The seven countries whose names end in -stan

This page is an interactive map. With JavaScript turned off you get the reference text instead: the seven sovereign states whose names end in the Persian suffix -stan, meaning place of or land of — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Five were Soviet republics until 1991. Afghanistan was never colonised outright but spent a century between the Russian and British empires. Pakistan, whose name was coined in 1933, is the only one of the seven with a coastline. Uzbekistan is one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth.

Kazakhstan (Қазақстан)

Capital: Astana. about 2,725,000 km². Population about 20 million. Independence 16 December 1991.

The ninth-largest country on Earth and by far the largest with no coastline, running from the Caspian to the Altai across a thousand miles of open steppe. The Baikonur Cosmodrome sits in the desert south-west, leased to Russia until 2050; every crewed Soyuz launch still departs from it. Oil from the Caspian shelf supplies most of the country's export earnings.

Uzbekistan (Ўзбекистон)

Capital: Tashkent. about 449,000 km². Population about 37 million. Independence 1 September 1991.

The most populous of the five Central Asian republics, and one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva were the great caravan cities of the Silk Road. Soviet planners diverted the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to irrigate cotton, and the Aral Sea they fed has shrunk to a fraction of its former size — the salt flats left behind are now labelled on maps as the Aralkum desert.

Kyrgyzstan (Кыргызстан)

Capital: Bishkek. about 200,000 km². Population about 7 million. Independence 31 August 1991.

Overwhelmingly mountainous, built around the Tien Shan ranges, with almost no land below 500 metres. Lake Issyk-Kul, the second-largest mountain lake in the world, sits at 1,600 metres and never freezes because it is slightly saline. Kyrgyzstan has removed three presidents by street protest since independence, more turnover than any of its neighbours.

Tajikistan (Тоҷикистон)

Capital: Dushanbe. about 143,000 km². Population about 10 million. Independence 9 September 1991.

The smallest of the five by area and the only one whose language is Persian rather than Turkic. More than nine-tenths of it is mountain: the eastern half is the Pamir, the Roof of the World, where Ismoil Somoni Peak reaches 7,495 metres, the highest point in the former Soviet Union. A civil war from 1992 to 1997 killed tens of thousands, and remittances sent home by migrant workers in Russia still make up one of the largest shares of national income anywhere.

Turkmenistan (Түркменистан)

Capital: Ashgabat. about 491,000 km². Population about 7 million (disputed). Independence 27 October 1991.

Roughly four-fifths Karakum desert, and holder of some of the largest proven natural gas reserves on Earth, concentrated in the Galkynysh field. It declared permanent neutrality in 1995 and the United Nations formally recognised the status, the only country to hold it on those terms. Ashgabat was rebuilt in white marble after a 1948 earthquake levelled it, and the country remains among the most closed in the world.

Afghanistan (افغانستان)

Capital: Kabul. about 652,000 km². Population about 43 million. Independence 19 August 1919.

The Hindu Kush runs diagonally through the country and has shaped every campaign fought across it. The Wakhan Corridor, the narrow strip reaching east to touch China, was drawn in 1893 purely to keep the Russian and British empires from sharing a border. The date above marks the end of British control over Afghan foreign policy rather than a founding. The Taliban returned to power in August 2021; Russia became the first state to extend formal recognition to the Islamic Emirate, in July 2025.

Pakistan (پاکستان)

Capital: Islamabad. about 796,000 km² (881,000 including Pakistani-administered Kashmir). Population about 250 million. Independence 14 August 1947.

The fifth most populous country in the world, and the only one of the seven that reaches the sea. Nearly the entire population lives within reach of the Indus, which carries meltwater from the Karakoram and Himalaya down to the delta below Karachi. K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, stands on the Chinese border in Gilgit-Baltistan. Islamabad was purpose-built in the 1960s to replace Karachi as the capital.

Capital cities

Astana (Kazakhstan), Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Dushanbe (Tajikistan), Ashgabat (Turkmenistan), Kabul (Afghanistan), Islamabad (Pakistan).

The Seven Stans

Every sovereign state whose name ends in -stan, from the Caspian shore to the Arabian Sea. The suffix is Persian, from an Indo-Iranian root meaning place of or land of.

Hover over, click, or tap any country to see its capital and read about it.

Why seven

Five of the seven were Soviet republics until 1991, and all five declared independence within four months of each other as the union collapsed. They share a border region, a Turkic or Persian linguistic inheritance, and an economy that the Soviet planning system built around cotton, gas and metals rather than around each other.

Afghanistan is the old outlier — never colonised outright, but squeezed for a century between the Russian and British empires in the contest known as the Great Game. The Wakhan Corridor, that thin finger of Afghan land reaching east to China, exists for no reason other than to have kept the two empires from touching.

Pakistan is the newest and the strangest. Its name was coined in 1933 by a student in Cambridge as an acronym for the Muslim-majority regions of British India — Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan — which also happened to read, in Persian and Urdu, as land of the pure. It is the only one of the seven with a coastline, and the only one that is not landlocked.

Uzbekistan goes the other way entirely. It is one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth: every one of its neighbours is landlocked too, so you must cross at least two borders to reach an ocean. The other is Liechtenstein.