Caspian Sea

Central Asia’s main physical features are highlands, deserts, and steppes, such as the Kirghiz Steppe in Kazakhstan. The Kara Kum desert covers much of the land in Turkmenistan, while the Kyzyl Kum desert covers much of Uzbekistan. Most of Central Asia has an arid or semiarid climate with cold winters.

How do settlement patterns in the Caucasus differ from those in Siberia and most of Central Asia? The Caucasus is a more urban region than Siberia or Central Asia. Unlike in Siberia and Central Asia, most people in the Caucasus live on farms.

Central Asia has an extremely varied geography, including high mountain passes through vast mountain ranges, such as the Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, and the Pamirs. The region is also home to the vast Kara Kum and Kyzyl Kum Deserts, which dominate the interior with extensive spans of sand and desolation.

Central Asia can also be called as region of beautiful and high mountain lakes in the world. Issyk Kul lake in Kyrgyzstan is one lake that fascinates everyone from every corner of the planet for its beauty. Some other lakes are Karakul lake, Song Kol lake and more.

The Central Asian economies are open but not fully integrated with the global economy in many ways. Kazakhstan is the richest and most economically developed one among the five Central Asian countries and has multifaceted relations to globalization.

Islam in Central Asia has existed since the beginning of Islamic history. Islam is the most widely practiced religion in Central Asia.

8th century

The Muslim conquest of Transoxiana or Arab conquest of Transoxiana were the 7th and 8th century conquests, by Umayyad and Abbasid Arabs, of Transoxiana, the land between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers, a part of Central Asia that today includes all or parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan.

The five largest ethnic groups in Central Asia are, in descending order of size, the Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, Turkmen, and Kyrgyz. All those groups speak languages related to Turkish except for the Tajik, who speak a language related to Persian.

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.

For example, the area has roughly 3% of the world’s oil, 4% of the world’s coal, and 15% of the world’s uranium. It also has large reserves of natural gas, zinc, lead, chromite, copper, iron ore, gold and manganese. These are mostly located in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The Central Asia region (CA) comprises the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

List of Country Capitals in Central Asia

There are seven countries in Central Asia with the suffix “-stan”: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Russian

Central Asia’s relationship with Russian: Today Central Asia’s relationship with the former Soviet Union is obvious. In fact the “stans” were some of the hardest hit as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Although Russia’s political involvement has declined, the Russian Language is still very useful in the region.

At the moment English is not much spread in Central Asia, but the western influence and the interest in the English language, mainly among young people, increase. With our graphic, you’ll be able to say hello in all five Central Asian languages as well as in Russian.

The most obvious modern example is English, which is the current dominant lingua franca of international diplomacy, business, science, technology and aviation, but many other languages serve, or have served at different historical periods, as lingua francas in particular regions, countries, or in special contexts.

The reasons for the spread of French as a lingua franca were not because French speakers set out to promote the language as such. French was learnt and used because its speakers had political, economic and cultural clout.

Chinese is also a more difficult language to learn. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute estimates it would take a native English speaker 2,200 hours to reach professional fluency in Chinese. That is four times longer than it would take to reach the same level in Dutch, French, or Spanish.

French

Latin