Sart is a name for the settled inhabitants of Central Asia which has had shifting meanings over the centuries.
Sart is a name for the settled inhabitants of Central Asia which has had shifting meanings over the centuries.
There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit sārthavāha (सार्थवाह), meaning "merchant, trader, caravan leader", a term supposedly used by nomads to describe town-dwellers, according to Vasily Bartold, Gerard Clauson, and most recently Richard Foltz. [1] [2]
The earliest known use of the term is in the 1070 Karakhanid Turkic text Kutadgu Bilig "Blessed Knowledge", in which it refers to the settled population of Kashgar.[ citation needed ] The term referred to all settled Muslims of Central Asia regardless of language.
Rashid al-Din Hamadani in the Jami' al-tawarikh writes that Genghis Khan commanded for Arslan Khan, prince of the Karluks, to be given the title "Sartaqtai", which referred to Tajiks and Uzbeks. [3]
A 13th-century Mongolian source, the Secret History of the Mongols , states that the Mongols called artisans captured from Central Asia, most notably Khwarazm, Sartuuls.
In the post-Mongol period we find that Ali-Shir Nava'i refers to the Iranian people as Sart Ulusi ("Sart people"), and for him Sart tili ("Sart language") was a synonym for the Persian language. Similarly, when Babur refers to the people of Margilan as "Sarts", it is in distinction to the people of Andijan who are Turks, and it is clear that by this he means Persian-speakers. He also refers to the population of the towns and villages of the vilayat of Kabul as "Sarts".
Similarly, Babur wrote in the Baburnama in 1525, "In the country of Kābul there are many and various tribes. Its valleys and plains are inhabited by Tūrks, Aimāks, and Arabs. In the city and the greater part of the villages, the population consists of Tajiks (Sarts)." [4]
A further change of use seems to have occurred with the arrival in the oasis regions of Turkestan of the Taza Özbek Pure Özbeks [5] under Muhammad Shaybani. They distinguished between themselves as semi-nomadic speakers of a Fergana Kipchak language and the settled Turkic-speaking populations already living in the oasis towns, most of whom spoke the Chagatai language, one of the Karluk languages. It is at this date that the distinction between the terms Sart and Tajik seems to have made itself felt, as previously they were often used interchangeably. Even after the Uzbeks switched to a settled way of life, they continued to maintain this distinction between Turkic-speakers who were members of one of the Uzbek tribes, and Sarts, who were not.
In June 2010, "Sart" was used in ethnic conflict between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan to distinguish the less East-Asiatic Uzbeks from Kyrgyz.[ citation needed ]
Throughout the Qing dynasty, the sedentary inhabitants of the oases around the Tarim speaking Karluk Turkic languages were still largely known as Taranchis or Sarts under the Mongol rulers of Khojan or Chagatai lineages. Other parts of the Muslim world knew this area as Moghulistan or as the eastern part of Turkestan, and the Qing generally lumped all of its Muslim subjects under the category of "Hui people" without distinguishing between Mandarin-speaking Dungans and ethnic groups speaking other languages such as the Taranchi, Sarts, Salars, Monguors, Bonans, etc. This is akin to the practice of Imperial Russia's lumping all Muslims connected to Ottoman or Muslim Chinggisid spheres as "Tatars".
In 1911, the Nationalist Chinese under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen overthrew Qing Dynasty rule and established the Republic of China.
By 1920, Jadidist Pan-Turkism challenged the Qing and Republican Chinese warlords controlling Xinjiang. Turpan poet Abdulxaliq, having spent his early years in Semey and the Jadidist intellectual centres in Uzbekistan, returned to Xinjiang with a pen name that he later styled as a surname: Uyghur. He adopted the name Uyghur from the Soviets, who gave that name to his ethnic group in 1921 at Tashkent. He wrote the famous nationalist poem "Oyghan", which opened with the line "Ey pekir Uyghur, oyghan!" (Hey poor Uyghur, wake up!). He was later executed by the Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai in Turpan in March 1933 for inciting Uyghur nationalist sentiments through his works.
Vasily Bartold argues that by the 19th century those described as "Sarts" had become much more Turkicised than had previously been the case. In the literature of Imperial Russia in the 19th century the term was sometimes used to denote the Turkic-speaking peoples of Ferghana, Tashkent, Shymkent and the southern Syr-Darya Oblast, also found in smaller numbers in Samarkand and the Emirate of Bukhara. "Sart" was also commonly employed by the Russians as a general term for all the settled natives of Turkestan. There was a great deal of debate over what this meant, and where the name came from. Barthold writes that "To the kazakh every member of a settled community was a Sart whether his language was Turkic or Iranian".
Nikolai Ostroumov was firm in his conviction that it was not an ethnic definition but an occupational one, and he backed this up by quoting some (apparently common) local sayings: "A bad Kyrgyz becomes a Sart, whilst a bad Sart becomes a Kyrgyz". This confusion reached its peak in the 1897 Russian Empire Census: the Fergana Oblast was held to have a very large Sart population, the neighbouring Samarkand Province very few but a great many Uzbeks. The distinction between the two was often far from clear.
Historically speaking the Sarts belonged to older settled groups, whereas the Uzbeks were descended from tribes which arrived in the region with Muhammad Shaybani in the 16th century. It seems that in Khwarazm at least, Uzbeks spoke a now-extinct Kipchak variety closer to Kazakh, while Sarts spoke a form of Persianised Oghuz Turkic. In Fergana, the Sarts spoke a Karluk variety that was very close to modern Uyghur and is believed to be the earlier, historical form of Uzbek.
In 1924 the Soviet regime decreed that henceforth all settled Turkic-speaking peoples in Central Asia (and many others who spoke Persian such as in Samarkand and Bukhara)[ citation needed ] would be known as "Uzbeks" and that the term "Sart" was to be abolished as an insulting legacy of colonial rule.[ citation needed ], even though Lenin himself used the term in his communiqués.
For the first few years, however, the language chosen by the Soviet authorities for the new Uzbek SSR was not the modern Uzbek that is found today, but the nomadic, less Persianized and quite exotic dialect of the city of Turkistan in what is now Kazakhstan.
The Uighurs are the people whom old Russian travellers called Sart (a name which they used for sedentary, Turkic-speaking Central Asians in general), while Western travellers called them Turki, in recognition of their language. The Chinese used to call them Ch'an-t'ou ('Turbaned Heads') but this term has been dropped, being considered derogatory, and the Chinese, using their own pronunciation, now called them Weiwuerh. As a matter of fact there was for centuries no 'national' name for them; people identified themselves with the oasis they came from, like Kashgar or Turfan." [6]
This proved itself to be largely incomprehensible to most inhabitants of the primary cities, from Tashkent to Bukhara. It was therefore replaced by the modern, fundamentally Persianized urban Uzbek, which is the only Turkic language without any vowel harmony.
It is thus very difficult to attach a single ethnic or even linguistic meaning to the term "Sart". Historically the various Turkic and Persian peoples of Central Asia were identified mostly by their lifestyle, rather than by any notional ethnic or even linguistic difference. The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Turkmens were nomads, herding across steppes, mountains and sand deserts, respectively. The settled Turks and Tajiks, on the other hand, were Sarts, as they either lived in cities such as Khiva, Bukhara, or Samarkand, or they lived in rural agricultural communities.
The Muslim, Mongol-speaking Dongxiangs of Northwest China call themselves Sarta or Santa. It is not clear if there is any connection between this term and the Sarts of Central Asia.
Sart was one of the names applied to the Siberian Bukharans who settled in Siberia in the 17th century.
Uzbekistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia. It is itself surrounded by five landlocked countries: Kazakhstan to the north; Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Tajikistan to the southeast; Afghanistan to the south, Turkmenistan to the south-west. Its capital and largest city is Tashkent. Uzbekistan is part of the Turkic languages world, as well as a member of the Organization of Turkic States. While the Uzbek language is the majority spoken language in Uzbekistan, Russian is widely used as an inter-ethnic tongue and in government. Islam is the majority religion in Uzbekistan, most Uzbeks being non-denominational Muslims. In ancient times it largely overlapped with the region known as Sogdia, and also with Bactria.
The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group native to the wider Central Asian region, being among the largest Turkic ethnic group in the area. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, next to Kazakh and Karakalpak minorities, and are also minority groups in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and China. Uzbek diaspora communities also exist in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United States, Ukraine, and other countries.
Tajiks are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak varieties of Persian, a Western Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks. In China, the term is used to refer to its Pamiri ethnic groups, the Tajiks of Xinjiang, who speak the Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages. In Afghanistan, the Pamiris are counted as a separate ethnic group.
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages.
Samarkand or Samarqand is a city in southeastern Uzbekistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia. Samarqand is the capital of Samarqand Region and a district-level city, that includes the urban-type settlements Kimyogarlar, Farhod and Khishrav. With 551,700 inhabitants (2021), it is the third-largest city of Uzbekistan.
Uzbek, formerly known as Turki, is a Karluk Turkic language spoken by Uzbeks. It is the official and national language of Uzbekistan and formally succeeded Chagatai, an earlier Karluk language also known as "Turki", as the literary language of Uzbekistan in the 1920s.
Turkestan, also spelled Turkistan, is a historical region in Central Asia corresponding to the regions of Transoxiana and Xinjiang. Turkestan is primarily inhabited by Turkic peoples, including Uzbeks, Oghuz Turks, Kazakhs, Khazars, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs. The region hosts Russian and Tajik-Persian minorities. Turkestan is subdivided into Afghan Turkestan, Russian Turkestan, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Today, "Turkestan" mainly refers to Xinjiang, where Turkic peoples constitute about half of the population.
The Kara-Khanid Khanate, also known as the Karakhanids, Qarakhanids, Ilek Khanids or the Afrasiabids, was a Karluk Turkic khanate that ruled Central Asia from the 9th to the early 13th century. The dynastic names of Karakhanids and Ilek Khanids refer to royal titles with Kara Khagan being the most important Turkic title up until the end of the dynasty.
Chagatai, also known as Turki, Eastern Turkic, or Chagatai Turkic, is an extinct Turkic language that was once widely spoken across Central Asia. It remained the shared literary language in the region until the early 20th century. It was used across a wide geographic area including western or Russian Turkestan, eastern or Chinese Turkestan, the Crimea, the Volga region, etc. Literary Chagatai is the predecessor of the modern Karluk branch of Turkic languages, which includes Uzbek and Uyghur. Turkmen, which is not within the Karluk branch but in the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, was nonetheless heavily influenced by Chagatai for centuries.
The Fergana Valley in Central Asia lies mainly in eastern Uzbekistan, but also extends into southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan.
Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
Yusuf Khass Hajib was an 11th-century Central Asian Turkic poet, statesman, vizier, Maturidi theologian and philosopher from the city of Balasaghun, the capital of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. He wrote the Kutadgu Bilig and most of what is known about him, comes from his own writings in this work. He is mostly referred to as Yūsuf Balasaguni, derived from his city of origin.
The Karluks were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribal confederacy residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains in Central Asia. Karluks gave their name to the distinct Karluk group of the Turkic languages, which also includes the Uzbek, Uyghur and Ili Turki languages.
The Khanate of Kokand was a Central Asian polity in the Fergana Valley centred on the city of Kokand between 1709 and 1876. Its territory is today divided between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan.
Soviet Central Asia was the part of Central Asia administered by the Soviet Union between 1918 and 1991, when the Central Asian republics declared independence. It is nearly synonymous with Russian Turkestan in the Russian Empire. Soviet Central Asia went through many territorial divisions before the current borders were created in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Turkic migrations were the spread of Turkic tribes and Turkic languages across Eurasia between the 6th and 11th centuries. In the 6th century, the Göktürks overthrew the Rouran Khaganate in what is now Mongolia and expanded in all directions, spreading Turkic culture throughout the Eurasian steppes. Although Göktürk empires came to an end in the 8th century, they were succeeded by numerous Turkic empires such as the Uyghur Khaganate, Kara-Khanid Khanate, Khazars, and the Cumans. Some Turks eventually settled down into sedentary societies such as the Qocho and Ganzhou Uyghurs. The Seljuq dynasty settled in Anatolia starting in the 11th century, resulting in permanent Turkic settlement and presence there. Modern nations with large Turkic populations include Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and Turkic populations also exist within other nations, such as Chuvashia, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and the Sakha Republic of Siberia in Russia, Northern Cyprus, the Crimean Tatars, the Kazakhs in Mongolia, the Uyghurs in China, and the Azeris in Iran.
The history of the Uyghur people extends over more than two millennia and can be divided into four distinct phases: Pre-Imperial, Imperial, Idiqut, and Mongol, with perhaps a fifth modern phase running from the death of the Silk Road in AD 1600 until the present.
The Katagans are a medieval Mongol tribe related to Genghis Khan. In the period of Mongol conquest and assimilation with enslaved by Turkic tribes played its role in the ethnogenesis of modern Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, Buryats, Uyghurs and others.
Turkic history is the systematic documentation and study of events involving the Turkic peoples.
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