Shimbay

Shimbay lies in the lower Oxus delta, east of the river's main channel. Its market served communities among the waterways and cultivated lands of the Aral country. Karakalpak craftspeople made the wooden frames and coverings of the portable felt dwellings used across the steppe. In the early nineteenth century the khans of Khiva brought Karakalpaks from the eastern shore of the Aral Sea into the delta, where settlement and pastoral life met in a landscape shaped by the river.