Khiva

Khiva stands in the irrigated lands of Khwarazm south of the Oxus, at the edge of the desert road to Persia. Its inner town, Ichan Kala, is enclosed by high earthen walls and contains a dense arrangement of mosques, tombs, markets and madrasas. Caravans could rest here before crossing the desert, and the streets within its walls joined places of worship with the commercial life of the oasis. The city forms part of a much older oasis civilization, whose settlements depended upon channels drawn from the great river.

Khiva passed to Timur in the late fourteenth century and came under Uzbek rule in the early sixteenth. As the waterways of the lower Oxus changed and old Urgench declined, Khiva emerged as a leading seat of the khanate. Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan, who ruled from 1643 to 1663, fought the Kalmyks and wrote histories of the Turks and Turkmen. The fortified residence of the khans, Kunya Ark, was strengthened in the later seventeenth century.

The eighteenth century brought warfare and the invasion of Nader Shah in 1740, followed by a revival under rulers of the Qungrat family. The Friday Mosque was rebuilt in 1788–89, its broad roof supported by a forest of wooden columns. In the early nineteenth century Muhammad Rahim Khan consolidated the khanate, while his successors added to the palaces and monuments within the old walls.