Sogdians, depicted on a Chinese
Northern Qi stela, circa 550 CE.
'Sogdiana' or 'Sogdia' ( -
Old Persian: ''Sughuda''; ; - ''Sute'') was the ancient civilization of an
Iranian people and a province of the
Achaemenid Persian Empire, the eighteenth in the list in the
Behistun Inscription of
Darius the Great (i. 16). Sogdiana is "listed" as the second 'good lands and countries' that
Ahura Mazda created. This region is listed after the first, Airyana Vaeja, Land of the Aryans, in the
Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, hence one can see how ancient this region is considered.
[1] Sogdiana, at different periods of time, included territories around
Samarkand,
Bukhara,
Khujand and
Kesh in modern
Uzbekistan.
The Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centred around their main city of
Samarkand. It lay north of
Bactria, east of
Khwarezm, and southeast of
Kangju between the Oxus (
Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (
Syr Darya), embracing the fertile valley of the
Zarafshan (ancient ''Polytimetus''). Sogdian territory corresponds to the modern
provinces of Samarkand and
Bokhara in modern
Uzbekistan as well as the
Sughd province of modern
Tajikistan.
History
Barbaric copy of a coin of
Euthydemus I, from the region of Sogdiana. The legend on the reverse is in
aramaic script.
Hellenistic period
The
Sogdian Rock or Rock of Ariamazes, a fortress in Sogdiana, was captured in 327 BC by the forces of
Alexander the Great, who united Sogdiana with
Bactria into one
satrapy. Subsequently it formed part of the
Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom, founded in 248 BCE by
Diodotus, for about a century.
Euthydemus I seems to have held the Sogdian territory, and his coins were later copied locally.
Eucratides apparently recovered sovereignty on Sogdia temporarily. Finally the area was occupied by nomads when the
Scythians and
Yuezhis overran it around 150 BCE.
Contacts with China
Sogdiana was "Sute" for the Chinese.
The Sogdians occupied a key position along the ancient
Silk Road, and played a major role in facilitating trade between
China and
Central Asia. Their contacts with China were triggered by the embassy of the Chinese explorer
Zhang Qian during the reign of
Wudi in the former
Han Dynasty, 141-87 BCE. He wrote a report of his visit in Central Asia, and named the area of Sogdiana, "
Kangju".
Following Zhang Qian's embassy and report, commercial Chinese relations with Central Asia and Sogdiana flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the
1st century BC: "The largest of these embassies to foreign states numbered several hundred persons, while even the smaller parties included over 100 members... In the course of one year anywhere from five to six to over ten parties would be sent out." (
Shiji, trans. Burton Watson). However the Sogdian traders were then still less important in the Silk Road trade than their Southern neighbours, Indian and Bactrian.
Central Asian role
The Sogdians dominated the East-West trade after the
4th century CE up to the
8th century CE, with
Suyab and
Talas ranking among their main centres in the north. They were the main caravan merchants of Central Asia. Their commercial interests were protected by the resurgent military power of the
Göktürks, whose empire has been described as "the joint enterprise of the
Ashina clan and the Soghdians"
[1] [ Sogdian Trade, ''Encyclopedia Iranica'', (retrieved 15 June 2007) ]. Their trades with some interruptions continued in 9th century. It is occurred in 10th century within the framework of the Uighur Empire, which until 840 extended all over northern Central Asia and obtained from China enormous deliveries of silk in exchange for horses. At this time caravans of Sogdians traveling to Upper Mongolia are mentioned in Chinese sources.
They played an equally important religious and cultural role. Part of the data about eastern Asia provided by Muslim geographers of the 10th century actually goes back to Sogdian data of the period 750-840 and thus shows the survival of links between east and west. However, after the end of the Uighur Empire, Sogdian trade went through a crisis. What mainly issued from Muslim Central Asia was the trade of the Samanids, which resumed the northwestern road leading to the Khazars and the Urals and the northeastern one toward the nearby Turkic tribes
.
Language and culture
Sogdian donors to the Buddha (fresco, with detail),
Bezeklik, eastern
Tarim Basin, China, 8th century.
The Sogdians were noted for their tolerance of different religious beliefs.
Buddhism,
Manichaeism,
Nestorian Christianity, and
Zoroastrianism all had significant followings. Sogdians were actors in the
Silk Road transmission of Buddhism, until the period of
Muslim invasion in the 8th century. Much of our knowledge of the Sogdians and their language comes from the numerous religious texts that they have left behind.
The Sogdians spoke an East
Iranian language called
Sogdian, closely related to
Bactrian, another major language of the region in ancient times. Sogdian was written in a variety of
scripts, all of them derived from the
Aramaic alphabet.
The valley of the Zarafshan about Samarkand retained even in the
Middle Ages the name of the Soghd O
Samarkand.
Arabic
geographers reckon it as one of the four fairest districts in the world. The
Yaghnobis living in the
Sughd province of
Tajikistan still speak
a dialect of the Soghdian language.
The great majority of the Sogdian people gradually mixed with other local groups such as the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Turks and Persians, and came to speak
Persian (modern
Tajiks) or (after the Turkic conquest of Central Asia) Turkic
Uzbek. They are among the ancestors of the modern
Tajik and
Uzbek people. Numerous Sogdian words can be found in modern Persian and Uzbek as a result of this admixture.
Famous Sogdians
★
An Lushan was a military leader of
Turkic and Sogdian origin during the
Tang Dynasty in
China. He rose to prominence by fighting during the
Tang Frontier Wars between 741 and 755. Later, he precipitated the catastrophic
An Shi Rebellion, which lasted from 755 to 763.
See also
★
Shakya
★
Tocharians
★
Iranian languages
★
Ancient Iranian peoples
Literature
★
★ Calum MacLeod, Bradley Mayhew “Uzbekistan. Golden Road to Samarkand”
★ Archaeological Researches in Uzbekistan. 2001. Tashkent The edition is based on results of German-French-Uzbek co-expeditions in 2001 in Uzbekistan
★
★ Etienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders. A History, Leiden : Brill, 2005. ISBN 90-04-14252-5
★ Etienne de la Vaissière, Histoire des marchands sogdiens, Paris : de Boccard, 2004.
★ Babadjan Ghafurov, "Tajiks", published in USSR, Russia, Tajikistan
★ Vaissiere. E.D.L, "Sogdian Trade" in Encyclopedia Iranica.
[2]
References
1. Wink, André. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0391041738.
External links
★ http://www.iranianlanguages.com
★ http://www.geocities.com/interlinguae/sogdian.html
★ http://www.livius.org/x/xerxes/xerxes_ii.html ''(
Xerxes II of Persia and Sogdianus)''
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
