1.1 History: Origin of the Arab minority in Uzbekistan

The Central Asian Arabs settled in the area of the Khanat Bukhara and the northern plains of Afghanistan-Turkistan. There are different theories about their origin. Barfield (1981:3–4) considers two possibilities. Either their origin goes back to the Islamization of Uzbekistan at the beginning of the 8th century (see also Karmysheva 1964:272; Akiner 1983:366), or Tamerlane settled the Arabs in Central Asia in 1401 after his conquests in…