Sogdiana

Sogdiana or Sogdia ( _uz. Sog'diona, _tg. Суғд - Old Persian: "Suguda-"; PerB|سغد; Ancient Greek: polytonic|Σογδιανῆ; Chinese: , Sùtè) 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 of the "good lands and countries" that Ahura Mazda was believed to have 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 notice of this region has been taken since ancient times. [ [http://www.avesta.org/vendidad/vd1sbe.htm Avesta.org] ] 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

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 BC 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 of Sogdia temporarily. Finally the area was occupied by nomads when the Scythians and Yuezhis overran it around 150 BC.

Battle of Sogdiana

In 36 BC quotation|... [a] Han expedition into central Asia, west of the Jaxartes River, apparently encountered and defeated a contingent of Roman legionaries. The Romans may have been the enslaved remnants of Crassus' army, defeated by the Parthians and forced to fight on their eastern frontier. Sogdiana (modern Bukhara), east of the Oxus River, on the Polytimetus River, was apparently the most easterly penetration ever made by Roman forces in Asia. The margin of Chinese victory appears to have been their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor. [R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, "The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History from 3500 B.C. to the Present", Fourth Edition (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 133.]

Contacts with China

The Sogdians' 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 BC. He wrote a report of his visit in Central Asia, and named an area of Sogdiana, "Kangju". They played a major role in facilitating trade between China and Central Asia.

Following Zhang Qian's embassy and report, commercial Chinese relations with Central Asia and Sogdiana flourished, [ [http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=18006 C.Michael Hogan, "Silk Road, North China", The Megalithic Portal, ed. Andy Burnham] ] 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

Subsequent to their domination by Alexander, the Sogdians from the city of Marakanda (Samarkand) became dominant as traveling merchants, occupying a key position along the ancient Silk Road. Their language became the common language of the Silk Route and they played a role in the culture movement of philosophies and religion, such Manicheism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism into the east as well as the movement of items of trade. They were described by the Chinese as born merchants, learning their commercial skills at an early age. It appears from sources, such a documents found by Aurel Stein and others, that by the 4th century AD they may have monopolized trade between India and China. They dominated the trade along the Silk Route from the 2nd century BC until the 10th century ADcite book
first=Francis
last=Wood
year= 2002
title= The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia
edition=
publisher= University of California Press
location=Berkeley, CA
pages= pp. 65–68
id= ISBN 978-0-520-24340-8]

The Suyab and Talas ranked among their main centres in the north. They were the dominant 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". [Wink, André. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0391041738.] [http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp7/ot_sogd_trade_20041201.html 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.

The trade they brought to China included grapes, alfalfa, and silverware from Persia, as well as glass containers, Mediterranean coral, brass Buddhist images, woolen cloth from Rome and amber from the Baltic. They brought back Chinese paper, copper and silk.

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 on the northwestern road leading to the Khazars and the Urals and the northeastern one toward the nearby Turkic tribes.

Language and culture

The 6th century is thought to be the peak of the Sogdian culture with its superb artistic tradition, judging by the remains of their civilization. Further, they were entrenched in their role as the central Asian traveling and trading merchants, transferring goods, culture and religion. [Luce Boulnois, "Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants", 2005, Odyssey Books, pp. 239–241 ISBN 962-217-721-2]

The Sogdians were noted for their tolerance of different religious beliefs. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion among Sogdians and remained so until shortly after the Islamic conquest, when the Arabs made repeated efforts to forcefully suppress it. Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity also had significant followings. 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 Eastern 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.

Even in the Middle Ages, the valley of the Zarafshan around Samarkand retained the name of the Sogdian, 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 or (after the Turkic conquest of Central Asia) Turkic (modern 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 Sogdian (from his father's side) and Turkic origin during the Tang Dynasty in China. He rose to prominence by fighting frontier wars between 741 and 755. Later, he precipitated the catastrophic An Shi Rebellion, which lasted from 755 to 763.

ee also

*Tocharians
*Iranian languages
*Ancient Iranian peoples

Literature

*1911
* 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, [http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp7/ot_sogd_trade_20041201.html "Sogdian Trade"] in Encyclopedia Iranica.

References

External links

* [http://www.iranica.com/newsite/index.isc?Article=http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/unicode/ot_grp7/ot_sogd_trade_20041201.html Encyclopedia Iranica: Sogdian trade]
* http://www.geocities.com/interlinguae/sogdian.html
* http://www.livius.org/x/xerxes/xerxes_ii.html "(Xerxes II of Persia and Sogdianus)"