Kyrgyzstan
POPULATION 5,059,000
MUSLIM 85 percent
CHRISTIAN 13 percent
OTHER 2 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
Kyrgyzstan is a small, mountainous country in southeastern Central Asia. It is bordered to the northwest and north by Kazakhstan, to the southeast and south by China, and to the south and west by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The country has served as a crossroads for several religions: Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity, and Islam. In ancient and medieval times adherents of these religions and other groups built their cities and settlements along the ancient trade route of the Silk Road.
Muslims are by far the largest religious group in the Kyrgyz Republic. The Sunni Hanafi school of Islam is a major feature in the identity of the Kyrgyz people. Islam has been the religion of peoples living in Kyrgyz territories since the eighth century. The northern portion of the country adopted Islam as an official religion in the tenth century. It was not until the sixteenth century, however, that people in remote parts of the country were Islamized. Among some groups in the mountains, traditional Islam still bears traces of pre-Islamic beliefs, including faith in Tengry and Umay and other supernatural beings of the ancient Turkic pantheon.
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