The Uzbek State as Reflected in Eighteenth Century

The combined research project on “Nomadic rule in a sedentary context – state formation in Central Asia, sixteenth and eighteenth century ” focuses on nomads rather close to the political power centres. The states we are dealing with here, originated in a nomadic confederation conquering and migrating to a mixed agro-pastoral zone (Mawarannahr and Khurasan) around 1500. The conquest led by Muḥammad Shaybānī Khān was the last great inroad of pastoralists from the Great Steppe (the Dasht-i Qipchaq) into Mawarannahr, where Uzbek dynasties ruled until 1920. Some of the wide range of questions the project addresses are the following: How and to which extent have the Central Asian states been shaped by nomads since 1500? How and to what extent have nomadic conquerors been subjected to changes after they came from the Great Steppe to Mawarannahr? How and to what extent did the constraints of their new social and ecological environment affect their economic subsistence and mode of life? The combined project focuses, in particular, on the military and the state.1 An attempt is made to trace developments both in sphere of political interaction (between nomads and sedentary groups) and in the military sphere, for instance the participation of sedentary groups in military activities or the building-up of mixed (nomadic and non-nomadic) forces and groups upon which later dynasties, such as the Manghits in Bukhara could rely on