Uzbekistan (Uzbek: Oʻzbekiston),
officially Republic of Uzbekistan (Uzbek: Oʻzbekiston
Respublikasi), is a country in Central Asia. It is surrounded by five
landlocked countries: Kazakhstan to the north; Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Tajikistan to the southeast; Afghanistan to the south and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Along
with Liechtenstein, it is one of only two doubly landlocked countries.
As a sovereign state,
Uzbekistan is a secular, unitary constitutional republic. It
comprises 12 provinces (vilayats) and one autonomous republic, Karakalpakstan. The capital and largest city of Uzbekistan is Tashkent.
What is now Uzbekistan was
in ancient times part of the Iranian-speaking region of Transoxiana and Turan. The first recorded settlers were Eastern
Iranian nomads, known as Scythians, who founded kingdoms in Khwarazm (8th–6th centuries BC), Bactria (8th–6th centuries BCE), Sogdia (8th–6th centuries BCE), Fergana (3rd century BCE –
6th century CE), and Margiana (3rd century BCE – 6th century
CE). The area was incorporated into the Iranian Achaemenid Empire and, after a period of Macedonian Greek rule, was
ruled by the Iranian Parthian Empire and later
by the Sasanian Empire, until the
Muslim conquest of Persia
in the seventh century. During this period, cities such as Samarkand, Khiva and
Bukhara began to grow rich from the Silk Road, and witnessed the emergence of leading figures of
the Islamic Golden Age,
including Muhammad al-Bukhari, Al-Tirmidhi, Ismail Samani, al-Biruni, and Avicenna. The local Khwarazmian dynasty, and
Central Asia as a whole, were decimated by the Mongol invasion in
the 13th century. After the Mongol Conquests, the area became increasingly dominated
by Turkic peoples. The city of Shahrisabz was the birthplace of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur
(Tamerlane), who in the 14th century established the Timurid Empire and was proclaimed the Supreme Emir of Turan
with his capital in Samarkand, which became a world centre of
science under the rule of Ulugh Beg, giving birth to the Timurid Renaissance. The
territories of the Timurid dynasty were
conquered by Uzbek Shaybanids in the 16th century,
moving the centre of power from Samarkand to Bukhara. The region was split into three states: Khanate of Khiva, Khanate of Kokand and Emirate of Bukhara.
Conquests by Emperor Babur towards the East led the foundation of India's
proto-industrialised Mughal Empire. It was gradually incorporated
into the Russian Empire during the
19th century, with Tashkent becoming the political center of Russian Turkestan. In 1924, after national
delimitation, the constituent republic of the Soviet Union known as the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic
was created. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991.
The first stamps of Uzbekistan were issued on
7 May 1992. Before then, Uzbekistan used stamps of the Soviet Union. In 1993
and 1995 the Uzbekistan Post Office resorted to overprinting stamps of the Soviet Union as supplies of the new
Uzbeki stamps ran low.
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