historic region along the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus River) of Turkistan, in the territories of present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Khwārezm formed part of the empire of Achaemenian Persia (6th–4th century BC); the Arabs conquered it and introduced Islām to the area in the 7th century AD.

From the late 11th to the early 13th century, Khwārezm was ruled by an independent dynasty, the Khwārezm-Shāhs (Khwārezm-Shāh Dynasty) (q.v.), and thereafter it was ruled successively by the Mongols, Timurids, and Shaybānids until the early 16th century, when it became the centre of the khanate of Khiva under the Uzbek Ilbar dynasty. Khiva repelled invasions from Russia in 1717 and 1839, but in 1873 it was conquered and made a Russian protectorate. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the khanate was abolished and replaced by the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (1920–24), which was subsequently dissolved and incorporated into the U.S.S.R.