Uzbeks

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The Uzbeks are a Central Asiatic people who speak a language belonging to the Chagatay branch of the Turkic language subfamily. In 1998, an estimated 18 million Uzbeks lived in the independent republic of Uzbekistan, located mainly between the Syr Dar'ya and Amu Dar'ya Rivers in Central Asia. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometers. Its estimated 1998 population was 24.1 million, of whom approximately 76 percent were Uzbek, 6 percent other Turkic, 6 percent Russian and Ukrainian, 5 percent Tajik, and 7 percent other. Smaller numbersof Uzbeks also inhabit Afghanistan, other Central Asiatic Turkic republics, and Russia.

Most Uzbeks are devout Sunni Muslims. They are the least Russified of the Turkic peoples formerly under Soviet rule, and virtually all of them still claim Uzbek as their primary language. Parents typically give their children Uzbek rather than Russian names. The majority of Uzbeks live in rural areas, where extended family households are common. Only two-fifths of the population of Uzbekistan live in urban areas, and a disproportionately high number of these urbanites are Slavic peoples. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many Russians and Jews emigrated from Uzbekistan, thereby changing the country's ethnic composition and opening up more technical and management jobs for Uzbeks.

Uzbekistan's population is youthful. Uzbeks have a high birth rate and large families. Of all the former Soviet republics, Uzbekistan has the greatest number of mothers with ten or more living children under the age of twenty years. In 2001, life expectancy at birth was estimated to be sixty-four years.

The Turkic-Mongol tribes known as Uzbeks originated in Siberia and entered the land of present-day Uzbekistan in the fourteenth century. They may have adopted the name "Uzbek" from the Muslim ruler of the Golden Horde, Oz Beg (Uzbek) Khan (reigned 1312–1341). The Uzbeks entered Central Asia under the leadership of Abu al-Khayr Khan, a descendant of the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan. Abu al-Khayr Khan led the Uzbek tribes southeastward to the north bank of the Syr Dar'ya.

In the late fifteenth century, the Uzbeks conquered key portions of Transoxania (the region between the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya Rivers) and occupied the major cities of Bukhara, Khiva, Samarqand, and Khujand. Uzbek khans gained wide recognition for their Sunni religious orthodoxy and cultured patronage of the arts. They sponsored the construction of architectural monuments, such as mosques, Islamic seminaries, palaces, and bridges.

Over the centuries, the territory of what is now Uzbekistan produced great scholars, poets, and writers. In the fifteenth century, the astronomer and mathematician Ulugh Beg founded a famous observatory in Samarqand, and the scholar, poet, and writer 'Ali Shir Nava'i greatly advanced Turkic-language literature.

During the reign of 'Abd Allah Khan II (1557–1598), Uzbek rule was expanded in Balkh, Samarqand,Tashkent, and Fergana. Uzbek hegemony extended eastward as far as Badakhshan in present-day Afghanistan and East Turkistan (roughly today's Xinjiang Uygur in northwestern China) and westward to Khorasan and Khwarizm in present-day northern Iran. Thereafter Uzbek power and influence declined, reaching a low point by the mid-1700s, with military defeats by the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah. Three Uzbek-dominated polities, known as khanates, emerged in the eighteenth century at Quqon in eastern Uzbekistan, Bukhara in southern Uzbekistan, and Khiva on the lower Amu Dar'ya.

Czarist Russian forces advanced southward, conquering Bukhara in 1868, Khiva in 1873, and Quqon in 1875. The Russians incorporated the Uzbek lands into the province of Turkistan and linked it to the rest of the empire via telegraph, telephone, and the press. Railroads reached Samarqand and Tashkent by 1905. Despite being ruled by czarist colonial administrators, the Uzbek intelligentsia and clergy of Bukhara and Khiva resisted the influence of Russian educational, religious, economic, and governmental institutions. At the same time, however, a group of reformers known as Jadids worked with the support of Russian governors to prepare a number of young urban intellectuals for change in their economy and society. The Jadid era (1900–1920) produced a number of modern poets and writers, who produced many of the first indigenous plays, stories, and novels of Central Asia.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused instability and conflict in Turkistan, as Muslim resistance and attempts to establish an autonomous government were defeated by the Red Army. By 1921, Communist-dominated politicians held power. In 1924–1925, they designated the region of Central Asia with an Uzbek population majority as Uzbekistan and incorporated it into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The authorities soon granted Uzbekistan the formal status of constituent republic of the USSR. Uzbeks constituted a minority in the capital city of Tashkent and were underrepresented in the Soviet bureaucracy and administration; Slavic peoples—Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians— constituted the majority.

The Communist political purges of the 1930s exacted heavy casualties, especially among Uzbekistan's relatively small class of intelligentsia and leaders. World War II brought major demographic changes, as the Soviet authorities moved thousands of Russian, Polish, and Jewish technicians, managers, and teachers to the towns and villages of Uzbekistan.

During the 1980s, Islamic religious practice surged, transforming many aspects of Uzbek life, especially in the towns of the Fergana Valley and other concentrations of Muslim believers. This resurgence affected the republic's cultural life through the increased activities of religious schools, neighborhood mosques, religious orders, and religious publishing ventures and through the Islamic Renaissance Party.

Throughout most of the Russian and Soviet eras, the Uzbeks maintained significant portions of their cultural traditions. In athletics, wrestling, horse riding, and team competitions continued to be popular. In rural areas, both men and women continued to wear distinctive Uzbek dress. For their homes, Uzbeks continued to prefer simple, one-story structures, like those of the past, built around courtyards planted with fruit trees and gardens open to the skies but closed off from the streets.

At the same time, many Uzbeks acquired Russian as a second language, and compulsory school attendance raised the literacy rate for both males and females to above 90 percent. Until the 1980s, most Soviet Uzbek authors produced tendentious novels, plays, and verse in line with official Communist Party themes. Since the 1990s, however, younger Uzbek poets and authors have broken away from the sloganeering characteristic of Soviet Socialist Realism. Attempts are also being made to revive classical Uzbek musical forms.

Uzbek political leaders declared Uzbekistan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. However, the Uzbek Communists retained political power and prohibited opposition parties from participating in the 1991 and 1994 elections. The government's human rights record has drawn international criticism, although the government has promoted the reclamation, renovation, and reconsecration of many smaller old mosques. Communist authorities had relegated these to serve as garages, storehouses, shops, slaughterhouses, or museums. Muslim artisans have accurately reconstructed these damaged buildings as part of a comprehensive drive to recreate the Islamic life suppressed by the Communists between 1920 and 1990.

Allworth, Edward. (1990) The Modern Uzbeks: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present: A Cultural History. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

——. (1964) Uzbek Literary Politics. The Hague, Netherlands: E. J. Brill.

Critchlow, James. (1991) Nationalism in Uzbekistan: A Soviet Republic's Road to Sovereignty. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Kalter, Johannes, and Margareta Pavaloi, eds. (1997) Uzbekistan: Heirs to the Silk Road. London: Thames and Hudson.

Karimov, Islam A. (1998) Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century: Challenges to Stability and Progress. New York: St. Martin's Press.

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