A map of Eurasia with emphasis on deserts. The oval Tarim Basin is at the center of the map.
The Eurasian Steppe extends thousands of miles from near the mouth of the Danube almost to the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded on the north by the forests of European Russia, Siberia
and Asian Russia. There is no clear southern boundary although the land
becomes increasingly dry as one moves south. The steppe narrows at two
points, dividing it into three major parts.
The Pontic–Caspian Steppe
Western Steppe
The Western Steppe, or Pontic–Caspian steppe, begins near the mouth of the Danube and extends northeast almost to Kazan and then southeast to the southern tip of the Ural Mountains. Its northern edge was a broad band of forest steppe which has now been obliterated by the conversion of the whole area to agricultural land. In the southeast the Black Sea–Caspian Steppe extends between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to the Caucasus Mountains. In the west, the Great Hungarian Plain is an island of steppe separated from the main steppe by the mountains of Transylvania. On the north shore of the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula has some interior steppe and ports on the south coast which link the steppe to the civilizations of the Mediterranean basin.
The Kazakh Steppe in the north with the Tarim Basin (Takhlamakan) and Dzungaria
Central Steppe
The Central Steppe or Kazakh Steppe extends from the Urals to Dzungaria. To the south, it grades off into semi-desert and desert which is interrupted by two great rivers, the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes), which flow northwest into the Aral Sea and provide irrigation agriculture. In the southeast is the densely populated Fergana Valley and west of it the great oasis cities of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara along the Zeravshan River. The southern area has a complex history (see Central Asia and Greater Iran), while in the north, the Kazakh Steppe proper was relatively isolated from the main currents of written history.
Dzungarian Narrowing
On
the east side of the former Sino-Soviet border mountains extend north
almost to the forest zone with only limited grassland in Dzungaria.
China
and surrounding regions. Showing the oval Tarim Basin, the drier area
separating Inner and Outer Mongolia and the projection of steppe into
Manchuria
Xinjiang
is the northwestern province of China. The east-west Tien Shan
Mountains divide it into Dzungaria in the north and the Tarim Basin to
the south. Dzungaria is bounded by the Tarbagatai Mountains on the west and the Mongolian Altai Mountains
on the east, neither of which is a significant barrier. Dzungaria has
good grassland around the edges and a central desert. It often behaved
as a westward extension of Mongolia and connected Mongolia to the Kazakh
steppe. To the north of Dzungaria are mountains and the Siberian
forest. To the south and west of Dzungaria, and separated from it by the
Tian Shan mountains, is an area about twice the size of Dzungaria, the oval Tarim Basin.
The Tarim Basin is too dry to support even a nomadic population, but
around its edges rivers flow down from the mountains giving rise to a
ring of cities which lived by irrigation agriculture and east-west
trade. The Tarim Basin formed an island of near civilization in the
center of the steppe. The Northern Silk Road went along the north and south sides of the Tarim Basin and then crossed the mountains west to the Fergana Valley. At the west end of the basin the Pamir Mountains connect the Tien Shan Mountains to the Himalayas. To the south, the Kunlun Mountains separate the Tarim Basin from the thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau.
The Mongol Steppe includes both Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. The two are separated by a relatively dry area marked by the Gobi Desert. South of the Mongol Steppe is the high and thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau. The northern edge of the plateau is the Gansu or Hexi Corridor, a belt of moderately dense population that connects China proper with the Tarim Basin. The Hexi Corridor was the main route of the Silk Road. In the southeast the Silk Road led over some hills to the east-flowing Wei River valley which led to the North China Plain.
Manchuria
is a special case. Westerners tend to think of Manchuria as the
northeast projection of China that they see on maps. The Chinese now
call this, or the eastern two thirds of it, Northeast China. The dryer western third west of the Greater Khingan Mountains has normally been part of Inner Mongolia. Before 1859, Manchuria also included Outer Manchuria to the north and east, which is now part of Russia. South of the Khingan Mountains and north of the Taihang Mountains, the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe
extends east into Manchuria as the Liao Xi steppe. In Manchuria, the
steppe grades off into forest and mountains without reaching the
Pacific. The central area of forest-steppe was inhabited by pastoral and
agricultural peoples, while to the north and east was a thin population
of hunting tribes of the Siberian type.
The primary domesticated animals raised were sheep and goats with fewer cattle than one might expect. Camels were used in the drier areas for transport as far west as Astrakhan. There were some yaks along the edge of Tibet. The horse was used for transportation and warfare. The horse was first domesticated on the Pontic–Caspian or Kazakh steppe sometime before 3000 BC, but it took a long time for mounted archery to develop and the process is not fully understood. The stirrup does not seem to have been completely developed until 300 AD.
The
major centers of population and high culture in Eurasia are Europe, the
Middle East, India and China. For some purposes it is useful to treat Greater Iran as a separate region. All these regions are connected by the Eurasian Steppe route which was an active predecessor of the Silk Road. The latter started in the Guanzhong
region of China and ran west along the Hexi Corridor to the Tarim
Basin. From there it went southwest to Greater Iran and turned southeast
to India or west to the Middle East and Europe. A minor branch went
northwest along the great rivers and north of the Caspian Sea to the
Black Sea. When faced with a rich caravan the steppe nomads
could either rob it, or tax it, or hire themselves out as guards.
Economically these three forms of taxation or parasitism amounted to the
same thing. Trade was usually most vigorous when a strong empire
controlled the steppe and reduced the number of petty chieftains preying
on trade. The silk road first became significant and Chinese silk began
reaching the Roman Empire about the time that the Emperor of Han pushed Chinese power west to the Tarim Basin.
Agriculture
The
nomads would occasionally tolerate colonies of peasants on the steppe
in the few areas where farming was possible. These were often captives
who grew grain for their nomadic masters. Along the fringes there were
areas that could be used for either plowland or grassland. These
alternated between one and the other depending on the relative strength
of the nomadic and agrarian heartlands. Over the last few hundred years,
the Russian steppe and much of Inner Mongolia has been cultivated. The
fact that most of the Russian steppe is not irrigated implies that it
was maintained as grasslands as a result of the military strength of the
nomads.
Language
According to the most widely held hypothesis of the origin of the Indo-European languages, the Kurgan hypothesis, their common ancestor is thought to have originated on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The Tocharians were an early Indo-European branch in the Tarim Basin. At the beginning of written history the entire steppe population west of Dzungaria spoke Iranian languages. From about 500 AD the Turkic languages replaced the Iranian languages first on the steppe, and later in the oases north of Iran. Additionally, Hungarian speakers, a branch of the Uralic language family, who previously lived in the steppe in what is now Southern Russia, settled in the Carpathian basin in year 895. Mongolic languages are in Mongolia. In Manchuria one finds Tungusic languages and some others.
Religion
Tibetan Buddhist temples and lamas on the grasslands
Tengriism was introduced by Turko-Mongol nomads. Nestorianism and Manichaeism spread to the Tarim Basin and into China, but they never became established majority religions. Buddhism spread from the north of India to the Tarim Basin and found a new home in China. By about 1400 AD, the entire steppe west of Dzungaria had adopted Islam. By about 1600 AD, Islam was established in the Tarim Basin while Dzungaria and Mongolia had adopted Tibetan Buddhism.
History
Warfare
Mongol warrior on horseback, preparing a mounted archery shot
Raids between tribes were prevalent throughout the region's history.
This is connected to the ease with which a defeated enemy's flocks can
be driven away, making raiding profitable. In terms of warfare and
raiding, in relation to sedentary societies, the horse gave the nomads
an advantage of mobility. Horsemen could raid a village and retreat with
their loot before an infantry-based army could be mustered and
deployed. When confronted with superior infantry, horsemen could simply
ride away and retreat and regroup. Outside of Europe and parts of the
Middle East, agrarian societies had difficulty raising a sufficient
number of war horses, and often had to enlist them from their nomadic
enemies (as mercenaries). Nomads could not easily be pursued onto the
steppe since the steppe could not easily support a land army. If the
Chinese sent an army into Mongolia, the nomads would flee and come back
when the Chinese ran out of supplies. But the steppe nomads were
relatively few and their rulers had difficulty holding together enough
clans and tribes to field a large army. If they conquered an
agricultural area they often lacked the skills to administer it. If they
tried to hold agrarian land they gradually absorbed the civilization of
their subjects, lost their nomadic skills and were either assimilated
or driven out.
Relations with neighbors
Turco-Mongol states and domains by the 15th century
Along the northern fringe the nomads would collect tribute from and blend with the forest tribes (see Khanate of Sibir, Buryats). From about 1240 to 1480 Russia paid tribute to the Golden Horde.
South of the Kazakh steppe the nomads blended with the sedentary
population, partly because the Middle East has significant areas of
steppe (taken by force in past invasions) and pastoralism. There was a
sharp cultural divide between Mongolia and China and almost constant
warfare from the dawn of history until the Qing conquest of Dzungaria in 1757.
The nomads collected large amounts of tribute from the Chinese and
several Chinese dynasties were of steppe origin. Perhaps because of the
mixture of agriculture and pastoralism in Manchuria its inhabitants, the
Manchu,
knew how to deal with both nomads and the settled populations, and
therefore were able to conquer much of northern China when both Chinese
and Mongols were weak.
Legacy of the Eurasian steppe nomads
Russian
culture and people were much influenced by the Asian nomads in the
Russian steppe and the adjoining steppes and deserts. The steppe culture
of Russia was shaped in Russia through cross-cultural contact mostly by
Slavic, Tatar-Turkic, Mongolian and Iranian people. In addition to ethnicity, also instruments such as the domra, traditional costumes such as kaftan, sarafan, Russian Cossack and tea culture were strongly influenced by the culture of Asian nomadic peoples.
The Eurasian steppes play a major role in Russia's more than
1000-year-old history, so that the steppes are a subject of many Russian
folk songs.
The history of Central Asia concerns the history of the
various peoples that have inhabited Central Asia. The lifestyle of such
people has been determined primarily by the area's climate and geography. The aridity
of the region makes agriculture difficult and distance from the sea cut
it off from much trade. Thus, few major cities developed in the region.
Nomadic horse peoples of the steppe dominated the area for millennia.
Relations between the steppe nomads and the settled people in and around Central Asia
were marked by conflict. The nomadic lifestyle was well suited to
warfare, and the steppe horse riders became some of the most militarily
potent people in the world, due to the devastating techniques and
ability of their horse archers.
Periodically, tribal leaders or changing conditions would cause several
tribes to organize themselves into a single military force, which would
then often launch campaigns of conquest, especially into more
'civilized' areas. A few of these types of tribal coalitions included
the Huns' invasion of Europe, various Turkic migrations into Transoxiana, the Wu Hu attacks on China and most notably the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia.
The dominance of the nomads ended in the 16th century as firearms allowed settled people to gain control of the region. The Russian Empire, the Qing dynasty of China, and other powers expanded into the area and seized the bulk of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union incorporated most of Central Asia; only Mongolia and Afghanistan remained nominally independent, although Mongolia existed as a Soviet satellite state and Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in the late 20th century. The Soviet areas of Central Asia saw much industrialization
and construction of infrastructure, but also the suppression of local
cultures and a lasting legacy of ethnic tensions and environmental
problems.
Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) reached Central Asia by 50,000 to 40,000 years ago.
The Tibetan Plateau is thought to have been reached by 38,000 years ago.
Populations who lived in Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum have also contributed significantly to the populations of both Europe and the Americas.
The term Ceramic Mesolithic is used of late Mesolithic cultures of Central Asia, during the 6th to 5th millennia BC
(in Russian archaeology,
these cultures are described as Neolithic even though farming is
absent).
It is characterized by its distinctive type of pottery, with point or
knob base and flared rims, manufactured by methods not used by the
Neolithic farmers. The earliest manifestation of this type of pottery
may be in the region around Lake Baikal in Siberia. It appears in the
Elshan or Yelshanka or Samara culture on the Volga in Russia by about 7000 BC. and from there spread via the Dnieper-Donets culture to the Narva culture of the Eastern Baltic.
In the Pontic-Caspian steppe, Chalcolithic
cultures develop in the second half of the 5th millennium BC,
small communities in permanent settlements which began to engage in
agricultural practices as well as herding. Around this time, some of
these communities began the domestication of the horse. According to the Kurgan hypothesis, the north-west of the region is also considered to be the source of the root of the Indo-European languages.
The horse-drawn chariot appears in the 3rd millennium BC, by 2000 BC, in the form of war chariots with spoked wheels,
thus being made more maneuverable, and dominated the battlefields. The
growing use of the horse, combined with the failure, roughly around 2000
BC, of the always precarious irrigation systems that had allowed for
extensive agriculture in the region, gave rise and dominance of pastoral
nomadism by 1000 BC, a way of life that would dominate the region for the next several millennia, giving rise to the Scythian expansion of the Iron Age.
Scattered nomadic groups maintained herds of sheep, goats,
horses, and camels, and conducted annual migrations to find new pastures
(a practice known as transhumance). The people lived in yurts
(or gers) – tents made of hides and wood that could be disassembled and
transported. Each group had several yurts, each accommodating about
five people.
While the semi-arid plains were dominated by the nomads, small
city-states and sedentary agrarian societies arose in the more humid
areas of Central Asia. The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of the early 2nd millennium BC was the first sedentary civilization of the region, practicing irrigation farming of wheat and barley and possibly a form of writing. Bactria-Margiana probably interacted with the contemporary Bronze Age nomads of the Andronovo culture, the originators of the spoke-wheeled chariot,
who lived to their north in western Siberia, Russia, and parts of
Kazakhstan, and survived as a culture until the 1st millennium BC. These
cultures, particularly Bactria-Margiana, have been posited as possible
representatives of the hypothetical Aryan culture ancestral to the speakers of the Indo-Iranian languages.
Later the strongest of Sogdian city-states of the Fergana Valley rose to prominence. After the 1st century BC, these cities became home to the traders of the Silk Road
and grew wealthy from this trade. The steppe nomads were dependent on
these settled people for a wide array of goods that were impossible for
transient populations to produce. The nomads traded for these when they
could, but because they generally did not produce goods of interest to
sedentary people, the popular alternative was to carry out raids.
A wide variety of people came to populate the steppes. Nomadic groups in Central Asia included the Huns and other Turks, as well as Indo-Europeans such as the Tocharians, Persians, Scythians, Saka, Yuezhi, Wusun, and others, and a number of Mongol
groups. Despite these ethnic and linguistic differences, the steppe
lifestyle led to the adoption of very similar culture across the region.
In the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, a series of large and powerful states developed on the southern periphery of Central Asia (the Ancient Near East). These empires launched several attempts to conquer the steppe people but met with only mixed success. The Median Empire and Achaemenid Empire both ruled parts of Central Asia. The Xiongnu Empire (209 BC-93 (156) AD) may be seen as the first central Asian empire which set an example for later Göktürk and Mongol empires. Xiongnu's ancestor Xianyu tribe founded Zhongshan state (c. 6th century BC – c. 296 BC) in Hebei province, China. The title chanyu was used by the Xiongnu rulers before Modun Chanyu so it is possible that statehood history of the Xiongnu began long before Modun's rule.
Following the success of the Han–Xiongnu War,
Chinese states would also regularly strive to extend their power
westwards. Despite their military might, these states found it difficult
to conquer the whole region.
When faced by a stronger force, the nomads could simply retreat
deep into the steppe and wait for the invaders to leave. With no cities
and little wealth other than the herds they took with them, the nomads
had nothing they could be forced to defend. An example of this is given
by Herodotus's detailed account of the futile Persian campaigns against the Scythians. The Scythians, like most nomad empires, had permanent settlements of various sizes, representing various degrees of civilisation. The vast fortified settlement of Kamenka on the Dnieper River, settled since the end of the 5th century BC, became the centre of the Scythian kingdom ruled by Ateas, who lost his life in a battle against Philip II of Macedon in 339 BC.
Some empires, such as the Persian and Macedonian empires, did make deep inroads into Central Asia by founding cities and gaining control of the trading centres. Alexander the Great's conquests spread Hellenistic civilisation all the way to Alexandria Eschate
(Lit. “Alexandria the Furthest”), established in 329 BC in modern
Tajikistan. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, his Central Asian
territory fell to the Seleucid Empire during the Wars of the Diadochi.
In 250 BC, the Central Asian portion of the empire (Bactria) seceded as the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, which had extensive contacts with India and China until its end in 125 BC. The Indo-Greek Kingdom, mostly based in the Punjab region but controlling a fair part of Afghanistan, pioneered the development of Greco-Buddhism. The Kushan Kingdom
thrived across a wide swath of the region from the 2nd century BC to
the 4th century AD, and continued Hellenistic and Buddhist traditions.
These states prospered from their position on the Silk Road linking China and Europe.
Likewise, in eastern Central Asia, the Chinese Han Dynasty
expanded into the region at the height of its imperial power. From
roughly 115 to 60 BC, Han forces fought the Xiongnu over control of the
oasis city-states in the Tarim Basin. The Han was eventually victorious and established the Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60 BC, which dealt with the region's defence and foreign affairs. Chinese rule in Tarim Basin was replaced successively with Kushans and Hephthalites.
Later, external powers such as the Sassanid Empire would come to dominate this trade. One of those powers, the Parthian Empire,
was of Central Asian origin, but adopted Persian-Greek cultural
traditions. This is an early example of a recurring theme of Central
Asian history: occasionally nomads of Central Asian origin would conquer
the kingdoms and empires surrounding the region, but quickly merge into
the culture of the conquered peoples.
At this time Central Asia was a heterogeneous region with a
mixture of cultures and religions. Buddhism remained the largest
religion, but was concentrated in the east. Around Persia, Zoroastrianism became important. Nestorian Christianity entered the area, but was never more than a minority faith. More successful was Manichaeism, which became the third largest faith.
Turkic expansion began in the 6th century; the Turkic speaking Uyghurs were one of many distinct cultural groups brought together by the trade of the Silk Route at Turfan, which was then ruled by China's Tang Dynasty.
The Uyghurs, primarily pastoral nomads, observed a number of religions
including Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity. Many of the
artefacts from this period were found in the 19th century in this
remote desert region.
Medieval
Sui and early Tang Dynasty
A Tang period gilt-silver jar, shaped in the style of northern nomad's leather bag decorated with a horse dancing with a cup of wine in its mouth, as the horses of Emperor Xuanzong were trained to do.
It was during the Sui and Tang dynasties that China expanded into
eastern Central Asia. Chinese foreign policy to the north and west now
had to deal with Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in Central Asia.
To handle and avoid any threats posed by the Turks, the Sui government
repaired fortifications and received their trade and tribute missions.
They sent royal princesses off to marry Turkic clan leaders, a total of
four of them in 597, 599, 614, and 617. The Sui stirred trouble and
conflict amongst ethnic groups against the Turks.
As early as the Sui Dynasty, the Turks had become a major militarised force employed by the Chinese. When the Khitans
began raiding north-east China in 605, a Chinese general led 20,000
Turks against them, distributing Khitan livestock and women to the Turks
as a reward. On two occasions between 635 and 636, Tang royal princesses were married to Turk mercenaries or generals in Chinese service.
Throughout the Tang Dynasty until the end of 755, there were approximately ten Turkic generals serving under the Tang. While most of the Tang army was made of fubing(府兵)
Chinese conscripts, the majority of the troops led by Turkic generals
were of non-Chinese origin, campaigning largely in the western frontier
where the presence of fubing(府兵) troops was low. Some "Turkic" troops were nomadisized Han Chinese, a desinicized people.
Civil war in China was almost totally diminished by 626, along with the defeat in 628 of the Ordos Chinese warlord Liang Shidu; after these internal conflicts, the Tang began an offensive against the Turks. In the year 630, Tang armies captured areas of the Ordos Desert, modern-day Inner Mongolia province, and southern Mongolia from the Turks.
After this military victory, Emperor Taizong won the title of
Great Khan amongst the various Turks in the region who pledged their
allegiance to him and the Chinese empire (with several thousand Turks
traveling into China to live at Chang'an). On June 11, 631, Emperor
Taizong also sent envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing gold and silk in order to persuade the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners who were captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier; this embassy succeeded in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who were then returned to China.
While the Turks were settled in the Ordos region (former territory of the Xiongnu), the Tang government took on the military policy of dominating the central steppe.
Like the earlier Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, along with Turkic
allies like the Uyghurs, conquered and subdued Central Asia during the
640s and 650s. During Emperor Taizong's reign alone, large campaigns were launched against not only the Göktürks, but also separate campaigns against the Tuyuhun, and the Xueyantuo. Taizong also launched campaigns against the oasis states of the Tarim Basin, beginning with the annexation of Gaochang in 640. The nearby kingdom of Karasahr was captured by the Tang in 644 and the kingdom of Kucha was conquered in 649.
The expansion into Central Asia continued under Taizong's successor, Emperor Gaozong, who invaded the Western Turks ruled by the qaghanAshina Helu in 657 with an army led by Su Dingfang. Ashina was defeated and the khaganate was absorbed into the Tang empire. The territory was administered through the Anxi Protectorate and the Four Garrisons of Anxi. Tang hegemony beyond the Pamir Mountains
in modern Tajikistan and Afghanistan ended with revolts by the Turks,
but the Tang retained a military presence in Xinjiang. These holdings
were later invaded by the Tibetan Empire
to the south in 670. For the remainder of the Tang Dynasty, the Tarim
Basin alternated between Tang and Tibetan rule as they competed for
control of Central Asia.
The Tang Empire competed with the Tibetan Empire for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia, which was at times settled with marriage alliances such as the marrying of Princess Wencheng (d. 680) to Songtsän Gampo (d. 649). A Tibetan tradition mentions that after Songtsän Gampo's death in 649 AD, Chinese troops captured Lhasa. The Tibetan scholar Tsepon W. D. Shakabpa
believes that the tradition is in error and that "those histories
reporting the arrival of Chinese troops are not correct" and claims that
the event is mentioned neither in the Chinese annals nor in the
manuscripts of Dunhuang.
There was a long string of conflicts with Tibet over territories in the Tarim Basin between 670–692 and in 763 the Tibetans even captured the capital of China, Chang'an, for fifteen days during the An Shi Rebellion. In fact, it was during this rebellion that the Tang withdrew its western garrisons stationed in what is now Gansu and Qinghai, which the Tibetans then occupied along with the territory of what is now Xinjiang. Hostilities between the Tang and Tibet continued until they signed a formal peace treaty in 821.
The terms of this treaty, including the fixed borders between the two
countries, are recorded in a bilingual inscription on a stone pillar
outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa.
Islamic empires
In the 8th century, Islam began to penetrate the region, the desert nomads of Arabia could militarily match the nomads of the steppe, and the early Arab Empire gained control over parts of Central Asia. The early conquests under Qutayba ibn Muslim (705–715) were soon reversed by a combination of native uprisings and invasion by the Turgesh, but the collapse of the Turgesh khaganate after 738 opened the way for the re-imposition of Muslim authority under Nasr ibn Sayyar.
The Arab invasion also saw Chinese influence expelled from western Central Asia. At the Battle of Talas in 751 an Arab army decisively defeated a Tang Dynasty
force, and for the next several centuries Middle Eastern influences
would dominate the region. Large-scale Islamization however did not
begin until the 9th century, running parallel with the fragmentation of Abbasid political authority and the emergence of local Iranian and Turkic dynasties like the Samanids.
Steppe empires
A map showing the major trade routes of Central Asia in the 13th century.
Over time, as new technologies were introduced, the nomadic horsemen grew in power. The Scythians developed the saddle, and by the time of the Alans the use of the stirrup
had begun. Horses continued to grow larger and sturdier so that
chariots were no longer needed as the horses could carry men with ease.
This greatly increased the mobility of the nomads; it also freed their
hands, allowing them to use the bow from horseback.
Using small but powerful composite bows,
the steppe people gradually became the most powerful military force in
the world. From a young age, almost the entire male population was
trained in riding and archery, both of which were necessary skills for
survival on the steppe. By adulthood, these activities were second
nature. These mounted archers were more mobile than any other force at
the time, being able to travel forty miles per day with ease.
The steppe peoples quickly came to dominate Central Asia, forcing
the scattered city states and kingdoms to pay them tribute or face
annihilation. The martial ability of the steppe peoples was limited,
however, by the lack of political structure within the tribes.
Confederations of various groups would sometimes form under a ruler
known as a khan. When large numbers of nomads acted in unison they could be devastating, as when the Huns
arrived in Western Europe. However, tradition dictated that any
dominion conquered in such wars should be divided among all of the
khan's sons, so these empires often declined as quickly as they formed.
Once the foreign powers were expelled, several indigenous empires formed in Central Asia. The Hephthalites
were the most powerful of these nomad groups in the 6th and 7th century
and controlled much of the region. In the 10th and 11th centuries the
region was divided between several powerful states including the Samanid dynasty, that of the Seljuk Turks, and the Khwarezmid Empire.
The most spectacular power to rise out of Central Asia developed when Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia. Using superior military techniques, the Mongol Empire
spread to comprise all of Central Asia and China as well as large parts
of Russia, and the Middle East. After Genghis Khan died in 1227, most
of Central Asia continued to be dominated by the successor Chagatai Khanate. This state proved to be short lived, as in 1369 Timur, a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region.
Even harder than keeping a steppe empire together was governing
conquered lands outside the region. While the steppe peoples of Central
Asia found conquest of these areas easy, they found governing almost
impossible. The diffuse political structure of the steppe confederacies
was maladapted to the complex states of the settled peoples. Moreover,
the armies of the nomads were based upon large numbers of horses,
generally three or four for each warrior. Maintaining these forces
required large stretches of grazing land, not present outside the
steppe. Any extended time away from the homeland would thus cause the
steppe armies to gradually disintegrate. To govern settled peoples the
steppe peoples were forced to rely on the local bureaucracy, a factor
that would lead to the rapid assimilation of the nomads into the culture
of those they had conquered. Another important limit was that the
armies, for the most part, were unable to penetrate the forested regions
to the north; thus, such states as Novgorod and Muscovy began to grow in power.
In the 14th century much of Central Asia, and many areas beyond
it, were conquered by Timur (1336–1405) who is known in the west as
Tamerlane. It was during Timur's reign that the nomadic steppe culture
of Central Asia fused with the settled culture of Iran. One of its
consequences was an entirely new visual language that glorified Timur
and subsequent Timurid rulers. This visual language was also used to
articulate their commitment to Islam.
Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, however. The
region then became divided among a series of smaller Khanates, including
the Khanate of Khiva, the Khanate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Kokand, and the Khanate of Kashgar.
Early modern period (16th to 19th centuries)
The
lifestyle that had existed largely unchanged since 500 BCE began to
disappear after 1500. Important changes to the world economy in the 14th
and 15th century reflected the impact of the development of nautical
technology. Ocean trade routes were pioneered by the Europeans, who had
been cut off from the Silk Road
by the Muslim states that controlled its western termini. The
long-distance trade linking East Asia and India to Western Europe
increasingly began to move over the seas and not through Central Asia.
However, the emergence of Russia as a world power enabled Central Asia
to continue its role as a conduit for overland trade of other sorts, now
linking India with Russia on a north–south axis.
An even more important development was the introduction of gunpowder-based
weapons. The gunpowder revolution allowed settled peoples to defeat the
steppe horsemen in open battle for the first time. Construction of
these weapons required the infrastructure and economies of large
societies and were thus impractical for nomadic peoples to produce. The
domain of the nomads began to shrink as, beginning in the 15th century,
the settled powers gradually began to conquer Central Asia.
The last steppe empire to emerge was that of the Dzungars who conquered much of East Turkestan
and Mongolia. However, in a sign of the changed times they proved
unable to match the Chinese and were decisively defeated by the forces
of the Qing Dynasty.
In the 18th century the Qing emperors, themselves originally from the
far eastern edge of the steppe, campaigned in the west and in Mongolia,
with the Qianlong Emperor taking control of Xinjiang in 1758. The Mongol threat was overcome and much of Inner Mongolia was annexed to China.
The Chinese dominions stretched into the heart of Central Asia and included the Khanate of Kokand,
which paid tribute to Beijing. Outer Mongolia and Xinjiang did not
become provinces of the Chinese empire, but rather were directly
administered by the Qing dynasty. The fact that there was no provincial
governor meant that the local rulers retained most of their powers and
this special status also prevented emigration from the rest of China
into the region. Persia also began to expand north, especially under the
rule of Nadir Shah, who extended Persian dominion well past the Oxus. After his death, however, the Persian empire rapidly crumbled.
Russian expansion into Central Asia (19th century)
Russian wars of conquest in Turkestan
The Russians also expanded south, first with the transformation of the Ukrainian
steppe into an agricultural heartland, and subsequently onto the fringe
of the Kazakh steppes, beginning with the foundation of the fortress of
Orenburg. The slow Russian conquest of the heart of Central Asia began in the early 19th century, although Peter the Great had sent a failed expedition under Prince Bekovitch-Cherkassky against Khiva as early as the 1720s.
By the 1800s, the locals could do little to resist the Russian advance, although the Kazakhs of the Great Horde under Kenesary Kasimov
rose in rebellion from 1837–46. Until the 1870s, for the most part,
Russian interference was minimal, leaving native ways of life intact and
local government structures in place. With the conquest of Turkestan
after 1865 and the consequent securing of the frontier, the Russians
gradually expropriated large parts of the steppe and gave these lands to
Russian farmers, who began to arrive in large numbers. This process was
initially limited to the northern fringes of the steppe and it was only
in the 1890s that significant numbers of Russians began to settle
farther south, especially in Zhetysu (Semirechye).
The Great Game
Russian campaigns
Prisoners in a zindan, a traditional Central Asian prison, in the Bukharan Protectorate under Imperial Russia, ca. 1910
The forces of the khanates were poorly equipped and could do little to resist Russia's advances, although the Kokandian commander Alimqul led a quixotic campaign before being killed outside Chimkent. The main opposition to Russian expansion into Turkestan came from the British, who felt that Russia was growing too powerful and threatening the northwest frontiers of British India. This rivalry came to be known as The Great Game,
where both powers competed to advance their own interests in the
region. It did little to slow the pace of conquest north of the Oxus, but did ensure that Afghanistan remained independent as a buffer state between the two Empires.
Russian expansion was halted in 1887 when Russia and Great Britain delineated the northern border of Afghanistan. Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva remained quasi-independent, but were essentially protectorates along the lines of the Princely States of British India.
Although the conquest was prompted by almost purely military concerns,
in the 1870s and 1880s Turkestan came to play a reasonably important
economic role within the Russian Empire.
Because of the American Civil War, cotton
shot up in price in the 1860s, becoming an increasingly important
commodity in the region, although its cultivation was on a much lesser
scale than during the Soviet period. The cotton trade led to
improvements: the Transcaspian Railway from Krasnovodsk to Samarkand and Tashkent, and the Trans-Aral Railway from Orenburg
to Tashkent were constructed. In the long term the development of a
cotton monoculture would render Turkestan dependent on food imports from
Western Siberia, and the Turkestan-Siberia Railway was already planned when the First World War broke out.
Russian rule still remained distant from the local populace,
mostly concerning itself with the small minority of Russian inhabitants
of the region. The local Muslims were not considered full Russian
citizens. They did not have the full privileges of Russians, but nor did
they have the same obligations, such as military service. The Tsarist
regime left substantial elements of the previous regimes (such as Muslim religious courts) intact, and local self-government at the village level was quite extensive.
Qing Dynasty
During the 17th and 18th centuries the Qing Dynasty made several campaigns to conquer the Dzungar Mongols. In the meantime, they incorporated parts of Central Asia into the Chinese Empire.
Internal turmoil largely halted Chinese expansion in the 19th century. In 1867 Yakub Beg led a rebellion that saw Kashgar declaring its independence as the Taiping and Nian Rebellions in the heartland of the Empire prevented the Chinese from reasserting their control.
Instead, the Russians expanded, annexing the Chu and Ili Valleys and the city of Kuldja from the Chinese Empire. After Yakub Beg's death at Korla in 1877 his state collapsed as the area was reconquered by China. After lengthy negotiations Kuldja was returned to Beijing by Russia in 1884.
Revolution and revolt
During the First World War the Muslim exemption from conscription was removed by the Russians, sparking the Central Asian Revolt of 1916. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 occurred, a provisional Government of Jadid Reformers, also known as the Turkestan Muslim Council met in Kokand and declared Turkestan's autonomy. This new government was quickly crushed by the forces of the Tashkent Soviet,
and the semi-autonomous states of Bukhara and Khiva were also invaded.
The main independence forces were rapidly crushed, but guerrillas known
as basmachi continued to fight the Communists until 1924. Mongolia was also swept up by the Russian Revolution and, though it never became a Soviet republic, it became a communist People's Republic in 1924.
The creation of the Republic of China in 1911 and the general turmoil in China affected the Qing Dynasty's
holdings in Central Asia. Republic of China's control of the region was
relegated to southern Xinjiang and there was a dual threat from Islamic
separatists and communists. Eventually the region became largely
independent under the control of the provincial governor. Rather than
invade, the Soviet Union established a network of consulates in the region and sent aid and technical advisors.
By the 1930s, the governor of Xinjiang's relationship with Moscow was far more important than that with Nanking. The Chinese Civil War further destabilised the region and saw Turkic nationalists make attempts at independence. In 1933, the First East Turkestan Republic was declared, but it was destroyed soon after with the aid of the Soviet troops.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Governor Sheng Shicai
of Xinjiang gambled and broke his links to Moscow, moving to ally
himself with the Kuomintang. This led to a civil war within the region.
Sheng was eventually forced to flee and the Soviet-backed Second East Turkestan Republic
was formed in northern Dzungaria, while the Republic of China retained
control of southern Xinjiang. Both states were annexed by the People's Republic of China in 1949.
These borders had little to do with ethnic make-up, but the Soviets felt it important to divide the region. They saw both Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism
as threats, which dividing Turkestan would limit. Under the Soviets,
the local languages and cultures were systematised and codified, and
their differences clearly demarcated and encouraged. New Cyrillic
writing systems were introduced, to break links with Turkey and Iran.
Under the Soviets the southern border was almost completely closed and
all travel and trade was directed north through Russia.
During the period of forced collectivisation under Joseph Stalin at least a million persons died, mostly in the Kazakh SSR. Islam, as well as other religions, were also attacked. In the Second World War
several million refugees and hundreds of factories were moved to the
relative security of Central Asia; and the region permanently became an
important part of the Soviet industrial complex. Several important
military facilities were also located in the region, including nuclear
testing facilities and the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Virgin Lands Campaign,
starting in 1954, was a massive Soviet agricultural resettlement
program that brought more than 300,000 individuals, mostly from the
Ukraine, to the northern Kazakh SSR and the Altai region of the Russian
SFSR. This was a major change in the ethnicity of the region.
Similar processes occurred in Xinjiang and the rest of Western China where the PRC quickly established control from the Second East Turkestan Republic that controlled northern Xinjiang and the Republic of China forces that controlled southern Xinjiang after the Qing Dynasty.
The area was subject to a number of development schemes and, like
Soviet Central Asia, one focus was on the growing of the cotton cash
crop. These efforts were overseen by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. The XPCC also encouraged Han Chinese to return to Xinjiang after many had migrated out during the Muslim revolts against the Qing Dynasty.
Political turmoil has led to major demographic shifts in the
region: During the Qing Dynasty there were 60% Turkic and 30% Han
Chinese in the region, after the Muslim revolts the percentage of Han Chinese dropped to as low as 7%, and by the year 2000 some 40% of the population of Xinjiang were Han.
As with the Soviet Union local languages and cultures were mostly
encouraged and Xinjiang was granted autonomous status. However, Islam
was much persecuted, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Many people from other parts of China fled to Xinjiang due to the failed agricultural policies of the Great Leap Forward
in other provinces. However, the Great Leap Forward did not affect much
of Xinjiang due to its geographical isolation from other parts of
China.
Soviet Evacuation and Population Deportations During World War II
The
Second World War sparked the widespread migration of Soviet citizens to
the rear of the USSR. Much of this movement was directed to Soviet
Central Asia. These migrations included official, state-organised
evacuations and deportations as well as the non-sanctioned, panicked
flight from the front by both general citizenry and important officials.
The evacuation of Soviet citizens and industry during World War II was
an essential element of their overall success in the war, and Central
Asia served as a main destination for evacuees.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
began on June 22, 1941. A decree from the Presidium of the Executive
Committee on the same day forbade the entry or exit from the USSR's
border regions, which were under a state of martial law.
Such mandates demonstrated the Soviets' fear of spreading panic and
their commitment to asserting direct state control over wartime
relocations to maintain order. Soviet wartime population policy
consisted of two distinct operations: deportation and evacuation.
Deportation aimed to clear regions near the front of potentially
insidious anti-Soviet elements that could hamper the war effort, while
evacuation policy aimed to move Soviet industry and intelligentsia to
the rear, where they would be safe.
Deportations along ethnic lines
Soviet
officials organised their wartime deportation policy largely along
ethnic lines. As a response to the German invasion, Soviet citizens of German descent
in border regions were targeted for deportation to the rear where
Soviet authorities had no need to worry of their conspiring with the
enemy. Such dubious ethnically-derived logic was not reserved for
Germans. Many Finns were also forcibly relocated in the first year of
the war simply for their heritage, though they were mainly sent to
remote areas in the northern rear, such as Siberia, rather than Central
Asia. A large portion of the German deportees, however, were sent to
Kazakhstan. The remobilisation of relocated human resources into the
labour force was pivotal to Soviet wartime production policy, and to
that end many able-bodied deportees were conscripted into a “labour
army” with military style discipline.
By early 1942 as many as 20,800 ethnic Germans had been organised
into battalions in this labour army, though this number would grow to
as much as 222,000 by early 1944 as conscription criteria were
broadened. The NKVD employed about 101,000 members of the labour army at construction sites to develop infrastructure for the war effort.
Those who were not assigned to the labour army were used for timber
harvesting, the construction of railways and other infrastructure, or
sent to collective farms.
As the tide turned in the war, and the Soviets began to reclaim
the territories they lost to the initial German advance, they began a
new wave of deportations of unfavoured ethnic groups. Karachais,
Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushetians, Kabardians, and Crimean Tatars were all
deported to Central Asia for their supposed fraternisation with
occupying German forces. These groups were sent mostly to Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan for their infidelity. These punitive
deportations were also conducted to keep “anti-Soviet elements” far from
the border – where the Soviet offensive against Germany was progressing
– for fear of spying or sabotage.
Evacuation of Soviet citizens to Central Asia
Many
Soviet citizens ended up in Central Asia during World War II, not as a
result of deportation, but evacuation. The evacuation focused on the
movement of critical wartime industry and the factory workers
responsible for overseeing such production. Whole factories and their
employees were moved together via railway eastward to cities like
Tashkent, which received a lion's share of the evacuees.
The initial attempts at evacuation while the war was still in its
early stages through early 1942 were a far cry from the organised
affair that the Soviet central bureaucracy envisaged. Throughout the
summer and fall of 1941, numerous Soviet frontier cities evacuated in a
haphazard and panicked fashion before the German onslaught. A number of
factors led to this lack of organisation. For one, the Soviet evacuation
plans were thrown together fairly hurriedly, and a lot of the
logistical planning was done on the fly as the German advance was
already sweeping through the Soviet border zone. The German invasion
also hampered the effectiveness of the Soviet response by shattering
their communications in the war's early stages; many Soviet leaders were
unable to gather reliable information about the positions of German
forces until it was too late to effect an orderly evacuation.
There was also a desire on the part of Soviet officials to
forestall any evacuations until it was absolutely necessary, the
marching orders were often to continue factory production until the eve
of occupation before hurriedly dismantling and transporting factory
equipment, and destroying what couldn't be moved in time.
As a result of the delay in evacuations, they were often carried out
under German aerial bombardment, which led to additional confusion among
the frightened citizenry. Historian Rebecca Manley describes these
early evacuations as being charactered by “three phenomena: the 'flight'
of officials, the flight of the population, and 'panic'”.
The early flight of Soviet officials who were supposed to manage
the evacuation was roundly condemned by Soviet leaders, but often their
retreat resulted from a realisation that evacuation procedures had
started too late, and that there was no way to effectively execute it.
Additionally, Soviet officials who remained in a city captured by German
forces feared execution by Nazis on the hunt for communists. Avoiding
that, the officials knew that they would be subject to intense
interrogation as to what happened by suspicious Soviets upon returning
to the fold.
Despite these setbacks in the implementation of evacuation policy
early in the war, around 12 million Soviet citizens successfully
evacuated in 1941, even if a number of these were the result of
disorganised, “spontaneous self-evacuation,” and another 4.5 million
evacuated the following year.
In addition, the factories that were successfully evacuated to the
Central Asian rear would help provide the productive capacity the
Soviets needed to eventually win the war, as well as preventing the
Germans from acquiring additional industrial resources. By providing a
safe haven from the German advance for Soviet citizens, Central Asia
played a critical role in securing Allied victory. The evacuation itself
was only part of the difficulty, however, as evacuees arriving in
Central Asia faced many trials and tribulations.
Due to the haphazard nature of evacuation, many labourers did not
arrive with their factory, and had to find labour on their own, though
jobs were hard to come by. Additionally, cities like Tashkent became
overwhelmed at the sheer volume of people arriving at its gates and had
great difficulty supplying the food and shelter necessary for evacuees.
Upon arrival, many evacuees died of illness or starvation in extreme
poverty in Central Asia. Uzbek officials set up aid stations at
Tashkent, which were mirrored at other railway stations to help combat
the poverty, but they could only do so much as little could be spared
economically for the war effort.
Despite these troubles, the ability of Central Asia to absorb Soviet
industry and population to the extent that it did and in the harried
manner that it did was impressive. The Germans certainly didn't foresee
the preparedness of Soviet Central Asia, and in the end they paid dearly
for it.
Since 1991
From 1988 to 1992, a free press and multi-party system developed in the Central Asian republics as perestroika
pressured the local Communist parties to open up. What Svat Soucek
calls the "Central Asian Spring" was very short-lived, as soon after
independence former Communist Party officials recast themselves as local
strongmen. Political stability in the region has mostly been maintained, with the major exception of the Tajik Civil War that lasted from 1992 to 1997. 2005 also saw the largely peaceful ousting of Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev in the Tulip Revolution and an outbreak of violence in Andijan, Uzbekistan.
The independent states of Central Asia with their Soviet-drawn borders.
Much of the population of Soviet Central Asia was indifferent to the
collapse of the Soviet Union, even the large Russian populations in
Kazakhstan (roughly 40% of the total) and Tashkent,
Uzbekistan. Aid from the Kremlin had also been central to the economies
of Central Asia, each of the republics receiving massive transfers of
funds from Moscow.
Independence largely resulted from the efforts of the small
groups of nationalistic, mostly local intellectuals, and from little
interest in Moscow for retaining the expensive region. While never a
part of the Soviet Union, Mongolia followed a somewhat similar path.
Often acting as the unofficial sixteenth Soviet republic, it shed the
communist system only in 1996, but quickly ran into economic problems.
See: History of independent Mongolia.
The economic performance of the region since independence has
been mixed. It contains some of the largest reserves of natural
resources in the world, but there are important difficulties in
transporting them. Since it lies farther from the ocean than anywhere
else in the world, and its southern borders lay closed for decades, the
main trade routes and pipelines run through Russia. As a result, Russia
still exerts more influence over the region than in any other former
Soviet republics. Nevertheless, the rising energy importance of the Caspian Sea entails a great involvement in the region by the US. The former Soviet republics of the Caucasus now have their own US Special Envoy and inter-agency working groups. Former US Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson had claimed that "the Caspian region will hopefully save us [the US] from total dependence on Middle East oil".
Some analysts, such as Myers Jaffe and Robert A. Manning,
estimate however that US' entry into the region (with initiatives such
as the US-favored Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline)
as a major actor may complicate Moscow's chances of making a decisive
break with its past economic mistakes and geopolitical excesses in
Central Asia. They also regard as a myth the assertion that Caspian oil
and gas will be a cheaper and more secure alternative to supplies from
the Persian Gulf.
Despite these reservations and fears, since the late 1980s, Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan have gradually moved to centre stage in
the global energy markets and are now regarded as key factors of the
international energy security. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in particular have succeeded in attracting massive foreign investment to their oil and gas
sectors. According to Gawdat Bahgat, the investment flow suggests that
the geological potential of the Caspian region as a major source of oil
and gas is not in doubt.
Russia and Kazakhstan started a closer energy co-operation in 1998, which was further consolidated in May 2002, when Presidents Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a protocol dividing three gas fields – Kurmangazy, Tsentralnoye, and Khvalynskoye
– on an equal basis. Following the ratification of bilateral treaties,
Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan declared that the northern Caspian was
open for business and investment as they had reached a consensus on the
legal status of the basin.
Iran and Turkmenistan refused however to recognise the validity of
these bilateral agreements; Iran is rejecting any bilateral agreement to
divide the Caspian. On the other hand, US' choices in the region
(within the framework of the so-called "pipeline diplomacy"), such as
the strong support of the Baku pipeline (the project was eventually
approved and was completed in 2005), reflect a political desire to avoid
both Russia and Iran.
Increasingly, other powers have begun to involve themselves in
Central Asia. Soon after the Central Asian states won their
independence, Turkey began to look east, and a number of organizations are attempting to build links between the western and eastern Turks. Iran,
which for millennia had close links with the region, has also been
working to build ties and the Central Asian states now have good
relations with the Islamic Republic. One important player in the new
Central Asia has been Saudi Arabia,
which has been funding the Islamic revival in the region. Olcott notes
that soon after independence Saudi money paid for massive shipments of Qur'ans to the region and for the construction and repair of a large number of mosques. In Tajikistan alone an estimated 500 mosques per year have been erected with Saudi money.
The formerly atheistic Communist Party leaders have mostly converted to Islam. Small Islamist
groups have formed in several of the countries, but radical Islam has
little history in the region; the Central Asian societies have remained
largely secular and all five states enjoy good relations with Israel. Central Asia is still home to a large Jewish population, the largest group being the Bukharan Jews,
and important trade and business links have developed between those
that left for Israel after independence and those remaining.
The People's Republic of China sees the region as an essential future source of raw materials; most Central Asian countries are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
This has affected Xinjiang and other parts of western China that have
seen infrastructure programs building new links and also new military
facilities. Chinese Central Asia has been far from the centre of that
country's economic boom and the area has remained considerably poorer
than the coast. China also sees a threat in the potential of the new
states to support separatist movements among its own Turkic minorities.
One important Soviet legacy that has only gradually been
appreciated is the vast ecological destruction. Most notable is the
gradual drying of the Aral Sea.
During the Soviet era, it was decided that the traditional crops of
melons and vegetables would be replaced by water-intensive growing of
cotton for Soviet textile mills. Massive irrigation efforts were
launched that diverted a considerable percentage of the annual inflow to
the sea, causing it to shrink steadily. Furthermore, vast tracts of
Kazakhstan were used for nuclear testing, and there exists a plethora of decrepit factories and mines.
In the first part of 2008 Central Asia experienced a severe energy crisis,
a shortage of both electricity and fuel, aggravated by abnormally cold
temperatures, failing infrastructure, and a shortage of food in which
aid from the west began to assist the region.
As of 2019, despite its common cultural and historical past
Central Asia has been "one of the least integrated regions in the
world".
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