Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan holds the Silk Road's oasis belt, and each of its three great cities solved the end of the caravans differently. Bukhara kept its madrasas and its scholarship; Khiva kept its walls, and its economy had rested substantially on raiding for slaves until the Russian conquest of 1873; Samarkand was rebuilt by Timur with craftsmen marched here from Damascus, Delhi and Baghdad. Tashkent is the modern counterweight, rebuilt after the 1966 earthquake.