Uzbek (word)

"Uzbek" is the self-designation of the present-day Uzbeks.

The term "Uzbek" originally referred to the descendants of the several hundred thousand Turkic people led by Muhammad Shaybani at the start of the 16th century, who moved from the Qipchaq steppe to Central Asia. ^[1]

In the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, "Uzbek" started to refer to a larger group of people, a tendency likely started by the Russians. It gradually became commonly accepted as an appropriate name for specific members of Turkic-speaking settled populations in Turkestan, apart from Turkmens, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. ^[2]

References

1. Levi 2017, p. 1.
2. Rzehak 2023, p. 20.

Sources

• Levi, Scott C. (2017). The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709 – 1876: Central Asia in the Global Age. University of Pittsburgh. ISBN   978-0822965060.
• Rzehak, Lutz (2023). "How Tajik was made into a national language". In Ido, Shinji; Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, Behrooz (eds.). Tajik Linguistics. De Gruyter. pp. 1–44. ISBN   978-3110619409.

Further reading

• Kılavuz, Idil Tunçer (2014). Power, Networks and Violent Conflict in Central Asia: A Comparison of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (1st ed.). Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-0815377931.