ABSTRACT
The majority of Uzbeks live in the Uzbek SSR, but there are also communities of some size in the Tadzhik, Kirghiz, Kazakh and Turkmen SSRs, mostly in the regions adjoining the Uzbek SSR.
1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The territory of present-day Uzbekistan has been inhabited since prehistoric times and has been the site of many different civilizations. In the sixth century BC much of it was ruled by the Persian Achaemenians. Alexander the Great invaded Central Asia in 329 BC and after his death Uzbekistan formed part of the GraecoBactrian state. In the first century AD the Kushan Empire reigned supreme; it was finally toppled by an invasion of the Huns (Ephthalites) in 425. By the mid-sixth century the area was under the sway of the Turkish Khaganate. The Arabs conquered Central Asia in the second half of the seventh century, bringing Islam and the Arabic script to its heterogeneous population. The Samanid dynasty of Bukhara achieved pre-eminence when Ismail Samani established himself as the master of Transoxiana and Khwarezmia (corresponding approximately to the territory of the nineteenth-century Khanate of Khiva) in 873. The Samanids were overthrown by the Karakhanids, a predominantly Turkic people, in 999. (Mahmud Kashgari 266
includes such tribes as the Kipchak, Pecheneg, Oghuz, Kirghiz, Uighur and Bashkird amongst the Karakhanids.) Seljuk tribes had begun to settle in Transoxiana in the late tenth century; by the early twelfth century they were in control of most of modern Uzbekistan, but in 1137 they suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Kara Khitai. The Kara Khitai themselves were overthrown by the Khwarezmshahs, whom they had originally helped to power, towards the end of the twelfth century.
