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UZBEKISTAN

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Map of Uzbekistan

Quick Facts:

Official Name: Republic of Uzbekistan
Local Name: Ozbekiston Respublikasi
Population: 27,307,134 (July 2006 est.)
Capital C ity : Tashkent ( Toshkent)
Languages: Uzbek, Russian, Tajik
Official Currency: Uzbekistani soum
Ethnic Groups: Uzbek, Russian, Tajik, Kazakh, Karakalpak, Tatar, other
Religions: Muslim (mostly Sunnis), Eastern Orthodox

Uzbek Flag Flag

Three equal horizontal bands of blue (top), white, and green separated by red fimbriations with a white crescent moon and 12 white stars in the upper hoist-side quadrant.

The flag features a new moon symbol and one white star for every month of the year. The blue is representative of water and sky; white represents peace; green represents the fertile land, and the two red stripes are symbolic of the people.


Central Asia has a rich history to which numerous tribes and nationalities have contributed over at least 2,500 years. A vital factor in the history of the southern part of the region was its location astride the most direct trade route between China and Europe, the so-called Silk Route, which began to develop in the heyday of the Roman Empire (see fig. 3). Cities such as Samarqand ( Samarkand) and Bukhoro ( Bukhara), founded by Iranians, became powerful cultural and commercial centers as East-West trade increased. That prosperity made part or all of the region the object of many conquests (including those by the Arabs in the eighth century A.D., several Turkic groups beginning in the ninth century, and the Mongols in the early thirteenth century). The Arabs and the Turks brought Islam to much of Central Asia. Meanwhile, the northern part of the region was inhabited by nomadic herding peoples, including the Turkic predecessors of the Kazaks and Kyrgyz, who also fell under the control of the Mongols.

Uzbekistan is the third-largest of the Central Asian republics in area and the first in population (estimated at 23 million in 1994 and growing at the fastest rate in Central Asia). Uzbekistan is completely landlocked between Kazakstan to the north, Turkmenistan to the south, and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east. It shares the Aral Sea, and hence the environmental problems of that area, with Kazakstan. The territory of modern Uzbekistan was at the center of the rich cultural and commercial developments that occurred in Central Asia over a period of two millennia, especially along the axis defined by the Silk Route between Europe and China. Included in Uzbekistan are the three chief Silk Route outposts of Bukhoro ( Bukhara), Khiva, and Samarqand ( Samarkand).

As with ethnic patterns and boundaries of post-Soviet Uzbekistan, the dominant native language, Uzbek, is in many ways a creation of the Soviet state. Indeed, until the beginning of the Soviet period, the languages spoken among the native population presented a colorful and diverse mosaic. Under Soviet rule, officially at least, this mosaic was replaced by Uzbek, which almost overnight became the official language of the Turkic population of the republic. But Russian, which at the same time was declared the "international language" of Uzbekistan, was favored above even Uzbek in official usage. Many Russian words made their way into Uzbek because Russian was the language of higher education, government, and economic activity throughout the Soviet era. In the 1980s, Uzbeks began a strong effort to eliminate the recent Russian borrowings from the language. The Latin alphabet was introduced to begin a gradual process of replacing the Cyrillic alphabet. But in the mid-1990s Russian still was widely used in official and economic circles.

Information and maps above taken from Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Fact Book. Unless otherwise specified, images sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Uzbekistan Internet Resources

This page contains convenient starting points for exploring web sites related to Uzbekistan. To make this page easier to load and use, we generally have limited the list to those sites which contain substantial collections of links to information on these subjects. The views reflected on any web site linked below do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center. We provide these links as a service to the public.

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