The Khanate of Khiva was a Central Asian polity that existed in the historical region of Khwarazm from 1511 to 1920, except for a period of Afsharid occupation by Nader Shah between 1740 and 1746. Centred in the irrigated plains of the lower Amu Darya, south of the Aral Sea, with the capital in the city of Khiva. It covered present-day western Uzbekistan, southwestern Kazakhstan and much of Turkmenistan before the Russian conquest at the second half of the 19th century.

Chagatai, also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic, is an extinct Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan, eastern or Chinese Turkestan, the Crimea, the Volga region, etc. Literary Chagatai is the predecessor of the modern Karluk branch of Turkic languages, which includes Uzbek and Uyghur. Turkmen, which is not within the Karluk branch but in the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, was nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.