Uzbekistan officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south. Prior to 1991 it was part of the Soviet Union. Once part of the Persian Samanid and later Timurid empires the region was conquered in the early 16th century by Uzbek nomads who spoke an Eastern Turkic language.
