Ancient times
Neanderthals left traces on Boz-Barmak mountain near Issyk-Kul. Five to ten thousand years ago Mesolithic hunters painted hunting and dancing scenes in red ochre on the walls of the Ak-Chunkur cave. From the 2nd century BC the Saka (Scythians) formed the first states here; they were followed by the Usun, the Hephthalites (‘White Huns’) and early Turkic peoples.
Turkic khaganates and the Silk Road
In the 7th century the land became part of the Western Turkic Khaganate and in the 8th of the Karluk state. Three branches of the Great Silk Road crossed the country, and cities such as Suyab, Navekat and Balasagun grew rich on the caravan trade — places where Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam met. In the 11th–12th centuries Uzgen and Balasagun were centres of the Karakhanid state; the Burana Tower and the Uzgen minaret date from this time.
Meanwhile, from the 9th to the 12th century, the Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate in southern Siberia was one of the strongest powers of the region. After the Mongol conquest, the lands of present-day Kyrgyzstan became part of the Chagatai ulus and later of Moghulistan; according to Chinese sources, the Kyrgyz were settled in the Tien Shan by the 15th century.
The Kokand khanate and Russia
From the 18th century the Kokand khanate of the Fergana valley brought most Kyrgyz tribes under its rule (around 1710–1876) and built forts such as Pishpek — today’s Bishkek — and Tokmok. In 1876 Russian troops defeated Kokand and occupied northern Kyrgyzstan; settlers from Russia and Ukraine, and Dungans fleeing China, followed.
In 1916 an uprising against wartime mobilisation spread across Russian Turkestan and was brutally suppressed; many Kyrgyz fled to China, where the Kyzylsu Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture exists today.
The Soviet era
The Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region was created in 1924, became the Kyrgyz ASSR in 1926 and the Kyrgyz SSR in 1936, with its capital renamed Frunze. The Soviet period brought industry, roads and schools, equal rights for women and the ban of bride price — but also forced collectivisation and the repressions of the 1930s, which destroyed much of the intelligentsia.
Independence
Kyrgyzstan declared independence on 31 August 1991, and the capital took back its old name, Bishkek. The first constitution was adopted in 1993, the same year the national currency, the som, was introduced. Since then the country has gone through several political upheavals: after the revolutions of 2005 and 2010 a new constitution made it Central Asia’s first parliamentary republic, and following the political crisis of 2020 a new constitution, approved by referendum in April 2021, returned Kyrgyzstan to a presidential system.
