Uzbekistan history in 10 minutes: a timeline from Sogdiana to today

Long before the Silk Road had a name, the region lived in oases along its rivers. Sogd lay in the Zarafshan valley, with Samarkand and Bukhara; Bactria lay to the south, around today’s Termez; Khorezm lay on the lower Amu Darya. In the 6th century BC the Persian king Cyrus the Great brought Sogdiana into the Achaemenid empire, and by then Samarkand was the capital of the Sogdian lands.

In 329 BC Alexander the Great took the city the Greeks called Maracanda. His campaign in Sogdiana lasted about two years, and in 327 BC he married Roxana, the daughter of a Sogdian nobleman. Afterwards the region passed to the Seleucids and then to the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.

Where to see it: the Afrasiyab hill and its museum in Samarkand, described in museums of Samarkand and Bukhara. The clay forts of ancient Khorezm, some of them from the 4th–3rd century BC, are in Khorezm’s desert fortresses, and the fortress that tradition ties to Alexander is in our Nurata guide. The people who made Sogd famous have their own article: the Sogdians.

From the 1st century AD the Kushan empire ruled the lands on both sides of the Amu Darya, and Buddhism came north along its roads. Around Termez monks built monasteries and stupas: Fayaz Tepe was founded in the 1st century AD, the Zurmala stupa went up in the 1st–2nd century from about 1.2 million mud bricks, and the caves of Kara Tepe were cut into a hill above the river. In the 7th century the Chinese monk Xuanzang still counted about ten monasteries in Termez.

Where to see it: the sites themselves and the archaeological museum in Termez, in our Termez guide, or the whole south in our Buddhist South tour. The Buddha found at Fayaz Tepe in 1968 is in the State Museum of History in Tashkent, one of the Tashkent museums worth an hour.

In the 5th–8th centuries the Sogdian cities were at the height of their trade, and in the early 8th century Arab armies arrived; in 713 the first mosque of Bukhara was built inside the Ark. Islam and the Arabic script came to stay.

The Samanids, who ruled from 819, made Bukhara their capital in 892, in the reign of Ismail Samani (892–907). Under them Bukhara became a centre of learning, and Persian took over from Sogdian as the language of the region. Ibn Sina, the physician and philosopher known in Europe as Avicenna, was born around 980 in Afshona, a village near Bukhara.

Where to see it: the Samanid Mausoleum, a brick cube from the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries, in the Samanid Mausoleum and Bolo-Hauz, and the fortress of the rulers in the Ark of Bukhara.

In 999 the Karakhanids, a Turkic dynasty, took Bukhara and Samarkand, and from 1040 to 1212 Samarkand was the capital of their western khanate. Their best-known monument is the Kalyan minaret in Bukhara, built in 1127 by Arslan Khan: 46.5 metres of patterned brick.

In the late 12th century the Khorezmshahs, rulers of Khorezm, rose to become the strongest state in the region; their first capital, Gurganj, lies across the border in today’s Turkmenistan. In 1220 the Mongol army of Genghis Khan took Bukhara and Samarkand. The city on the Afrasiyab hill was never rebuilt, and Samarkand grew up again beside it. The Kalyan minaret was left standing.

Where to see it: Poi Kalyan in Bukhara; Kyzyl-Kala in Karakalpakstan, rebuilt in the 12th century, in Khorezm’s desert fortresses; and in Urgench the memorial to Jaloliddin Manguberdi, the last Khorezmshah, in around Khiva.

Amir Timur was born in 1336 near Kesh, today’s Shahrisabz. In 1370 he founded the dynasty that ruled Central Asia and Iran until 1507, and he made Samarkand his capital. His grandson Ulugh Beg governed Samarkand from 1409, built an observatory in the 1420s and finished a catalogue of 1,018 stars. The last great Timurid, Babur, was born in Andijan in 1483 and in 1526 founded the Mughal dynasty in India.

Most of the blue domes travellers come for belong to this century. Where to see it: Gur-e-Amir, Shah-i-Zinda and the Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand, and Ak-Saray in Shahrisabz, an easy trip from Samarkand with a guide. The whole story is in the Timurids.

In 1501 Muhammad Shaybani took Samarkand, and his dynasty, the Shaybanids, ruled until 1598; by the 1560s Bukhara was their permanent capital. They rebuilt the Kalyan mosque in 1514 and covered Bukhara’s crossroads with trading domes. Under the khans of Bukhara the Registan in Samarkand received Sher-Dor (1619–1636) and Tilla-Kari (1646–1660). From 1753 the Manghit dynasty ruled Bukhara, which became an emirate.

Two more states grew up beside it. In Khorezm, Khiva became the capital in 1598 after the Amu Darya changed its course, and its khans filled Itchan Kala with madrasahs and palaces. In the Fergana Valley the Kokand khanate lasted from 1709 to 1876. Each court built in its own way, which is why Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand look so different; how to tell the styles apart is in how to read Uzbek architecture.

Where to see it: the Registan, Itchan Kala and the palace of Khudoyar Khan in our Kokand guide.

In 1865 Tashkent became part of the Russian Empire and the centre of its Turkestan province, and the Kokand khanate followed in 1876. Bukhara and Khiva kept their rulers as protectorates until 1920. The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was formed in 1924; its capital was Samarkand until 1930, then Tashkent.

After the earthquake of 26 April 1966 the centre of Tashkent was rebuilt, and in 1977 the first metro in Central Asia opened there. In July 2026 ten buildings of Tashkent modernism, from Chorsu Bazaar to the metro, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. On 31 August 1991 Uzbekistan became independent.

Where to see it: our guides to Tashkent modernism and the Tashkent metro.