The legendary hospitality of Central Asians was the consequence of several influences. Foremost was the role played by the Great Silk Road, which depended on hospitality to support caravans of goods. Village and neighborhood communal hospitality houses, as well as Beduin and Islamic norms, also bolstered Central Asian hospitality, as did the influence of Russian culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ethnographers have acknowledged the importance of hospitality in Central Asian culture exclusively from the male perspective. Among sedentary Cent…