travel guide
The monuments of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva make far more sense once you know who built them and why. This primer covers two thousand years of Central Asian history in the order you will meet it on the road.
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The term Silk Road was coined in the nineteenth century, but the routes it describes are far older. They were never a single road: rather, a web of caravan tracks linking oasis cities across deserts and mountains, along which silk, spices, horses, glass, paper, religions and ideas travelled for more than fifteen centuries. Central Asia sat in the middle of it.
Long before the Silk Road had a name, settled peoples farmed the river valleys of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, while nomads moved across the steppe. Khorezm, around today’s Khiva, and Sogdiana, around Samarkand and Bukhara, were sophisticated civilisations, with fortified cities whose ruins you can still visit in Karakalpakstan.
In 329 BC, Alexander the Great reached Marakanda, ancient Samarkand, and campaigned across the region for two years. The Greek presence left traces in art and coinage, and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms flourished to the south for generations.
From around the fourth to the eighth centuries AD, the Sogdians were the great traders of the Silk Road, with communities stretching from Persia to China. Their language served as a commercial lingua franca. The Afrosiab museum in Samarkand preserves murals showing ambassadors at a Sogdian court, one of the most vivid images of the era.
Religious life was diverse: Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity all had followers along the routes.
Arab armies arrived in the early eighth century, and Islam gradually became the dominant faith. Under the Samanid dynasty in the ninth and tenth centuries, Bukhara became one of the intellectual capitals of the Islamic world. Scholars such as the physician and philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and the mathematician al-Khwarizmi, whose name gave us the word algorithm, came from this region. The Samanid Mausoleum in Bukhara is one of the oldest surviving monuments of Islamic architecture in Central Asia.
The Karakhanids followed, building the Kalyan Minaret in Bukhara in the twelfth century.
In 1220, Mongol armies under Genghis Khan swept through the region, destroying Bukhara, Samarkand and Urgench. Some cities never recovered; others were rebuilt nearby. The Kalyan Minaret is said to have been spared because it impressed the conqueror.
In the late fourteenth century, Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, built an empire from his base in Samarkand. Born near Shakhrisabz, he brought craftsmen from conquered lands to build monumental architecture: the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, the Ak-Saray palace in Shakhrisabz and his own tomb, Gur-e-Amir.
His grandson Ulugbek ruled Samarkand as a scholar-king, building a madrasa on the Registan and an observatory whose star catalogue was among the most accurate of its time. The Timurid period is the golden age of the architecture you will see; our guide to Islamic architecture in Uzbekistan explains its features.
From the sixteenth century, the Shaybanids and their successors ruled from Bukhara, adding many of the madrasas and trading domes of the old town. As sea routes replaced overland trade, the region turned inward. Three states emerged: the Emirate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva and the Khanate of Kokand in the Fergana Valley. Khiva’s walled inner town largely dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In the nineteenth century, during the rivalry between Russia and Britain known as the Great Game, the Russian Empire conquered the region. Tashkent became the administrative capital of Russian Turkestan. After 1917, the Soviet Union drew the borders of today’s republics. The Soviet period brought railways, industry, cotton monoculture, the shrinking of the Aral Sea, and, after the 1966 earthquake, the rebuilding of Tashkent.
In 1991, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan became independent. Restoration of historic monuments, revival of crafts and new openness to visitors followed, especially in the last decade.
A guided program brings these layers together, from Sogdian ruins to Timurid domes and khanate palaces. Our Silk Road itinerary shows a classic route. Send us a request with your interests, and we will build a history-focused program and quote.
Updated: 2026-10
Because the main overland routes between China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean passed through its oasis cities. Goods, ideas, religions and technologies changed hands here.
The Ulugbek Madrasa was built in the fifteenth century by Timur's grandson Ulugbek. The Sher-Dor and Tilya-Kori madrasas were added in the seventeenth century under the governor Yalangtush Bahadur.
Several cities claim great antiquity. Samarkand, ancient Marakanda, and Bukhara both have histories reaching back well over two thousand years.
Samarkand is the most famous name on the Silk Road and the centrepiece of most Uzbekistan tours. Its blue domes and tiled squares are the reason many travellers come to Central Asia in the first place.
Bukhara is the city where travellers slow down. Its old town is still lived in, its lanes lead from mosques to bazaars and courtyards, and the whole centre can be explored on foot.
Khiva's inner town sits entirely within mud-brick walls, with minarets, palaces and madrasas packed into a few hundred metres. It feels like a city frozen in time, and it is best seen slowly, at dawn and dusk.
Uzbekistan's domes and portals are among the finest examples of Islamic architecture anywhere. Knowing a few building types and terms turns sightseeing into reading the buildings.
Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva form the classic Silk Road loop. Here is how to order the cities, how many nights each one needs and what to add when you have more time.
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To: Global Destination
Where: Tashkent, Uzbekistan
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