The Samarkand Oblast^{[lower-alpha 1]} was an oblast (province) of the Russian Empire between 1887 and 1924. It roughly corresponded to most of present-day central Uzbekistan and northwestern Tajikistan. It was created out of the northeastern part of the Emirate of Bukhara. It consisted of the uyezds of Samarkand (incl. cities Samarkand and Pendzhikent), Dzhizak (incl. city Dzhizak), Katta-Kurgan (incl. city Katta-Kurgan) and Khodzhent (incl. cities Khodzhent and Uratyube).^[1]

As of 1897, 860,021 people populated the oblast. Uzbeks constituted the majority of the population. Significant minorities consisted of Tajiks and Kazakhs. The Turkic speaking population amounted to 609,204 (70,8%) people.

On April 30, 1918, the region became a part of Turkestan ASSR. On October 27, 1924 as a result of the national-territorial reorganisation of Central Asia, the Samarkand region became a part of the Uzbek SSR of the Soviet Union.