The Uzbeks (Oʻzbek, pl. Oʻzbeklar) are the largest Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Smaller diaspora populations of Uzbeks from Central Asia, mainly from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, are also found in North America, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Western Europe. Additionally, about 170,000 ethnic-Uzbek refugees from Afghanistan were estimated by the UN in 2005 to be residing in Pakistan, though the majority of them had gone back to their home country by 2010. The origin of the word Uzbek remains disputed. One view holds that it is eponymously named after Uzbeg Khan. Another states that the name means independent or the lord itself, from Oʻz (self) and the Turkic title Bek/Bey/Beg. There is another theory which holds that the pronunciation of Uz comes from one of the Oghuz Turks variously known as Uz or Uguz united with the word Bey or Bek to form uguz-bey, meaning "leader of an oguz". Origins Although Turko-Mongol infiltration into Central Asia had started early, as late as the 13th century AD when Turkic and Mongol armies finally conquered the entire region, the majority of Central Asia's peoples were Iranian peoples such as Sogdians, Bactrians and, more ancient, the Saka--Massagetae tribes. It is generally believed that these ancient Indo-European-speaking peoples were linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups while the sedentary population finally adopted the Persian language, the traditional lingua franca of the eastern Islamic lands. The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process. This process was dramatically boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region. The modern Uzbek language is largely derived from the Chagatai language which gained prominence in the Timurid Empire. The position of Chagatai (and later Uzbek) was further strengthened after the fall of the Timurids and the rise of the Shaybanid Uzbek Khaqanate that finally shaped the Turkic language and identity of modern Uzbeks, while the unique grammatical and phonetical features of the Uzbek language as well as the modern Uzbek culture reflect the more ancient Iranian roots of the Uzbek people The modern Uzbek population represents varying degrees of diversity derived from the high traffic invasion routes through Central Asia. Once populated by Iranian tribes and other Indo-European people, Central Asia experienced numerous invasions emanating out of Mongolia that would drastically affect the region. According to genetic genealogy testing in 2002 from a University of Oxford study, "The Uzbeks, Uyghurs, and Dungans have close genetic affinities to the populations from the Caucasus as well from East Asia and South Siberia. Uzbeks are inhabitants of Uzbekistan, the heart of Central Asia history goes back to the earliest Bronze Age colonists of the Tarim Basin were people of Caucasoid physical type who entered probably from the north and west, and probably spoke languages that could be classified as Pre- or Proto-Tocharian, ancestral to the Indo-European Tocharian languages documented later in the Tarim Basin. These early settlers occupied the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin, where their graves have yielded mummies dated about 1800 BC. They participated in a cultural world centered on the eastern steppes of central Eurasia, including modern northeastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan The first people known to have inhabited Central Asia were Iranian nomads who arrived from the northern grasslands of what is now Uzbekistan sometime in the first millennium BC. These nomads, who spoke Iranian dialects, settled in Central Asia and began to build an extensive irrigation system along the rivers of the region. At this time, cities such as Bukhoro (Bukhara) and Samarqand (Samarkand) began to appear as centers of government and culture. By the 5th century BC, the Bactrian, Soghdian, and Tokharian states dominated the region.[citation needed] As China began to develop its silk trade with the West, Iranian cities took advantage of this commerce by becoming centers of trade. Using an extensive network of cities and settlements in the province of Mawarannahr (a name given the region after the Arab conquest) in Uzbekistan and farther east in what is today China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Soghdian intermediaries became the wealthiest of these Iranian merchants. Because of this trade on what became known as the Silk Route, Bukhoro and Samarqand eventually became extremely wealthy cities, and at times Mawarannahr (Transoxiana) was one of the most influential and powerful Persian provinces of antiquity.

• published: 18 May 2014
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