The land between two deserts

Khwarazm — Chorasmia to the Greeks — enters written history as a satrapy of Darius I. In 480 BCE Chorasmian troops marched with Xerxes against Greece.

From about 500 BCE to 500 CE the delta was a densely irrigated, fortified farming civilisation: more than fifty mud-brick fortresses, the Elliq Qala.

1. 

   Ayaz-Kala 1

   4th–3rd century BCE

   182 by 152 metres on a 100-metre hill: double walls with a vaulted corridor, 45 towers, walls up to 10 metres high. Ayaz-Kala 3 (1st–2nd century CE) was a Kushan-era garrison of some 5 hectares; Ayaz-Kala 2 (6th–8th century) an Afrighid castle on a 40-metre cone with a 50-metre stair and a fire temple with wall paintings.

2. 

   Toprak-Kala

   1st–5th century CE

   Capital of Chorasmia until the Afrighids moved to Kath after 305 CE. Its 2nd–3rd-century palace had painted halls, Hellenistic-Kushan high-relief sculpture and an archive of documents in the Khwarezmian language.

3. 

   Koy-Krylgan-Kala

   4th–3rd century BCE

   A circular temple-fortress with a Zoroastrian fire temple, destroyed around 200 BCE and resettled until about 400 CE. Among the finds: a man-shaped ossuary statue, now in the Hermitage.

4. 

   Chilpik

   1st century BCE – 1st century CE

   A Zoroastrian tower of silence about 15 metres high on a natural mound beside the Amu Darya, some 40 km from Nukus. Bodies were exposed to birds and sun; bones were kept in ossuaries. Used until the Arab conquest, later a signal tower. It stands on the state emblem.

5. 

   Janbas-Kala and Kyzyl-Kala

   Janbas-Kala: a Neolithic settlement and an Achaemenid-era fortress. Kyzyl-Kala, the Red Fortress: 1st–4th century, rebuilt in the 12th century and partly restored today.

The legend of Ayaz-Kala: a poor slave-hero, Ayaz, wins a princess and a fortress.

The Afrighid dynasty ruled from Kath from 305 to 995. Islam arrived with the Arab conquest in the 8th century.

Mizdakhan flourished again under the Golden Horde. Mazlumkhan-Sulu, from the first half of the 14th century, is a semi-underground portal-dome mausoleum with azure majolica and muqarnas. Shamun Nabi: seven domes over a 25-metre “grave” of a legendary magician.

1388: Timur razes Urganch as a rival to Samarkand. 1511: after the Amu Darya shifts its course, the Arabshahid Uzbeks found the Khanate of Khiva.

The people formed as a confederation in the late 15th and 16th centuries on the lower Syr Darya, near the Kazakh Lesser Horde — which is why language, dress and yurt are so close to Kazakh.

First written mention: 1583–1598, in decrees of Abdullah Khan II of Bukhara listing Karakalpaks near Sighnaq on the Syr Darya.

From 1810 the Karakalpak fate was tied to Khiva: heavy taxes, forced canal labour, land seized by the khan's court.

1. 1827

   Uprising led by Aydos Bi — crushed, and later immortalised in Berdakh's poem Aydosbiy.

2. 1855–56

   Rebellion led by Ernazar Alakoz (c. 1806–1856), aiming at an independent Karakalpak khanate. Defeated; Ernazar killed. His mausoleum near Shimbay is a place of memory today.

3. 1858–59

   The Kungrad rebellion — the poet Ajiniyaz takes part and is exiled.

1. 1873

   Khiva becomes a Russian protectorate. The right bank of the Amu Darya, with most Karakalpaks, is ceded to Russia as the Amu Darya Department.

2. 1920

   The Khiva Khanate is abolished; the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic follows (1920–24).

3. 1924–25

   Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast inside the Kazakh ASSR of the RSFSR.

4. 1932

   Karakalpak ASSR within the RSFSR. Nukus becomes the capital.

5. 1936

   5 December: transferred to the Uzbek SSR — the border that still exists.

6. 1928 · 1940

   Latin script in 1928; Cyrillic in 1940.

In 1937 Sergey Tolstov founded the Khorezm Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition: 54 years, about 1,000 sites, 5,000 aerial photographs from 1946 on. Toprak-Kala, Koy-Krylgan-Kala and Janbas-Kala came to light. A young painter on the 1950 expedition was Igor Savitsky.

In the 1960s and 70s irrigation boomed and the region was “probably at its most prosperous”. Cotton and rice monoculture; the Muynak cannery employed some 30,000 people.

• 1⁄6of the entire Soviet fish catch came from the Aral
• 40,000fishermen
• 30,000workers at the Muynak cannery
• 500,000muskrat pelts a year from the delta reeds

Salinity rose from 10 g/L to 376 g/L by 1990 — seawater is 35.

Commercial fishing was dead by 1987. Muynak's ships rust in the sand 30–90 km from the water — the Ship Graveyard.

The exposed bed is a new desert, the Aralkum: salt-and-pesticide dust storms; anaemia and respiratory disease soared; in 2009 child mortality reached 75 per 1,000.

“One of the planet's worst environmental disasters.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 2011

Kazakhstan's Kok-Aral dam (2005) revived the North Aral. Uzbekistan plants saxaul forests on the dry seabed. The Sudochye-Akpetki state reserve; the UN Multi-Partner Human Security Trust Fund for the Aral Sea region.

Stihia, since 2018: an electronic-music, art and science festival founded by Otabek Suleimanov beside the ship graveyard in Muynak — “not just a gigantic party… we do it in Muynak purposefully, because this is one of the most devastated parts of the country.”

1. 14 Dec 1990

   Declaration of state sovereignty of Karakalpakstan. 1991: Uzbekistan independent.

2. 14 Dec 1992

   The flag is adopted.

3. 9 Apr 1993

   Constitution and emblem adopted. The same year: an agreement to join Uzbekistan for 20 years as a sovereign republic, with the constitutional right to secede by referendum.

4. 1994–2016

   Karakalpak returns to the Latin script in 1994–96; the alphabet is refined in 2009 and 2016.

5. 2003

   A new Savitsky Museum building; another followed in the mid-2010s.

6. 2023

   The 2023 constitution preserved Karakalpakstan's sovereign status.

7. 25 Feb 2023

   Júweri gúrtik, the national dish, gets an annual festival day.

8. Dec 2025

   UNESCO inscribes the Karakalpak yurt and the kobyz and jyrau tradition on its intangible-heritage lists.