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Alexander The Great’s Travels Through Uzbekistan

admin — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Alexander of ancient Greece, the first ruler of the world, traveled through Uzbekistan on his campaign that took him all the way to India. Alexander’s Asian campaign started in 334 B.C.E with the conquering of Asia Minor. This included Egypt as well as the Phoenicians. He then set out to move against Persia, and after his success there, entered Central Asia in 329 B.C.E..

Moving through what is now Afghanistan, but called Bactria by the Greeks, his army made its way northward to what is now the modern day Uzbekistan. Arriving in 328 he fought with the local forces that the king of Bactria had lost control over. Known as the Sogdian states, these different areas were never truly united and were defeated by the Macedonian army. But the people in the area were never conquered, especially the highlanders in the region who continued to find until the Greeks were driven out.

Spitamen, the leader of the Sogdians, was defeated in a final battle with Alexander in the fall of 328. After this, Alexander sought to bring stability to the area with political strategy, as it became clear he could win a battle, but not the war. He gave loyalists property and wealth at the expense of those who opposed him. After two years of fighting he left with weak control over the region.

The Bloody Reign Of Emir Timur

admin — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Emir Timur, or Tamerlane as he is better known in the west, was a controversial figure of the 14th century whose bloody reign of terror reshaped the face of Asia for centuries. Born in a small town called Kesh, near Samarkand, in 1336 in what was then part of the Chagatai Khanate, now modern Uzbekistan, but scarce little else is known about his childhood and early adolescence.
This son of a minor chief would rise to control an empire that stretched from Syria to India. Nicknamed Timur Leng (the lame) due to a severe leg wound he probably received fighting as a mercenary in southern Iran in his youth. Many people claim that he received these wounds while stealing sheep, which is probably not true, but understandable that some people might wish to slander your memory when you have wiped out whole populations in war.
Timur claimed descent from Genghis Khan on his mother’s side (also probably not true), and declared his aim was to reunite the empire of his Mongol ancestors. His army was organized on the Mongol model but administration was left in the hands of trained Muslim administrators. A patron of the arts and respecter of learned men but he also regularly order the death of whole populations after a revolt.
He fell ill on a campaign to conquer China in 1405 and returned to Samarkand wear he died that February. Restorer of the Silk Road central Asia bloomed under his rule, but in India and Iran he was a bringer of nightmares destroying whole populations. Despite his contributions to learning and the arts his history will always be stained with blood.

The Destructive Path Of Genghis Khan

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Genghis Khan was spurred on by his father’s poisoning at the hands of the Tartars under a flag of conciliation when he was just nine years old. Khan went on to become one of the most fearsome tribal leaders in history, but began with many early troubles. Until the age of 20 Khan had numerous problems with rival tribes including the kidnapping of his pregnant wife and his own capture and enslavement by the Taichi’uts.The whole story can be found at http://www.genome-engineering.com/scientists-sequence-genghis-khane28099s-descendent.html Khan quickly escaped and joined forces with his brothers to raise an army to attack and unify the neighboring Mongol tribes.

Genghis Khan amassed an army of 20,000 men and set about taking over Asia, starting first by avenging his father’s death by attacking the Tartars. His forces crushed the Tartars before he moved on to revenge against his previous captors, the Taichi’uts. Using aggressive and innovative tactics, Khan marauded throughout Asia defeating tribe after tribe, while assimilating the surviving warriors into his own army. Once the Mongol tribes were under his power Khan set out to extend the Mongol kingdom. Born with the name Temujin, his skills as a leader earned him the name Genghis Khan, which meant “Universal Ruler” in his own language. Through his own work, and later his sons’, Genghis was able to take most of Asia and parts of eastern Europe, creating one of the largest empires in world history.

Samarqand, Way Station Along The Silk Road

admin — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Samarqand, way station along the silk road, is an ancient city in Uzbekistan.

At the present day, the land-locked country of Uzbekistan is surrounded by the countries of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. (Indeed, Uzbekistan has the distinction of being only one of two “double-landlocked” countries in the world, meaning that someone in Uzbekistan actually has to cross the borders of two countries before reaching the ocean.)

Samarqand, the second-largest city in Uzbekistan after the capital, Tashkent, was founded around 700 BCE. When the Han Dynasy in China came to pwer in 206 BCE, that country began exporting its goods – in particular silk – around the world, using a series of trading routes which eventually came to be called the “Silk Road.”

Traders would place their goods in wagons and set off across such countries as India, Persia (now Iraq), and Arabia, and then via the seas to the various cities of Europe. (Traders did not traverse the entire way, of course, but would sell their goods at waystations (sch as Samarkand), where a new group of traders would then continue on to the next way station to sell the goods there.

European goods would then make their way back along the “road”. In this way, towns grew up along the routes, trade flourished, and the various civilizations involved flourished.

Samarkand is a World Heritage City, not only because of its prominence along the Silk Road but also because of its many ancient mosques and beaituiful Islamic architecture. Marco Polo, in his book “The Travels of Marco Polo,” describes this city with fondness.

Life In Uzbekistan Under The Soviet Union

admin — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On August 31st, 1991 Uzbekistan declared their independence from the former Soviet Union. This marked the end of a very tumultuous relationship with the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan is located Northeast of Iran and Northwest of India and Pakistan. The people of Uzbekistan are called Uzbeks and make up more than 80 of the total population. Other groups are Russians, Tajiks, and Tartars. Under the Soviet Union there were many disasters and general unrest. The Bolsheviks, the original founding political group of the Soviet Union, were not popular in the area of Uzbekistan. In 1924, Uzbekistan officially became a member of the Soviet Union.

Uzbekistan is a mostly arid and dry country. Their main contributions to the Soviet Union were gold, natural gas, uranium, and cotton. In order for Uzbekistan to grow cotton they had to irrigate using the Aral Sea to do so. The Aral Sea, under the Soviet Union, was the fourth largest fresh lake body of water on Earth. Now the sea, due to poor irrigation tactics of the Soviet Union, is 1/3 of the size that it was in the mid 1960s. Cotton is a very valuable crop but takes an enormous amount of water to keep it growing well. Without the building of dams and proper irrigation ditches, the sea has been drained of much of its water and has not been able to catch up or become replenished. Since less than 5 of Uzbekistan can be farmed, it has left Uzbekistan in a water shortage crisis. This is one way that life in Uzbekistan under the Soviet Union has transformed what the country must deal with today.

Under the Soviet Union, poverty was high and the military police ruled with an iron fist. Under Stalin, the Uzbeks were never trusted and always seen as potential political enemies. The enigmatic and paranoid Stalin had hundreds of thousand of Uzbeks and Tartars sent to the Gulag Camps located in Siberia. This created an atmosphere of distrust and hidden anger against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.