but only lasted a few months. The nationalists were massacred by the Red Army. General Frunze captured Khiva and Bukhara in 1920. More difficult, however, were the Basmatchi ("brigands" in Uzbek), the rebellion led by Enver Pasha in 1921 and based in the Ferghana Valley.

Five Soviet socialist republics had emerged, but real power was held by the Russians.

Under Stalin, new border lines were drawn, favoring Turkic-speaking countries and Uzbekistan at the expense of the Iranian-speaking Tajiks. The Tajiks lost Bukhara and Samarkand. A third of their population became part of Uzbekistan, while Uzbeks accounted for a quarter of Tajikistan's population. Initially, Uzbekistan was formed from the union of the two republics of Bukhara and Khiva, to which the autonomous republic of Karakalpakia was added in 1936. Stalin, a former Commissioner for Nationalities, knew how to subjugate these new states: he eliminated local elites, especially religious ones, forcibly settled them and imposed Russian as the official language. The problematic division of territories systematically imposed Moscow as arbiter.

Compared to the other bangs of the Soviet Empire, during the Brezhnev period, Central Asia appeared particularly calm. But the region's formidable gold, gas and uranium resources, combined with ever-increasing revenues from cotton exports, encouraged the emergence of local mafias. Corruption took root at all levels of power and administration, through the clan-based organization typical of Central Asia, which Moscow was unable to eradicate. This situation came to light in 1983 with the "cotton scandal", in which Brezhnev's entire entourage was implicated.

Independence came with the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Uzbekistan celebrated its independence on September¹, 1991. President Islam Karimov, former First Secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party, was the first president and remained in office for 25 years. The new sovereign republics of Central Asia were quick to give priority to their national voice, but Russia remained an essential partner in the decision-making process and in the military sphere. The arrival of the Americans during the operations against Afghanistan in 2002 was perceived by some as a disruptive element, by others as a means of counterbalancing Moscow's still significant influence, not without displeasing the Russian capital, which never ceased to recover its prerogatives in the region.

With the sudden death of President Islam Karimov in 2016, a new era of liberal reforms began for Uzbekistan, which was finally emerging from the economic model dictated by the Soviets and extended by Uzbekistan's first president for three decades. The end of cotton monoculture, the beginnings of economic liberalization and the controlled modernization of political life. Former Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

His policy is based more on the Kazakh or Azerbaijani model to boost the country's economic development, notably by opening up the exploitation of national wealth to large international firms, abolishing the sole use of a clan, freeing political opponents (with the closure of the dreadful Jaslyk prison in 2019), abolishing the death penalty and protecting human rights (2023) ratified by a constitutional referendum.

In 2023, during early elections, Shavkat Mirziyoyev was re-elected, as an independent candidate, for a first renewed seven-year term with 87.7% (having obtained the power to legally stand for a third term).