Uzbekistan

The story

A journey in search of images in Uzbekistan.

The cities visited: Bukhara, Fergana, Khiva, Samarkand, Shakhrisabz, Tashkent.

The Republic of Uzbekistan is a state (447,400 sq km, 25,563,441 inhabitants, capital Tashkent) in Central Asia. It borders Kazakhstan to the north and west, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south. The official language is Uzbek.

For millennia the present-day Uzbekistan was part of the Persian Empire. Before the gradual arrival of invaders of Turkic stock, the area was inhabited by peoples of Iranian descent who spoke Persian. Today, the descendants of these first inhabitants still form a significant minority and are known as Tajiks.

Uzbekistan is the most populous state in Central Asia. Its 25 million inhabitants, concentrated in the south and east of the country, in fact make up about half of the total population of the area. In the days of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan was one of the poorest republics; much of the population was employed in cotton growing in small rural communities. Even today, a large part of the inhabitants live in the countryside and depend on farming for their livelihood.