Uzbek

Uzbek is spoken in Uzbekistan, the most populous of the newly independent states of central Asia. There are about 16 million speakers here (about 70 percent of the population), with another 1½ million in neighboring Tajikistan, and smaller numbers in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Uzbek is one of the Turkic languages, which form a branch of the Altaic family. At the time of the Russian Revolution it was written in the Arabic script, but this was replaced by the Roman in 1927, and the Cyrillic in 1940.

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Aibek is the pseudonym of Musa Tashmukhamedov, whose historical novel Navoi was published in 1945. Its title is the name of a famous Uzbek poet and statesman of the 15th century.