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Sogdia

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Sogdiana

Sogdiana, ca. 300 BC.
Languages Sogdian language
Religions Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Christianity
Capitals Samarkand, Bukhara, Khujand, Kesh
Area Between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya
Existed
Sogdians, depicted on a Chinese Northern Qi stela, circa 550 AD.

Sogdiana or Sogdia (Old Persian: Suguda-; Ancient Greek: Σογδιανή; Chinese: 粟特 - Sùtè; New Persian: سغد - Sōġd) 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 thought to be "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.[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

Gold coin of Diodotus c. 250 BC.

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

Barbaric copy of a coin of Euthydemus I, from the region of Sogdiana. The legend on the reverse is in Aramaic script.

In 36 BC

...[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.[2]

This interpretation has been disputed.[3]

Contacts with China

Sogdiana was "Sùtè" for the Chinese. Note that this is the mandarin pronunciation and not the Middle Chinese pronunciation which was used by the Chinese at the time.

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,[4] 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

Sogdian coin, 6th century AD. British Museum.
Chinese-influenced Sogdian coin, Kelpin, 8th century AD. British Museum.

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 AD[5]

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".[6][7][8] 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.[5]

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.[7]

In Turfan under Tang dynasty rule, it was a center of major commercial activity between chinese and sogdian merchants. Mazdaism was the religion practiced by the sogdians, and there were many inns in Turfan, some provided sex workers with an opportunity to service the Silk Road merchants since the official histories report that there were markets in women at both Kucha and Khotan.[9] The Sogdian-language contract buried at the Astana graveyard demonstrates that at least one Chinese man bought a Sogdian girl in 639 AD. One of the archeologists who excavated the Astana site, Wu Zhen, contends that, although many households along the Silk Road bought individual slaves, as we can see in the earlier documents from Niya, the Turfan documents point to a massive escalation in the volume of the slave trade.[10]The few documented pairings of Chinese male owners with Sogdian girls raise the question how often Sogdian and Chinese families intermarried. The historical record is largely silent on this topic, but Rong Xinjiang has found a total of twenty-one recorded marriages in the seventh century in which one partner was Sogdian, and in eighteen cases, the spouse is also Sogdian. The only exceptions are very high-ranking Sogdian officials who married Chinese wives.[11] He concludes that most Sogdian men took Sogdian wives, and we may surmise that the pairings between Chinese men and Sogdian women were usually between a male master and a female slave. Several commercial interactions were recorded In 673 a company commander (duizheng 􀶟􀍍) bought a camel for fourteen bolts of silk from Kang Wupoyan 􀩰􀤢􀥎􀖷,[12] a non-resident merchant from Samarkand (Kangzhou 􀩰􀏈).[13] In 731 a Sogdian merchant sold an eleven-year-old girl to a resident of Chang’an, Tang Rong 􀡥􀿲, for forty bolts of silk.[14] Five men served as guarantors, vouching that she was not a free person who been enslaved (The Tang Code banned the enslavement of commoners.)[15]

Language and culture

Sogdian in Sassanid style dresses donors to the Buddha (fresco, with detail), Bezeklik, eastern Tarim Basin, China, 8th century.

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.[16]

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.

See also

Literature

  • Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • 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.

References

  1. ^ Avesta.org
  2. ^ 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, apparently relying on Homer H. Dubs, "A Roman City in Ancient China", in Greece and Rome, Second Series, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Oct., 1957), pp. 139-148
  3. ^ Schuyler Cammann, Review of "A Roman City in Ancient China" by Homer H. Dubs, in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (May, 1962), pp. 380-382. See also reply by H.H. Dubs in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Nov., 1962), pp. 135-136
  4. ^ C.Michael Hogan, Silk Road, North China, The Megalithic Portal, ed. Andy Burnham
  5. ^ a b Wood, Francis (2002). The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 65–68. ISBN 978-0-520-24340-8.
  6. ^ Wink, André. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0391041738.
  7. ^ a b Sogdian Trade, Encyclopedia Iranica, (retrieved 15 June 2007)
  8. ^ Stark, Sören. Die Alttürkenzeit in Mittel- und Zentralasien. Archäologische und historische Studien (Nomaden und Sesshafte, Band 6). Reichert, 2008 ISBN 03895005320.
  9. ^ Xin Tangshu 221a:6230. In addition, Susan Whitfield offers a fictionalized account of a Kuchean courtesan’s experiences in the ninth century without providing any sources, although she has clearly drawn on the description of the prostitutes’ quarter in Chang’an in Beilizhi; Whitfield, 1999, pp. 138-154.
  10. ^ Wu Zhen􀀍􀀁2000 (p. 154 is a Chinese-language rendering based on Yoshida’s Japanese translation of the Sogdian contract of 639).
  11. ^ Rong Xinjiang, 2001, pp. 132-135. Of the twenty-one epitaphs, twelve are from Quan Tangwen buyi 􀎌􀡥􀋖􀻾􁍲 (Supplement to the complete writings of the Tang), five from Tangdai muzhi huibian 􀡥􀋾􀾥􀒛􀷒􁇜 (Collected epitaphs of the Tang), three were excavated at Guyuan, Ningxia, and one is from another site.
  12. ^ Yan 􀖷 is a common ending for Sogdian first names meaning ‘for the benefit of’ a certain deity. For other examples, see Cai Hongsheng, 1998, p. 40.
  13. ^ Ikeda contract 29.
  14. ^ Ikeda contract 31. Yoshida Yutaka and Arakawa Masaharu saw this document, which was clearly a copy of the original with space left for the places where the seals appeared.
  15. ^ http://www.yale.edu/history/faculty/materials/hansen-silk-road-trade.pdf
  16. ^ Luce Boulnois, Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants, 2005, Odyssey Books, pp. 239–241 ISBN 962-217-721-2
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