Russian Turkestan in the context of "Pishpek"

The Wakhan Corridor (Dari: دالان واخان, romanized: Dālān-i Wāxān; Pashto: واخان دهلېز, romanized: Wāxān dahlez) is a narrow strip of territory in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan. This corridor stretches eastward, connecting Afghanistan to Xinjiang, China. It also separates the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan in the north from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan regions in Pakistan in the south. This high mountain valley, which rises to a maximum altitude of 4,923 m (16,152 ft), serves as the source of both the Panj and Pamir rivers, which converge to form the larger Amu Darya River. For countless centuries, a vital trade route has traversed this valley, facilitating the movement of travelers to and from East, South, and Central Asia.

The corridor was formed after an 1893 out of British territory from now Pakistan after an agreement between Mortimer Durand of the British Raj and Emir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan, so that the Russian dominion, now Tajikistan would not touch British dominion, now Pakistan. This agreement also created the Durand Line which today forms the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was last conquered by the Durrani Empire in 1763. At the time it was carved out, the narrow strip acted as a buffer zone between the Russian Empire and the British Empire (specifically the regions of Russian Turkestan, now in Tajikistan, and the northern part of the British Raj, now in Pakistan). Its eastern end bordered China's Xinjiang region, then claimed by the Qing dynasty.

Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is a doubly landlocked country located in Central Asia. It is surrounded by five countries: Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Tajikistan to the southeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, making it one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth, the other being Liechtenstein. The country has a population of more than 37.6 million, making it the most populous country in Central Asia. Uzbekistan is a member of the Organization of Turkic States. Uzbek, spoken by the Uzbek people, is the official language and spoken by the majority of its inhabitants, while Russian and Tajik are significant minority languages. Islam is the predominant religion, and most Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims.

The first recorded settlers in the land of what is contemporary Uzbekistan were Eastern Iranian nomads, known as Scythians, who founded kingdoms in Khwarazm, Sogdiana, and Bactria in the 8th–6th centuries BC, as well as Fergana and Margiana in the 3rd century BC – 6th century AD. The area was incorporated into the Achaemenid Empire and, after a period of Greco-Bactrian rule and later by the Sasanian Empire, until the Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century. The early Muslim conquests and the subsequent Samanid Empire converted most of the people into adherents of Islam. During this period, cities began to grow rich from the Silk Road, and became a center of the Islamic Golden Age. The local Khwarazmian dynasty was destroyed by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, leading to a dominance by Mongol peoples. Timur in the 14th century established the Timurid Empire. Its capital was Samarkand, which became a center of science under the rule of Ulugh Beg, giving birth to the Timurid Renaissance. The territories of the Timurid dynasty were conquered by Kipchak Shaybanids in the 16th century. Conquests by Emperor Babur towards the east led to the foundation of the Mughal Empire in India. Most of Central Asia was gradually incorporated into the Russian Empire during the 19th century, with Tashkent becoming the political center of Russian Turkestan. In 1924, national delimitation created the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic as a republic of the Soviet Union. It declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan in 1991.

The Great Game was a rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires over influence in Central Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet. The colonial empire and great land power (heartland state) used military interventions and diplomatic negotiations to acquire and redefine territories in Central and South Asia. Russia conquered Turkestan, and Britain expanded and set the borders of British India. By the early 20th century, a line of independent states, tribes, and monarchies from the shore of the Caspian Sea to the Eastern Himalayas were made into protectorates and territories of the two empires.

Though the Great Game was marked by distrust, diplomatic intrigue, and regional wars, it never erupted into a full-scale war directly between Russian and British colonial forces. However, the two nations battled in the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, which affected the Great Game. The Russian and British Empires also cooperated numerous times during the Great Game, including many treaties and the Afghan Boundary Commission.

Bishkek, formerly known as Pishpek (until 1926), and then Frunze (1926–1991), is the capital and largest urban city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative centre of the Chüy Region. Bishkek is situated near the border with Kazakhstan and has a population of around 1,200,000 people, as of 2024.

The Khanate of Kokand established the fortress of Pishpek in 1825 to control local caravan routes and to collect tribute from Kyrgyz tribes. On 4 September 1860, with the approval of the Kyrgyz, Russian forces led by Colonel Apollon Zimmermann destroyed the fortress. In the present day, the fortress ruins can be found just north of Jibek Jolu Street, near the new main mosque. A Russian settlement was established in 1868 on the site of the fortress under its original name, Pishpek. It lay within the General Governorship of Russian Turkestan and its Semirechye Oblast.

Chagatai (چغتای, Čaġatāy), also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic (Čaġatāy türkīsi), is a Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan (i.e. parts of modern-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), Eastern Turkestan (where a dialect, known as Kaşğar tılı, developed), Crimea, the Volga region (such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), etc. Chagatai is the direct ancestor of the Uzbek and Uyghur languages. Kazakh and Turkmen, which are not within the Karluk branch but are in the Kipchak and Oghuz branches of the Turkic languages respectively, were nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.

Ali-Shir Nava'i was the greatest representative of Chagatai literature.

In the 16th century, the Tsardom of Russia embarked on a campaign to expand the Russian frontier to the east. This effort continued until the 19th century under the Russian Empire, when the Imperial Russian Army succeeded in conquering all of Central Asia. The majority of this land became known as Russian Turkestan—the name "Turkestan" was used to refer to the area due to the fact that it was and is inhabited by Turkic peoples, excluding the Tajiks, who are an Iranian ethnicity. Upon witnessing Russia's absorption of the various Central Asian realms, the British Empire sought to reinforce India, triggering the Great Game, which ended when both sides eventually designated Afghanistan as a neutral buffer zone.

Although the Russian Empire collapsed during World War I, the Russian sphere of influence remained in what was Soviet Central Asia until 1991. This region now comprises Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan in the centre, Kyrgyzstan in the east, Tajikistan in the southeast, and Turkmenistan in the southwest; the Russian language is still recognized in some capacity in many of these countries.

A governorate (Russian: губе́рния, romanized: gubérniya, pre-1918 spelling: губе́рнія, IPA: [ɡʊˈbʲernʲɪjə] ) was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, governorates remained as subdivisions in the Byelorussian, Russian and Ukrainian Soviet republics, and in the Soviet Union from its formation in 1922 until 1929. The term is also translated as government or province. A governorate was headed by a governor (губернатор, gubernator), a word borrowed from Latin gubernator, in turn from Greek kyvernítis (Greek: κυβερνήτης).

Selected governorates were united under an assigned governor-general such as the Grand Duchy of Finland, Congress Poland, Russian Turkestan and others. There were also military governors such as Kronstadt, Vladivostok and others. Aside from governorates, other types of divisions were oblasts (region) and okrugs (district).

During World War I, conflict on the Asian continent and the islands of the Pacific included naval battles, the Allied conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China, the anti-Russian Central Asian revolt of 1916 in Russian Turkestan and the Ottoman-supported Kelantan rebellion in British Malaya. The most significant military action was the careful and well-executed Siege of Qingdao in China, but smaller actions were also fought at Bita Paka and Toma in German New Guinea.

All other German and Austro-Hungarian possessions in Asia and the Pacific fell without bloodshed. Naval warfare was common; all of the colonial powers had naval squadrons stationed in the Indian or Pacific oceans. These fleets operated by supporting the invasions of German-held territories and by destroying the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy.