Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is a sovereign, doubly landlocked country located in Central Asia. It is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Tajikistan to the southeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the south-west. It is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. The country has a population of more than 39 million, making it the most populous country in Central Asia. Uzbekistan is a member of the Organisation of Turkic States. Uzbek (written in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts), spoken by the Uzbek people who form more than 89% of the population, is the official language of the country. Russian and Tajik are significant minority languages, with Russian serving as a lingua franca. Tajik is primarily spoken by Tajiks living in the southern parts of the country, such as Samarkand and Bukhara.

The first recorded settlers in Uzbekistan were Eastern Iranian nomads, known as Scythians, who founded kingdoms in Khwarazm, Sogdiana, and Bactria in the 8th–6th centuries BC, as well as in Fergana and Margiana in the 3rd century BC – 6th century AD. The area was incorporated into the Achaemenid Empire and, after a period of Greco-Bactrian rule, was part of the Sasanian Empire until the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century. The early Muslim conquests and the subsequent Samanid Empire resulted in the spread of Islam among the local people.