Uzbeks

By Russell Zanca

The national and eponymous ethnonym is Ozbek. Uzbek is used by non-Uzbeks and Ozbek is the term used by Uzbeks themselves.

Uzbek or Ozbek becomes increasingly common after the middle of the 15th century. As a term first used for political-cum-ethnic distinction, it referred to the nomadic warriors associated with Shaibani Khan and the Shaibanids. This was a Turkic people who went on to conquer much of modern Uzbekistan. Their power was eclipsed early in the 16th century, and then the term Uzbek or Ozbek rarely crops up until the 19th century. People interested in the exact meaning of the term will have to be satisfied with one of the most literal connotations of the term, "Master of the Self." Today's sense of being "Uzbek" is largely a 20th century creation of Soviet-style modernity. There are Uzbek populations in all of the modern Central Asian countries in addition to Afghanistan and western China.

The country of Uzbekistan contains deserts and mountains with most of the population concentrated in the east and south. The major mountain ranges are part of the chains of the Tien Shan and Alai, found mostly in Uzbekistan's north and northeast, and south. There are lesser chains, such as the Nurota, in arid central Uzbekistan. Scenic alpine viewing may be encountered in Tashkent and Samarkand provinces as well as in Uzbekistan's Ferghana valley provinces. Most of Uzbekistan is agriculturally inhospitable; approximately 11% of the land is arable, and much of this arable land requires extensive and intensive irrigation works for profitable yields.

Uzbekistan had one of the highest population growth rates of all the former Soviet republics, eclipsed only by Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Notable population declines occurred during the Civil War period (1917-1924) and Collectivization through World War II (1929-1945). Although these are significant chunks of time, the overall historical trend in the 20th century has been rapid population growth with birth rates exceeding 2%/year. At the outset of Russian colonization in the historic population centers of today's Uzbekistan, the overall Central Asian Uzbek population was between 3-4 million. Census figures for 2000 show that in this nation-state of about 24 million, almost 75% of the population is ethnically Uzbek, so there are probably 16-17 million Uzbeks in Uzbekistan today.

The overwhelming majority of Uzbeks speak Uzbek, known as Ozbekcha to Uzbek speakers, which became a standardized literary language through the amalgam of Tashkent, Samarkand and Ferghana valley dialects in the 1920s. The Uzbek literary heritage, however, dates back to the 15th century Chaghatay language. Modern Uzbek is a Turkic language, and mixes much Persian vocabulary and grammar along with long-established Turkic linguistic patterns. It is classified as an eastern Turkic language associated with much older dialects of Chaghatai and Kipchak, terms still used as ethnic and linguistic markers. Modern Uzbek shares closest linguistic affiliations with Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Turkish, and Turkmen. There are, naturally regional dialects, including those spoken in Tashkent, the Ferghana valley, Khorezm (in the west), and the southern dialects of Kashka-Dario (dario means river in Uzbek) and Surkhan-Dario. Perhaps the most distinct regional dialect, relative to all other Uzbek-language speakers is that of Khorezm, which is much closer to modern Turkish and Turkmen.

Although primordialism remains a very popular approach to theorizing ethnic history within Uzbekistan, the evidence indicates that Uzbek ethnic history shows great fluidity and lots of, shall we say, reconstructive surgery. There's no question but that the ethnic origins of the Uzbeks are rooted in a pastoral nomadic Turkic past, and that Eurasian nomadic peoples, such as the Huns, Turk, Uighur, and Mongols form a part of the historical waves of Turkic invaders. However, a large ethnic component of Uzbek history also comprises settled, agrarian Iranic, or Persian-speaking peoples. Over the past two millennia, modern Uzbek people's ethnic make up has involved the cross-fertilization of Chinese, Turks, South Asians, Iranians and Arabs, and even western Eurasian peoples. For at least five centuries, the people loosely grouped as today's Uzbeks have balanced farming and pastoralism with much merchandising and trading traditions associated with urban centers, such as Tashkent, Urgench, Khiva, Andijon and Kokand.

The increasing trend among Uzbeks since the 19th century has been towards intensive agriculture. Uzbekistan's history has not been characterized by any period of Uzbek unity or of an Uzbek state, but more by the existence of independent principalities or kingdoms, including those of Bukhara, Khiva, Kokand, and Tashkent. The current borders of Uzbekistan, finally worked out only in the mid-1920s do not correspond to the limits of any former Uzbek territory. Since political independence in 1991, Uzbekistan's relationships with neighboring countries may be defined by tenseness, especially with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Relations with Kazakhstan have been strained also. To its south and southwest, Uzbekistan has downright hostile relations with Taliban Afghanistan, and more or less normal relations with Iran and Pakistan. The Uzbeks of Afghanistan, who mainly live in the country's north, constitute a very large proportion of the Northern Alliance forces, the latter led by a very prominent Uzbek general, Rashid Dostum. Until late 2001, however, official ties between Uzbeks of Uzbekistan and Afghan Uzbeks were not particularly strong. Despite the inter-ethnic tensions between the Han Chinese state and its western Turkic peoples, the independent Turkic nation-states of Central Asia enjoy cordial and productive working relations with the People's Republic of China.

Because much of Uzbekistan's territory comprises deserts and semi-deserts, it only makes sense that the biggest population centers are oases, near oases, and in valleys. Since the best water-fed areas are in the north, east and south, we see the greatest population centers there, with the notable exceptions of Nukus, Urgench-Khiva, and Navoii in central Uzbekistan. Tashkent, Samarkand, Namangan, and Bukhara are the largest Uzbek cities, and the water supplies of each of these cities are fed by glacial rivers, including the Syr Dario and Zeravshan. In Uzbekistan, any settlement above 30,000 is classified as urban or a city. While new villages and settlements were an ongoing process of the 20th century, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Soviet Central Asian settlements is their overall connection to larger centers through the construction of roads, railways, airports, telephone, and telegraph systems. These systems have served to bring even Uzbekistan's most isolated locales in much better contact with regional and republican centers after WWII in comparison to neighbors such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. Somewhere between 65-70% of Uzbekistan's population remains rural, and most of these people are settled on collective farms, some of which cover thousands of acres with farm populations reaching anywhere from 6,000 to 15,000 on average. In other words, the collective farms each comprise a number of villages, villages that were often settlements long before the imposition of Soviet power. Today the farms are slowly being broken up, but they are still the prevailing settlement pattern throughout the rural country. Historically, they serve the peasant locales with general stores, post offices, police stations, infirmary or polyclinic, mills, machine/appliance repair shops, teahouses, and a mosque or two. Sometimes a collective farm might have its only weekly market, a bozor/bazaar, but one is much more likely to find rural residents visiting slightly larger regional settlements once a week to shop for necessities, everything from soap and shoes to spare parts and school supplies.

In the cities of Uzbekistan one finds ubiquitous examples of the well known Soviet-style apartment blocks, huge and fired brick behemoths, although many have decorative touches on the outside including colorful murals and concrete geometric designs over windows, created to reflect a Central Asian flavor. In the countryside there are also occasional examples of smaller-scale block-style housing. The vast majority live in single or extended family dwellings, the latter known as compounds. In Uzbekistan a typical rural family dwelling contains anywhere from four to sixteen inhabitants. Uzbeks are not particularly concerned with the outward appearance of their houses, though most are whitewashed or blue-washed and contain corrugated roofs. The houses are rather square and the flat area under the corrugated slanting roof material is usually used to store hay, vegetables, and firewood. Universally, housing materials in the countryside are wattle and daub, utilizing mud for bricks and finishing with an underlying framework of wood. In many regions of the country, especially central and western Uzbekistan, houses are redolent of the Native American southwest with an adobe style look. In the summertime, one often sees people sleeping atop their flat roofs. People covet fired bricks and quality wood, but they are in very short supply in Uzbekistan, especially in the post-Soviet era thanks to the loss of a centralized system of supply.

Since 1991 Uzbekistan has slowly, very slowly emerged from its second world status as part of the great socialist superpower, a 70-year experiment of sorts to a kind of grudging market-type economy. The leadership of Uzbekistan embraces capitalism officially, but has made it difficult for low-level entrepreneurialism to emerge, and has hampered privatization of agrarian enterprises while refusing to make its currency, the som, convertible and to free prices on staple goods, such as dairy, bread, and cottonseed oil.

Most urban Uzbeks buy their own foodstuffs from markets and shops, although nearly all Uzbeks keep garden plots even in the cities both for fresh fruits and vegetables as well as for winter canning purposes. Even in the cities, people often keep chickens and sheep or goats. In the countryside everybody grows food, although it's very rare that people would grow enough to be self-sufficient, even if they may produce enough of a particular type of fruit, legume, nut or vegetable. Therefore, all Uzbeks spend a significant amount of time shopping for their foodstuffs, even if this means just visiting the rural marketplaces. As much as poverty increases to become a factor of rural life with well more than 50% of the rural population living under the official poverty line, nearly all transactions involving food are monetary transactions. Barter is practiced but usually between or among local enterprises, so these tend to be large-scale transactions; an example of which may be diesel fuel for wheat or flour. Many rural residents, and increasingly urban residents, try to sell their own food products, craft items, or imported items; petty trading has become the main means of survival for the mass of the Uzbek population.

As well as being an agricultural population, Uzbeks are long associated with trading and merchandising, so along with the increase of petty trading, many Uzbeks are shopkeepers and craft manufacturers. The largest commercial enterprises center on cotton productivity, oil production, and gold mining; cotton farming involves the great mass of the peasantry, but it is very poorly remunerated.

Because of the Soviet command-administrative structure, most of Uzbekistan's industrial base was geared more toward the production of raw materials than finished goods. Independent Uzbekistan has worked hard to establish its growing industrialization, including the opening of food industry enterprises, automobile manufacturing, clothing and textile manufacture, glass factories, oil refineries, and porcelain factories. Industrial manufacture for internal consumption includes cotton, silk, wool, fruits and vegetables, glass, furniture, oil, cement, brick and porcelain enterprises. Uzbekistan's major industrializing export productivity centers on gold, cotton, marble, some oil, and some light foods industries, too.

Uzbek crafts include metal working, woodworking, textiles (cotton, silk, and wool), and instrument making. Uzbek craftspeople are also renowned for their applied crafts, including tile painting and gypsum carving.

Uzbeks trade actively on the individual and group level and in local as well as international contexts. In the farming communities these items include including meat, bread, tea, kabobs, watermelon, figs and pomegrantes. Many peasants often journey to large towns and cities to increase their trading networks, bringing everything from robes, knives, and skullcaps to honey and horses. The articles of trade are locally produced foodstuffs, handicrafts, and tools and inventory needed for agricultural work.

Over the past decade many young and enterprising Uzbeks are traveling abroad in groups, forming small networks of international traders, often traveling to Istanbul , Moscow, and Bangkok to trade in everything from old silk textiles, knives, dried fruits and tea sets to the more unfortunate but lucrative export of sex.

Uzbeks have practiced overland trade for centuries and newly independent Uzbekistan continues older traditions of trade with the Chinese, Indians, and Iranians along with a newer orientation to western countries, such as Turkey, Germany, and the United States. Cotton exports help engage trade, for example, with Pakistan for sugar and Germany for pharmaceutical goods and transportation vehicles.

Most Uzbeks do not have quite the sense of retirement that we find in the industrialized west, though the Soviet system allowed all men and women to collect a pension from their state jobs by age 60. Nevertheless, able-bodied elderly Uzbeks are involved in all manner of work, if they so choose, but are especially valued for their childcare services and work around the home, including tending to gardens and animals. Older women continue to cook, make handicrafts, and clean whereas elderly men still do plenty of work around the house involving repair and building. Children are expected to begin carrying out chores both in the home and in the fields from the age of five or six, and they often undertake light assignments with the help of older siblings; in general, such divisions are exactly those reproduced by sex later in life. Gender roles are rather strictly defined in Uzbekistan. Women's work is undervalued but more demanding on the whole, including housework, cooking, childcare, milking, baking, drawing water, laundering, and doing the bulk of cotton sowing and harvesting. Men are responsible for much of the agricultural work associated with irrigation, gardening work, bringing animals to pasture, the driving and operating of machinery, all tasks associated with carpentry and home repair, and rural shopping. There is some overlap here in terms of gender roles here, but by and large the divisions are rigid. In rural areas, one often encounters professionals hard at work at least around their own homes, but rarely in the fields, which only makes sense considering that their education and training has lifted them above their peasant status. Local officials seem to try to avoid manual labor as much as possible because of their leadership and administrative status, however those who have earned their positions of agricultural expertise do spend more time working directly with peasants.

Land tenure remains one of the hardest areas to discuss meaningfully. Why this should be the case has mostly to do with the Soviet past of expropriation of nearly all lands and pastures as state property. This process of state ownership overall all means of production, including real estate, means that many people have little to no knowledge of pre-1920s land tenure practices. Historically, land, animals, and inventory formed a part of state lands, the lands of religious endowments and those owned by individuals who passed their holdings to their children, so that land tenure followed inheritance patterns based on a mixture of Islamic law and adat (local custom). Pastoralists historically inherited usufruct rights to pastures and water sources, but only animals were passed down as owned property. Even during the socialist period, some livestock were inherited, but the use of pastures was radically altered according to collectivization principles. On the cotton collectives, many people certainly have a sense of land ownership, and many elderly people are well aware of who owned which lands. Overall, pre-Russian conquest land tenure relations in Uzbekistan apppear to have been characterized by massive stratification, and the vast majority of peasants were nearly landless. Since the 1990s land privatization has begun, but very slowly and unevenly; there seems to be little sense or hope that people with old titles to lands will have them returned to their families, especially in the rural areas. Renting land is now possible, along with the right to sell houses, but this does not mean that an individual actually owns the land, nor can his children inherit it according to pre-Soviet practices. In a country with scarce productive land and burgeoning population, the land tenure issue will likely remain difficult and unsatisfactory to most for a long time to come.

Uzbeks in various regions of their country are to greater and lesser degrees patrilineal, and this is reflected both in marriage patterns and social roles. Pastoralist Uzbeks are able to recount five to seven generations on both sides, but this is rarely the case among urban and farming Uzbeks.

Historically, Uzbeks have featured a clan and tribal division among the patrilineages. At one time in fact, it's been said that there were more than 100 Uzbek tribes, including the Naiman, Qipchoq, Noghai, Kungrat, and Ming. Fieldwork in central Uzbekistan provides evidence that many shepherds are capable of discussing their tribal affiliations, but few demonstrated any ability to discuss the precise meanings and structures of tribal organization. Political analysts commonly talk about the tribal affiliations with regard to state politics, but one must be careful about appropriating anthropological terminology here, for what the analysts really mean is that Uzbekistan's politics follow close regional alliances that are not necessarily patriclans in the anthropological sense. In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, for example, discussion of clannic politcs is much less metaphorical.

Uzbek kin terminology recognizes age differences within generations, so there are distinct terms for older and younger brothers as well as older and younger sisters. Strangers always apply either sibling-age ranks or generational terms to one another, as if all people are related by consanguineal ties, thus anybody on the street becomes, for example, aka (older brother) or singil (younger sister) or amaki (father's brother) or hola (father's sister). Terms such as father and mother are also used, as is son or daughter when strangers of vastly different ages engage in conversation. Separate kin terms apply to father's brothers and sisters as well as mother's brother's and sisters, and there are separate sex marked terms for affinal relatives. There is a cousin terminology, employing terms such as jiian and togha/hola bache, but people often refer to their first cousins on both sides as brothers and sisters, although they use the terms mentioned above when describing the actual relationship.

Interestingly, the term bolalar (children) is often used by a man to refer to his entire nuclear family, including his wife, she thus becomes subsumed under the general term "children."

As Muslims, Uzbeks see marriage as a central and necessary part in the life of an indivdual. Polygyny was allowed under Islamic sharia but later banned by Soviet power. Since independence (1991) there has been a slow return to unofficial polygyny, but polygynous unions are rare as is true through the Muslim world. In cities the average age at marriage tends to be early twenties and late teens in the countryside. Because of Uzbekistan's precipitous economic decline since the late 1980s many young people are deferring marriage until they can accumulate money. For men and women this is especially important as both parties must bring money, goods, and gifts to the union. In Uzbekistan, qalym (bridewealth) must be paid by the groom's side to the bride's family, and she will bring household goods and clothing to the union. Here the emphasis in marriage is on the uniting of families, and certainly people look to strategic aspects of their future affinals, including professions of the family, education level, and whether or not they are townsfolk or villagers.

Uzbeks typically arrange marriages and the newly married couple takes up either a patrilocal or virilocal residence. Historically, the extended patrilineal family with a set of parents, their married sons and grandchildren all living within a compound has been the pattern. Uzbeks also feature a stem family, meaning that the youngest son eventually retains ownership of the house after his older brothers have established new residences. In the postwar period there has been a greater increase toward nuclear or small extended family housing arrangements, and we expect to see this trend continue in both cities and villages.

A typical extended family unit may live in a house of four to six rooms with a separated enclosed kitchen, sleeping rooms and a central guest room. Families typically eat and sleep separated by sex, save children. Most domestic units surround an inner courtyard where the family normally eats and sometimes sleeps when the weather is warm. In villages, running water and gas are generally absent, although almost all have enjoyed electricity since the early 1960s.

Traditionally, Uzbek inheritance was androcentric with little to nothing going toward daughters in terms of land, homes or livestock, save in the form of movable property for her wedding. In fact, daughters are seen as a financial drain because families should begin to save for their wedding parties and wedding gifts from the time they're born. Youngest sons often received the lion's share of real estate and livestock, although inheritance rules show some flexibility and often depend on individual families. Although not strictly practiced or enforced, the typical pattern has been one of ultimogeniture, an institution long observed among Turko-Mongolian peoples.

Women are expected to be primary caretakers with a heavy reliance on grandmothers, female relatives and friends. Uzbek children grow up often with a large number of relatives and neighbors watching out for them.

Uzbeks pride themselves on their respect for authority and age, and, as a result, young people tend to be very deferential toward those older than themselves, and people in general act deferentially toward those with responsible or professional statuses, including politicians, local leaders, doctors and scholars. When meeting someone for the first time, shaking hands or hugging and exchanging pleasantries are very important. Until recently, social stratification only really existed between people associated with professional and political positions and responsibilities and those from the more common orders. Since the mid-1990s economic stratification has assumed a greater role, and economic class stratification is dividing people from one another in ways that have been experienced for about three generations. Moreover, certain categories of individuals, such as Khojas and Sayids have always been accorded special respect because of their long associations in Islamic history with education, leadership, and descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Such people continue to have leadership positions in society, and this can be seen through matching their surnames, i.e., Khojaev or Mirsaidov, to their professions.

Uzbekistan officially presents itself as a parliamentary democracy, and in fact it is officially a multi-party state, but in practice the People's Democratic Party and the Uzbek Supreme Council/Parliament act as one, and most of the advanced leadership is a holdover body from the Communist Party. The three-four political parties are little more than pocket parties who support the decisions of the president and his inner circle. The leadership of Tashkent is challenged not so much by ideological opponents as but by regional interests. Elections are held, but the choices are little better than what existed under Soviet rule. Intense debate as a part of wide decision making processes affecting the country are virtually absent, and rule proceeds in a very top-down manner.

Uzbeks are very conflicted over matters of pluralism, religion, and women's rights. The lack of democratic freedoms or of a vibrant civil society sector may have pushed certain groups toward violence as a means toward expressing grievances and accessing power. Some terrorism has occurred, targeting the Uzbek leadership and law enforcement officials since 1997, with apparent links to the repression of Islamic groups. In general, the terrorism has led to massive repression not merely of Islamists but also of ordinary Muslims, and human rights advocates. The Uzbek government strongly supports a secular society with the Soviet rights for women maintained. An assault on women's rights, if one can call it this, only comes from small pockets of radical religious organizations and does not characterize the vast majority of Uzbeks.

Crime has been on the rise for years as economic conditions worsen, and the police deal very harshly with suspected criminals. Stiff jail terms and capital punishment are meted out at will.

The closest institution the Uzbeks have that reflects the idea of civil society is the mahalla komitet, or neighborhood committee, whose roots long antedate the USSR. Nevertheless, these neighborhood watch and welfare organizations often have ties to the state, so they have at various times served more as a repressive institution of the state than one of civil society. Since Uzbekistan became independent, however, they have played a greater and more independent role in asserting the needs and interests of small-scale groups. They play a pivotal role in resolving domestic disputes, petty crimes, and social welfare complaints. In the countryside, conflicts increasingly devolve around ideas of ownership and territoriality with regard to cultivated fields and pastures, perhaps this is only to be expected when strict state control is abandoned in a disorderly fashion during a period of greatly increasing poverty. When conflicts result in assaults or murder, then the police are called in.

During the 1990s and till the present Uzbekistan's state military has been involved in skirmishes with Islamists (those who use the Islamic faith to advance political causes violently and non-violently), the Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities, and, most recently, in Afhganistan in conjunction with the United States assault on the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The overwhelming majority of Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi rite (one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence). There are also many Uzbeks who adhere to a Sufistic variant of Islam, including those associated Naqshbandiia and Yassawiia, Central Asian Sufi orders dating to the medieval period. Moreover, there are indigenous Jewish and Christian populations, but they are small and shrinking.

On the territory of Uzbekistan Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity also existed and antedated Islam. In general, Uzbeks are tolerant and respectful of other faiths. Furthermore, the official position of atheism, espoused by the Soviet Union has left a strong impact of skepticism and agnosticism among members of the older generations. Since the 1980s there have been growing tendencies of Wahabism, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and Taliban-style Islam among the young, but it is hard to estimate what percentage adhere to these very extremist religious orientations, probably in the tens of thousands.

In many parts of Uzbekistan, people mix normative Islam with pre-Islamic beliefs, including the power of amulets, water sources, and sacred places. In fact, one finds shrine worship spread throughout Central Asia. Many Uzbeks are having to re-learn Islam today, since practicing religion was strongly discouraged during the Soviet period.

Uzbekistan has several levels of an officially recognized Muslim leadership, recognized foremost in the mufti of Tashkent. In the other cities, there are officially recognized mosques, but throughout the country vast numbers of practicing Muslims don't strongly associate with the official mosques, but with their own independent mosques and their local imams (religious leaders akin to priests). Among the Sufi orders, there are pirs, who lead groups in religious practice and Sufi rites. In the villages the mullos (part-time religious leaders) are the religious authorities, but often they are not formally schooled practictioners, merely people with an avowed spiritual direction. They increasingly preside over life-cycle events, such as weddings and male circumcisions.

Uzbeks observe the major Muslim holidays with increasing frequency, including Ramadan, and the Eids (or Haiits), marking the end of the fast and days of remembrance for deceased relatives. They also celebrate important rites of spring that antedate Islam, especially Navruz (Irano-Turkic New Year). Pre-Islamic beliefs that have merged with Islam often take the form of ceremonies when women attempt to become pregnant or pray for ill relatives, etc. Then the family may make a pilgrimage together to a holy shrine, including a sacred spring to the supposed site of the tomb of a saint. Uzbeks try to make the haj, but may go to Samarkand or Bukhara instead of Mecca as a substitute.

Life-cycle events, including weddings, births, deaths, circumcisions, and birthdays are all marked by ceremonies including feasting and extended family and neighborly visiting.

Uzbeks have long been associated with literary creativity, especially poetry, including epics. In addition to the development of renowned 19thand 20th century literary forms, including the novel and short story, Uzbeks may be proudest of their "Shakespeare," the 15h century litterateur, Mir Alisher Navoii. Music, including the famous maqqam style (known in Persia and Northern India), singing, and dancing are highly developed expressive forms, varying significantly from east to west in the country. Carving in wood and gypsum, tile work, textiles (hon atlas tie-dyeing and suzani production), and the painting of their own dwellings are beloved forms of both high art and folk production.

Curiously, Uzbeks do not concern themselves much with Islamic prohibitions on representing nature and living things, although geometric designs are also prominent and beautifully represented in carving and other forms of ornamental architecture. Nevertheless, nature motifs are commonly found painted on the walls and ceilings of people's homes.

Although most Uzbeks now rely upon modern medicines to cure illness and disease, the collapse of the Soviet system and the attendant development of poverty brought about renewed interest in folk medicines, especially herbal remedies and homeopathic solutions (little different form the West in this regard now). People are strong adherents of balancing the humors, so diet and food combinations play a very important role. For intestinal ailments, for example, people may suggest salt in vodka, and for general pain, a bit of opium in tea (when and where available). Suffice to say, a strong and growing belief in folk remedies happily coexists with reliance on modern medicines, and the influence of the former has grown during the past decade.

With regard to death, Uzbeks basically have Muslim funerals, and they believe in the notion of heaven and hell, believing that there will be a Judgement Day for all the deceased. In practice, people host family and neighbors for several days after someone has died at home, although a body is often buried the day of death or the day after death, having been ritually washed and wrapped in a shroud. Gathering and feasting is vital to the ritual. Men usually take the funeral pallet to the cemetery, friends help dig the grave, and a mullo or imam says prayers before the burial. The deceased's head is laid in the ground to face Mecca. Days of Remembrance (Haiit in Uzbek) will follow on set days and for years after a person has died. These include visitations and feasts at the home where the person lived.

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