Uzbekistan's population reached 36.02 million as of January 2024 according to the State Statistics Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Ethnic Uzbeks constitute approximately 83.8 percent of this total, followed by Tajiks at 4.8 percent, Kazakhs at 2.5 percent, Karakalpaks at 2.2 percent, and Russians at 2.3 percent, with the remainder comprising smaller communities of Tatars, Kyrgyz, Koreans, Turkmens, and others. The Korean population, numbering around 170,000, descends almost entirely from Soviet-era deportations ordered by Stalin in 1937, when approximately 172,000 ethnic Koreans were forcibly relocated from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia in cattle cars over six weeks. The demographic composition shifted dramatically after independence in 1991, when nearly 1.5 million ethnic Russians, Germans, and other European groups emigrated between 1991 and 2000, reducing their combined share from roughly 10 percent to less than 4 percent.
The Uzbek language belongs to the Karluk branch of Turkic languages, sharing closer linguistic ties with Uyghur than with Kazakh or Kyrgyz despite geographic proximity. Uzbek transitioned through three scripts in one century: Arabic script until 1928, Latin alphabet from 1928 to 1940 under Soviet reform, Cyrillic from 1940 to 1993, and Latin alphabet again starting in 1993 after independence, though the Cyrillic-to-Latin transition remains incomplete in daily practice as of 2024, with government documents, older signage, and many publications still using Cyrillic. Russian remains the second language for approximately 14 percent of the population according to 2020 census data, functioning as an inter-ethnic lingua franca particularly in Tashkent, though its prevalence among those under thirty has declined sharply. Tajik speakers, concentrated in Samarkand and Bukhara, often dispute official statistics, claiming the Tajik population exceeds 10 percent, a figure the government contests, creating persistent demographic tension. Karakalpak, spoken in the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan in northwestern Uzbekistan, shares closer linguistic features with Kazakh than Uzbek and holds official status within that region.
The territory now called Uzbekistan supported settled agricultural civilizations by 1500 BCE, with irrigation systems along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers enabling cities that became nodes on what later became the Silk Road. The region formed the core of Sogdiana, a civilization centered around Samarkand and Bukhara that served as cultural and commercial intermediaries between Persian, Chinese, Indian, and nomadic worlds from approximately 500 BCE until the Arab conquest. Sogdian merchants established trading colonies from the Mediterranean to Xi'an, and their language functioned as the commercial lingua franca of the Silk Road until the tenth century. The city of Afrasiab, immediately north of modern Samarkand, served as the Sogdian capital until its destruction by Genghis Khan in 1220, and excavations since the 1870s have revealed wall paintings depicting ambassadors from Chaganian, China, and possibly Korea in a seventh-century palace.
Alexander the Great conquered Sogdiana between 329 and 327 BCE after a brutal campaign that required three years to pacify what he expected to subdue in months, facing sustained guerrilla resistance led by the Sogdian nobleman Spitamenes until his assassination. Alexander married Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian nobleman Oxyartes, in 327 BCE at the Sogdian Rock fortress, likely near modern Shahrisabz, in a political marriage intended to consolidate control. The Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator inherited this region after Alexander's death in 323 BCE, but lost it to the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom around 250 BCE, which itself fell to the nomadic Yuezhi around 130 BCE, eventually forming the Kushan Empire that ruled from approximately 30 CE to 375 CE.
Arab armies under Qutayba ibn Muslim conquered Bukhara in 709 CE and Samarkand in 712 CE, encountering fierce resistance that required multiple campaigns to suppress. The Battle of Talas in 751 CE, fought between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tang Dynasty near the Talas River in modern-day Kyrgyzstan, resulted in an Arab victory that effectively ended Chinese political influence in Transoxiana, though the battle's importance lies primarily in its legendary capture of Chinese papermakers whose skills spread westward, establishing Samarkand as a major paper production center by 751 CE. Islamization proceeded gradually over three centuries, with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity persisting alongside Islam until approximately the eleventh century. The conversion trajectory accelerated under the Samanid Empire, which ruled from Bukhara between 819 and 999 CE and produced the Persian polymath Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, born near Bukhara in 980 CE. His Canon of Medicine, completed around 1025 CE, remained a standard medical text in European universities until the mid-seventeenth century.
The Karakhanid Khanate, the first Turkic Muslim state in Central Asia, conquered the Samanids in 999 CE, marking the beginning of Turkic linguistic and cultural dominance over the previously Persian-speaking cities. The Seljuk Turks controlled portions of the region in the eleventh century, succeeded by the Khwarazmian Empire, which ruled from Urgench and extended from the Caspian Sea to Afghanistan between approximately 1077 and 1231 CE. The Khwarazmshah Muhammad II made the catastrophic error of executing Mongol envoys in Otrar in 1218 CE, an act that prompted Genghis Khan's devastating invasion in 1219 CE. The Mongol army systematically destroyed Bukhara, Samarkand, Termez, and Urgench between 1220 and 1221 CE, with contemporary chroniclers reporting mass casualties, though modern historians debate the scale.
The region's recovery began under the Chagatai Khanate, one of four divisions of the Mongol Empire, though political fragmentation persisted until the rise of Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane. Born in 1336 CE near Shahrisabz in what is now southern Uzbekistan, Timur seized power in Transoxiana in 1370 CE and spent the next thirty-five years building an empire that stretched from Delhi to Damascus and from the Tian Shan to the Persian Gulf. He made Samarkand his capital and imported craftsmen, scholars, and architects from every conquered city, transforming it into what contemporaries described as the most magnificent city in Asia. Timur died in 1405 CE in Otrar while preparing an invasion of Ming China, and his empire fragmented almost immediately among his descendants, though his grandson Ulugh Beg, who ruled Samarkand from 1411 to 1449 CE, built an astronomical observatory there in 1428 CE that produced the Zij-i-Sultani star catalogue in 1437 CE, listing 1,018 stars with unprecedented accuracy.
Uzbek tribes from the Kipchak Steppe under Muhammad Shaybani Khan conquered Transoxiana between 1500 and 1507 CE, establishing the Khanate of Bukhara and giving their name to both the territory and its settled populations, despite significant ethnic and linguistic continuity with pre-existing Turkic groups. The term "Uzbek" derives from Öz Beg Khan, who ruled the Golden Horde from 1313 to 1341 CE, though the connection between his name and the tribal confederation remains historically disputed. Three separate khanates emerged: the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva established around 1511 CE in Khorezm, and the Khanate of Kokand formed in the Fergana Valley around 1709 CE. These states competed for territory and trade routes while maintaining nominal allegiance to shared Islamic scholarship and cultural practices.