Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya), including the fertile valley of the Zeravshan (called the Polytimetus by the ancient Greeks).[4] Sogdian territory corresponds to the modern regions of Samarkand and Bukhara in modern Uzbekistan, as well as the Sughd region of modern Tajikistan. In the High Middle Ages, Sogdian cities included sites stretching towards Issyk Kul, such as that at the archeological site of Suyab.
Name
Oswald Szemerényi devotes a thorough discussion to the etymologies of ancient ethnic words for the Scythians in his work Four Old Iranian Ethnic Names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka. In it, the names provided by the Greek historian Herodotus and the names of his title, except Saka, as well as many other words for "Scythian", such as AssyrianAškuz and GreekSkuthēs, descend from *skeud-, an ancient Indo-European root meaning "propel, shoot" (cf. English shoot).[5] *skud- is the zero-grade; that is, a variant in which the -e- is not present. The restored Scythian name is *Skuδa (archer), which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, in which the δ has been regularly replaced by an l. According to Szemerényi, Sogdiana (Old Persian: Suguda-; Uzbek: Sug'd, Sug'diyona; Persian: سغد, romanized:Soġd; Tajik: Суғд, سغد, romanized:Suġd; Chinese:粟特; Greek: Σογδιανή, romanized:Sogdianē) was named from the Skuδa form. Starting from the names of the province given in Old Persian inscriptions, Sugda and Suguda, and the knowledge derived from Middle Sogdian that Old Persian -gd- applied to Sogdian was pronounced as voiced fricatives, -γδ-, Szemerényi arrives at *Suγδa as an Old Sogdian endonym.[6] Applying sound changes apparent in other Sogdian words and inherent in Indo-European, he traces the development of *Suγδa from Skuδa, "archer", as follows: Skuδa > *Sukuda by anaptyxis > *Sukuδa > *Sukδa (syncope) > *Suγδa (assimilation).[7]
History
Left: Bead necklace from the tomb of the so-called "Sarazm princess" in Sarazm, Sogdia, middle 4th millennium BC. Right: 12-petalled flower from the cult structure in Sarazm, Sogdia, early 3rd millennium BC
Sogdiana possessed a Bronze Age urban culture: original Bronze Age towns appear in the archaeological record beginning with the settlement at Sarazm, Tajikistan, spanning as far back as the 4th millennium BC, and then at Kök Tepe, near modern-day Bulungur, Uzbekistan, from at least the 15th century BC.[8]
In the Avesta, namely in the Mihr Yasht and the Vendidad, the toponym of Gava (gava-, gāum) is mentioned as the land of the Sogdians. Gava is, therefore, interpreted as referring to Sogdia during the time of the Avesta.[9] Although there is no universal consensus on the chronology of the Avesta, most scholars today argue for an early chronology, which would place the composition of Young Avestan texts like the Mihr Yasht and the Vendiad in the first half of the first millennium BCE.[10]
Overview over the geographical horizon of the Young Avestan period. Sources for the different localizations are given in the file description.
The first mention of Gava is found in the Mihr Yasht, ie., the hymn dedicated to the ZoroastriandeityMithra. In verse 10.14 it is described how Mithra reaches Mount Hara and looks at the entirety of the Airyoshayan (airiio.shaiianem, 'lands of the Arya'),
where navigable rivers rush with wide a swell towards Parutian Ishkata, HaraivianMargu, Gava Sogdia (gaom-ca suγδəm), and Chorasmia.
—Mihr Yasht 10.14 (translated by Ilya Gershovitch).[11]
The second mention is found in the first chapter of the Vendidad, which consists of a list of the sixteen good regions created by Ahura Mazda for the Iranians. Gava is the second region mentioned on the list, directly behind Airyanem Vaejah, the homeland of Zarathustra and the Iranians, according to Zoroastrian tradition:
The second of the good lands and countries which I, Ahura Mazda, created, was the Gava of the Sogdians (gāum yim suγδō.shaiianəm). Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, and he counter-created the locust, which brings death unto cattle and plants.
While it is widely accepted that Gava referred to the region inhabited by the Sogdians during the Avestan period, its meaning is not clear.[13] For example, Vogelsang connects it with Gabae, a Sogdian stronghold in western Sogdia and speculates that during the time of the Avesta, the center of Sogdia may have been closer to Bukhara instead of Samarkand.[14]
During this period of Persian rule, the western half of Asia Minor was part of the Greek civilization. As the Achaemenids conquered it, they met persistent resistance and revolt. One of their solutions was to ethnically cleanse rebelling regions, relocating those who survived to the far side of the empire. Thus Sogdiana came to have a significant Greek population.
Given the absence of any named satraps (i.e. Achaemenid provincial governors) for Sogdiana in historical records, modern scholarship has concluded that Sogdiana was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria.[22] The satraps were often relatives of the ruling Persian kings, especially sons who were not designated as the heir apparent.[16] Sogdiana likely remained under Persian control until roughly 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II.[23] Rebellious states of the Persian Empire took advantage of the weak Artaxerxes II, and some, such as Egypt, were able to regain their independence. Persia's massive loss of Central Asian territory is widely attributed to the ruler's lack of control. However, unlike Egypt, which was quickly recaptured by the Persian Empire, Sogdiana remained independent until it was conquered by Alexander the Great. When the latter invaded the Persian Empire, Pharasmanes, an already independent king of Khwarezm, allied with the Macedonians and sent troops to Alexander in 329 BC for his war against the Scythians of the Black Sea region (even though this anticipated campaign never materialized).[23]
During the Achaemenid period (550–330 BC), the Sogdians lived as a nomadic people much like the neighboring Yuezhi, who spoke Bactrian, an Indo-Iranian language closely related to Sogdian,[24] and were already engaging in overland trade. Some of them had also gradually settled the land to engage in agriculture.[25] Similar to how the Yuezhi offered tributary gifts of jade to the emperors of China, the Sogdians are recorded in Persian records as submitting precious gifts of lapis lazuli and carnelian to Darius I, the Persian king of kings.[25] Although the Sogdians were at times independent and living outside the boundaries of large empires, they never formed a great empire of their own like the Yuezhi, who established the Kushan Empire (30–375 AD) of Central and South Asia.[25]
A now-independent and warlike Sogdiana formed a border region insulating the Achaemenid Persians from the nomadic Scythians to the north and east.[26] It was led at first by Bessus, the Achaemenid satrap of Bactria. After assassinating Darius III in his flight from the Macedonian Greek army,[27][28] he became claimant to the Achaemenid throne. The Sogdian Rock or Rock of Ariamazes, a fortress in Sogdiana, was captured in 327 BC by the forces of Alexander the Great, the basileus of Macedonian Greece, and conqueror of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.[29]Oxyartes, a Sogdian nobleman of Bactria, had hoped to keep his daughter Roxana safe at the fortress of the Sogdian Rock, yet after its fall Roxana was soon wed to Alexander as one of his several wives.[30] Roxana, a Sogdian whose name Roshanak means "little star",[31][32][33] was the mother of Alexander IV of Macedon, who inherited his late father's throne in 323 BC (although the empire was soon divided in the Wars of the Diadochi).[34]
After an extended campaign putting down Sogdian resistance and founding military outposts manned by his Macedonian veterans, Alexander united Sogdiana with Bactria into one satrapy. The Sogdian nobleman and warlord Spitamenes (370–328 BC), allied with Scythian tribes, led an uprising against Alexander's forces. This revolt was put down by Alexander and his generals Amyntas, Craterus, and Coenus, with the aid of native Bactrian and Sogdian troops.[35] With the Scythian and Sogdian rebels defeated, Spitamenes was allegedly betrayed by his own wife and beheaded.[36] Pursuant with his own marriage to Roxana, Alexander encouraged his men to marry Sogdian women in order to discourage further revolt.[30][37] This included Apama, daughter of the rebel Spitamenes, who wed Seleucus I Nicator and bore him a son and future heir to the Seleucid throne.[38] According to the Roman historian Appian, Seleucus I named three new Hellenistic cities in Asia after her (see Apamea).[38][39]
The military power of the Sogdians never recovered. Subsequently, Sogdiana formed part of the HellenisticGreco-Bactrian Kingdom, a breakaway state from the Seleucid Empire founded in 248 BC by Diodotus I, for roughly a century.[40][41]Euthydemus I, a former satrap of Sogdiana, seems to have held the Sogdian territory as a rival claimant to the Greco-Bactrian throne; his coins were later copied locally and bore Aramaic inscriptions.[42] The Greco-Bactrian king Eucratides I may have recovered sovereignty of Sogdia temporarily.
Saka and Kushan periods (146 BC–260 AD)
Head of a Saka warrior, as a defeated enemy of the Yuezhi, from Khalchayan, northern Bactria, 1st century BCE.
Finally Sogdia was occupied by nomads when the Sakas overran the Greco-Bactrian kingdom around 145 BC, soon followed by the Yuezhi, the nomadic predecessors of the Kushans. From then until about 40 BC the Yuezhi tepidly minted coins imitating and still bearing the images of the Greco-Bactrian kings Eucratides I and Heliocles I.[46]
The Yuezhis were visited in Transoxiana by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BC,[47] which sought an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu. Zhang Qian, who spent a year in Transoxiana and Bactria, wrote a detailed account in the Shiji, which gives considerable insight into the situation in Central Asia at the time.[48] The request for an alliance was denied by the son of the slain Yuezhi king, who preferred to maintain peace in Transoxiana rather than seek revenge.
A Yuezhi (left) fighting a Sogdian behind a shield (right), Noin-Ula carpet, 1st century BC/AD.
Zhang Qian also reported:
the Great Yuezhi live 2,000 or 3,000 li [832–1,247 kilometers] west of Dayuan, north of the Gui[Oxus] river. They are bordered on the south by Daxia[Bactria], on the west by Anxi[Parthia], and on the north by Kangju [beyond the middle Jaxartes/Syr Darya]. They are a nation of nomads, moving from place to place with their herds, and their customs are like those of the Xiongnu. They have some 100,000 or 200,000 archer warriors.
From the 1st century AD, the Yuezhi morphed into the powerful Kushan Empire, covering an area from Sogdia to eastern India. The Kushan Empire became the center of the profitable Central Asian commerce. They began minting unique coins bearing the faces of their own rulers.[46] They are related to have collaborated militarily with the Chinese against nomadic incursion, particularly when they allied with the Han dynasty general Ban Chao against the Sogdians in 84, when the latter were trying to support a revolt by the king of Kashgar.[51]
Battle scenes between "Kangju" Saka warriors, from the Orlat plaques. 1st century CE.[52]
Historical knowledge about Sogdia is somewhat hazy during the period of the Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD) in Persia.[54][55] The subsequent Sasanian Empire of Persia conquered and incorporated Sogdia as a satrapy in 260,[54] an inscription dating to the reign of Shapur I claiming "Sogdia, to the mountains of Tashkent" as his territory, and noting that its limits formed the northeastern Sasanian borderlands with the Kushan Empire.[55] However, by the 5th century the region was captured by the rival Hephthalite Empire.[54]
The Hephthalites conquered the territory of Sogdiana, and incorporated it into their Empire, around 479 AD, as this is the date of the last known independent embassy of the Sogdians to China.[57][58]
The Hephthalites may have built major fortified Hippodamian cities (rectangular walls with an orthogonal network of streets) in Sogdiana, such as Bukhara and Panjikent, as they had also in Herat, continuing the city-building efforts of the Kidarites.[58] The Hephthalites probably ruled over a confederation of local rulers or governors, linked through alliance agreements. One of these vassals may have been Asbar, ruler of Vardanzi, who also minted his own coinage during the period.[59]
Relief of a hunter, Varahsha, Sogdia, 5th–7th century CE.
The wealth of the Sasanian ransoms and tributes to the Hephthalites may have been reinvested in Sogdia, possibly explaining the prosperity of the region from that time.[58] Sogdia, at the center of a new Silk Road between China to the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire became extremely prosperous under its nomadic elites.[60] The Hephthalites took on the role of major intermediary on the Silk Road, after their great predecessor the Kushans, and contracted local Sogdians to carry on the trade of silk and other luxury goods between the Chinese Empire and the Sasanian Empire.[61]
Because of the Hephthalite occupation of Sogdia, the original coinage of Sogdia came to be flooded by the influx of Sasanian coins received as a tribute to the Hephthalites. This coinage then spread along the Silk Road.[57] The symbol of the Hephthalites appears on the residual coinage of Samarkand, probably as a consequence of the Hephthalite control of Sogdia, and becomes prominent in Sogdian coinage from 500 to 700 AD, including in the coinage of their indigenous successors the Ikhshids (642–755 AD), ending with the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana.[62][63]
Turkic Khaganates (557–742 AD)
The Sogdian merchant An Jia with a Turkic Chieftain in his yurt. 579 AD.
The Turks of the First Turkic Khaganate and the Sasanians under Khosrow I allied against the Hephthalites and defeated them after an eight-day battle near Qarshi, the Battle of Bukhara, perhaps in 557.[64] The Turks retained the area north of the Oxus, including all of Sogdia, while the Sasanians obtained the areas south of it. The Turks fragmented in 581, and the Western Turkic Khaganate took over in Sogdia.
Archaeological remains suggest that the Turks probably became the main trading partners of the Sogdians, as appears from the tomb of the Sogdian trader An Jia.[65] The Turks also appear in great numbers in the Afrasiab murals of Samarkand, where they are probably shown attending the reception by the local Sogdian ruler Varkhuman in the 7th century AD.[66][67] These paintings suggest that Sogdia was a very cosmopolitan environment at that time, as delegates of various nations, including Chinese and Korean delegates, are also shown.[66][68] From around 650, China led the conquest of the Western Turks, and the Sogdian rulers such as Varkhuman as well as the Western Turks all became nominal vassals of China, as part of the Anxi Protectorate of the Tang dynasty, until the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana.[69]
Qutayba ibn Muslim (669–716), Governor of Greater Khorasan under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), initiated the Muslim conquest of Sogdia during the early 8th century, with the local ruler of Balkh offering him aid as an Umayyad ally.[55][70] However, when his successor al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah governed Khorasan (717–719), many native Sogdians, who had converted to Islam, began to revolt when they were no longer exempt from paying the tax on non-Muslims, the jizya, because of a new law stating that proof of circumcision and literacy in the Quran was necessary for new converts.[55][71] With the aid of the Turkic Turgesh, the Sogdians were able to expel the Umayyad Arab garrison from Samarkand, and Umayyad attempts to restore power there were rebuffed until the arrival of Sa'id ibn Amr al-Harashi (fl. 720–735). The Sogdian ruler (i.e. ikhshid) of Samarkand, Gurak, who had previously overthrown the pro-Umayyad Sogdian ruler Tarkhun in 710, decided that resistance against al-Harashi's large Arab force was pointless, and thereafter persuaded his followers to declare allegiance to the Umayyad governor.[71]Divashtich (r. 706–722), the Sogdian ruler of Panjakent, led his forces to the Zarafshan Range (near modern Zarafshan, Tajikistan), whereas the Sogdians following Karzanj, the ruler of Pai (modern Kattakurgan, Uzbekistan), fled to the Principality of Farghana, where their ruler at-Tar (or Alutar) promised them safety and refuge from the Umayyads. However, at-Tar secretly informed al-Harashi of the Sogdians hiding in Khujand, who were then slaughtered by al-Harashi's forces after their arrival.[72]
From 722, following the Muslim invasion, new groups of Sogdians, many of them Nestorian Christians, emigrated to the east, where the Turks had been more welcoming and more tolerant of their religion since the time of Sassanian religious persecutions. They particularly created colonies in the area of Semirechye, where they continued to flourish into the 10th century with the rise of the Karluks and the Kara-Khanid Khanate. These Sogdians are known for producing beautiful silver plates with Eastern Christian iconography, such as the Anikova dish.[73][74][75]
Abbasid Caliphate (750–819)
Decorated niche from the Abbasid mosque of Afrasiab, Samarkand, 750–825 CE.
The Umayyads fell in 750 to the Abbasid Caliphate, which quickly asserted itself in Central Asia after winning the Battle of Talas (along the Talas River in modern Talas Oblast, Kyrgyzstan) in 751, against the Chinese Tang dynasty. This conflict incidentally introduced Chinese papermaking to the Islamic world.[77] The cultural consequences and political ramifications of this battle meant the retreat of the Chinese empire from Central Asia. It also allowed for the rise of the Samanid Empire (819–999), a Persian state centered at Bukhara (in what is now modern Uzbekistan) that nominally observed the Abbasids as their overlords, yet retained a great deal of autonomy and upheld the mercantile legacy of the Sogdians.[77] Yet the Sogdian language gradually declined in favor of the Persian language of the Samanids (the ancestor to the modern Tajik language), the spoken language of renowned poets and intellectuals of the age such as Ferdowsi (940–1020).[77] So too did the original religions of the Sogdians decline; Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Nestorian Christianity disappeared in the region by the end of the Samanid period.[77] The Samanids were also responsible for converting the surrounding Turkic peoples to Islam.
The Samanids occupied the Sogdian region from circa 819 until 999, establishing their capital at Samarkand (819–892) and then at Bukhara (892–999).
Turkic conquests: Kara-Khanid Khanate (999–1212)
Detail of a Kara-Khanid ruler of Samarkand (sitting cross-legged on a throne in the complete reconstructed relief), Afrasiab, Samarkand, circa 1200 CE. It was possibly defaced in 1212 when the Khwarazmian Empire shah Muḥammad b. Tekish took over Samarkand.
In 999 the Samanid Empire was conquered by an Islamic Turkic power, the Kara-Khanid Khanate (840–1212).[81]
From 1212, the Kara-Khanids in Samarkand were conquered by the Kwarazmians. Soon however, Khwarezmia was invaded by the early Mongol Empire and its ruler Genghis Khandestroyed the once vibrant cities of Bukhara and Samarkand.[82] However, in 1370, Samarkand saw a revival as the capital of the Timurid Empire. The Turko-Mongol ruler Timur brought about the forced immigration to Samarkand of artisans and intellectuals from across Asia, transforming it not only into a trade hub but also into one of the most important cities of the Islamic world.[83]
Left image: a Sogdian silkbrocade textile fragment, dated c. 700 AD Right image: and a Sogdian silver wine cup with mercurygilding, 7th century AD
Most merchants did not travel the entire Silk Road, but would trade goods through middlemen based in oasis towns, such as Khotan or Dunhuang. The Sogdians, however, established a trading network across the 1500 miles from Sogdiana to China. In fact, the Sogdians turned their energies to trade so thoroughly that the Saka of the Kingdom of Khotan called all merchants suli, "Sogdian", whatever their culture or ethnicity.[84] The Sogdians had learnt to become expert traders from the Kushans, together with whom they initially controlled trade in the Ferghana Valley and Kangju during the 'birth' of the Silk Road. Later, they became the primary middlemen after the demise of the Kushan Empire.[85][86]
Unlike the empires of antiquity, the Sogdian region was not a territory confined within fixed borders, but rather a network of city-states, from one oasis to another, linking Sogdiana to Byzantium, India, Indochina and China.[87] Sogdian contacts with China were initiated by the embassy of the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian during the reign of Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BC) of the former Han dynasty. Zhang wrote a report of his visit to the Western Regions in Central Asia and named the area of Sogdiana as "Kangju".[88]
Left image: Sogdian men feasting and eating at a banquet, from a wall mural of Panjakent, Tajikistan, 7th century AD Right image: Detail of a mural from Varakhsha, 6th century AD, showing elephant riders fighting tigers and monsters.
Following Zhang Qian's embassy and report, commercial Chinese relations with Central Asia and Sogdiana flourished,[89] as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the 1st century BC. In his Shiji published in 94 BC, Chinese historian Sima Qian remarked that "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."[90] In terms of the silk trade, the Sogdians also served as middlemen between the Chinese Han Empire and the Parthian Empire of the Middle East and West Asia.[91] Sogdians played a major role in facilitating trade between China and Central Asia along the Silk Roads as late as the 10th century, their language serving as a lingua franca for Asian trade as far back as the 4th century.[92][93]
Left image: An Jia, a Sogdian trader and official in China, depicted on his tomb in 579 AD. Right image: ceramic figurine of a Sogdian merchant in northern China, Tang dynasty, 7th century AD
Subsequent to their domination by Alexander the Great, the Sogdians from the city of Marakanda (Samarkand) became dominant as traveling merchants, occupying a key position along the ancient Silk Road.[94] They played an active role in the spread of faiths such as Manicheism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism along the Silk Road. The ChineseSui Shu (Book of Sui) describes Sogdians as "skilled merchants" who attracted many foreign traders to their land to engage in commerce.[95] They were described by the Chinese as born merchants, learning their commercial skills at an early age. It appears from sources, such as documents found by Sir Aurel Stein and others, that by the 4th century they may have monopolized trade between India and China. A letter written by Sogdian merchants dated 313 AD and found in the ruins of a watchtower in Gansu, was intended to be sent to merchants in Samarkand, warning them that after Liu Cong of Han-Zhao sacked Luoyang and the Jin emperor fled the capital, there was no worthwhile business there for Indian and Sogdian merchants.[21][96] Furthermore, in 568 AD, a Turko-Sogdian delegation travelled to the Roman emperor in Constantinople to obtain permission to trade and in the following years commercial activity between the states flourished.[97] Put simply, the Sogdians dominated trade along the Silk Road from the 2nd century BC until the 10th century.[84]
Suyab and Talas in modern-day Kyrgyzstan were the main Sogdian centers in the north that dominated the caravan routes of the 6th to 8th centuries.[98] Their commercial interests were protected by the resurgent military power of the Göktürks, whose empire was built on the political power of the Ashina clan and economic clout of the Sogdians.[99][100][101] Sogdian trade, with some interruptions, continued into the 9th century. For instance, camels, women, girls, silver, and gold were seized from Sogdia during a raid by Qapaghan Qaghan (692–716), ruler of the Second Turkic Khaganate.[102] In the 10th century, Sogdiana was incorporated into the Uighur Empire, which until 840 encompassed northern Central Asia. This khaganate obtained enormous deliveries of silk from Tang China in exchange for horses, in turn relying on the Sogdians to sell much of this silk further west.[103] Peter B. Golden writes that the Uyghurs not only adopted the writing system and religious faiths of the Sogdians, such as Manichaeism, Buddhism, and Christianity, but also looked to the Sogdians as "mentors", while gradually replacing them in their roles as Silk Road traders and purveyors of culture.[104]Muslim geographers of the 10th century drew upon Sogdian records dating to 750–840. After the end of the Uyghur Empire, Sogdian trade underwent a crisis. Following the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana in the 8th century, the Samanids resumed trade on the northwestern road leading to the Khazars and the Urals and the northeastern one toward the nearby Turkic tribes.[100]
During the 5th and 6th century, many Sogdians took up residence in the Hexi Corridor, where they retained autonomy in terms of governance and had a designated official administrator known as a Sabao, which suggests their importance to the socioeconomic structure of China. The Sogdian influence on trade in China is also made apparent by a Chinese document which lists taxes paid on caravan trade in the Turpan region and shows that twenty-nine out of the thirty-five commercial transactions involved Sogdian merchants, and in thirteen of those cases both the buyer and the seller were Sogdian.[105] Trade goods brought to China included grapes, alfalfa, and Sassanian silverware, as well as glass containers, Mediterranean coral, brass Buddhist images, Roman wool cloth, and Baltic amber. These were exchanged for Chinese paper, copper, and silk.[84] In the 7th century, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang noted with approval that Sogdian boys were taught to read and write at the age of five, though their skill was turned to trade, disappointing the scholarly Xuanzang. He also recorded the Sogdians working in other capacities such as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers, and woodcarvers.[106]
Shortly after the smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire from China by Nestorian Christian monks, the 6th-century Byzantine historian Menander Protector writes of how the Sogdians attempted to establish a direct trade of Chinese silk with the Byzantine Empire. After forming an alliance with the Sasanian ruler Khosrow I to defeat the Hephthalite Empire, Istämi, the Göktürk ruler of the First Turkic Khaganate, was approached by Sogdian merchants requesting permission to seek an audience with the Sassanid king of kings for the privilege of traveling through Persian territories in order to trade with the Byzantines.[91] Istämi refused the first request, but when he sanctioned the second one and had the Sogdian embassy sent to the Sassanid king, the latter had the members of the embassy poisoned.[91] Maniah, a Sogdian diplomat, convinced Istämi to send an embassy directly to Byzantium's capital Constantinople, which arrived in 568 and offered not only silk as a gift to Byzantine ruler Justin II, but also proposed an alliance against Sassanid Persia. Justin II agreed and sent an embassy to the Turkic Khaganate, ensuring the direct silk trade desired by the Sogdians.[91][107][108]
It appears, however, that direct trade with the Sogdians remained limited in light of the small amount of Roman and Byzantine coins found in Central Asian and Chinese archaeological sites belonging to this era. Although Roman embassies apparently reached Han China from 166 AD onwards,[109] and the ancient Romans imported Han Chinese silk while the Han dynasty Chinese imported Roman glasswares as discovered in their tombs,[110][111]Valerie Hansen (2012) wrote that no Roman coins from the Roman Republic (507–27 BC) or the Principate (27 BC – 330 AD) era of the Roman Empire have been found in China.[112] However, Warwick Ball (2016) upends this notion by pointing to a hoard of sixteen Roman coins found at Xi'an, China (formerly Chang'an), dated to the reigns of various emperors from Tiberius (14–37 AD) to Aurelian (270–275 AD).[113] The earliest gold solidus coins from the Eastern Roman Empire found in China date to the reign of Byzantine emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) and altogether only forty-eight of them have been found (compared to thirteen-hundred silver coins) in Xinjiang and the rest of China.[112] The use of silver coins in Turfan persisted long after the Tang campaign against Karakhoja and Chinese conquest of 640, with a gradual adoption of Chinese bronze coinage over the course of the 7th century.[112] The fact that these Eastern Roman coins were almost always found with Sasanian Persian silver coins and Eastern Roman gold coins were used more as ceremonial objects like talismans, confirms the pre-eminent importance of Greater Iran in Chinese Silk Road commerce of Central Asia compared to Eastern Rome.[114]
The Kizil Caves near Kucha, mid-way in the Tarim Basin, record many scenes of traders from Central Asia in the 5–6th century: these combine influence from the Eastern Iran sphere, at that time occupied by the Sasanian Empire and the Hephthalites, with strong Sogdian cultural elements.[115][116] Sogdia, at the center of a new Silk Road between China to the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire became extremely prosperous around that time.[117]
The style of this period in Kizil is characterized by strong Iranian-Sogdian elements probably brought with intense Sogdian-Tocharian trade, the influence of which is especially apparent in the Central-Asian caftans with Sogdian textile designs, as well as Sogdian longswords of many of the figures.[118] Other characteristic Sogdian designs are animals, such as ducks, within pearl medallions.[118]
Aside from the Sogdians of Central Asia who acted as middlemen in the Silk Road trade, other Sogdians settled down in China for generations. Many Sogdians lived in Luoyang, capital of the Jin dynasty (266–420), but fled following the collapse of the Jin dynasty's control over northern China in 311 AD and the rise of northern nomadic tribes.[96]
Aurel Stein discovered 5 letters written in Sogdian known as the "Ancient Letters" in an abandoned watchtower near Dunhuang in 1907. One of them was written by a Sogdian woman named Miwnay who had a daughter named Shayn and she wrote to her mother Chatis in Sogdia. Miwnay and her daughter were abandoned in China by Nanai-dhat, her husband who was also Sogdian like her. Nanai-dhat refused to help Miwnay and their daughter after forcing them to come with him to Dunhuang and then abandoning them, telling them they should serve the Han Chinese. Miwnay asked one of her husband's relative Artivan and then asked another Sogdian man, Farnkhund to help them but they also abandoned them. Miwnay and her daughter Shayn were then forced to became servants of Han Chinese after living on charity from a priest. Miwnay cursed her Sogdian husband for leaving her, saying she would rather have been married to a pig or dog.[120][121][122][123][124][125][126][127][128] Another letter in the collection was written by the Sogdian Nanai-vandak addressed to Sogdians back home in Samarkand informing them about a mass rebellion by Xiongnu Hun rebels against their Han Chinese rulers of the Western Jin dynasty informing his people that every single one of the diaspora Sogdians and Indians in the Chinese Western Jin capital Luoyang died of starvation due to the uprising by the rebellious Xiongnu, who were formerly subjects of the Han Chinese. The Han Chinese emperor abandoned Luoyang when it came under siege by the Xiongnu rebels and his palace was burned down. Nanai-vandak also said the city of Ye was no more as the Xiongnu rebellion resulted in disaster for the Sogdian diaspora in China.[129][130] Han Chinese men frequently bought Sogdian slave girls for sexual relations.[131]
The Yingpan man, Xinjiang, China, 4th-5th century CE. He may have been a Sogdian trader.
Still, some Sogdians continued living in Gansu.[96] A community of Sogdians remained in the Northern Liang capital of Wuwei, but when the Northern Liang were defeated by the Northern Wei in 439 AD, many Sogdians were forcibly relocated to the Northern Wei capital of Datong, thereby fostering exchanges and trade for the new dynasty.[134] Numerous Central Asian objects have been found in Northern Wei tombs, such as the tomb of Feng Hetu.[135]
Other Sogdians came from the west and took positions in Chinese society. The Bei shi[136] describes how a Sogdian came from Anxi (western Sogdiana or Parthia) to China and became a sabao (薩保, from Sanskritsarthavaha, meaning caravan leader)[107] who lived in Jiuquan during the Northern Wei (386 – 535 AD), and was the ancestor of An Tugen, a man who rose from a common merchant to become a top ranking minister of state for the Northern Qi (550 – 577 AD).[95][137] Valerie Hansen asserts that around this time and extending into the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD), the Sogdians "became the most influential of the non-Chinese groups resident in China". Two different types of Sogdians came to China, envoys and merchants. Sogdian envoys settled, marrying Chinese women, purchasing land, with newcomers living there permanently instead of returning to their homelands in Sogdiana.[95] They were concentrated in large numbers around Luoyang and Chang'an, and also Xiangyang in present-day Hubei, building Zoroastriantemples to service their communities once they reached the threshold of roughly 100 households.[95] From the Northern Qi to Tang periods, the leaders of these communities, the sabao, were incorporated into the official hierarchy of state officials.[95]
During the 6–7th centuries AD, Sogdian families living in China created important tombs with funerary epitaphs explaining the history of their illustrious houses. Their burial practices blended both Chinese forms such as carved funerary beds with Zoroastrian sensibilities in mind, such as separating the body from both the earth and water.[138]Sogdian tombs in China are among the most lavish of the period in this country, and are only inferior to Imperial tombs, suggesting that the Sogdian Sabao were among the wealthiest members of the population.[139]
In addition to being merchants, monks, and government officials, Sogdians also served as soldiers in the Tang military.[140]An Lushan, whose father was Sogdian and mother a Gokturk, rose to the position of a military governor (jiedushi) in the northeast before leading the An Lushan Rebellion (755 – 763 AD), which split the loyalties of the Sogdians in China.[140] The An Lushan rebellion was supported by many Sogdians, and in its aftermath many of them were slain or changed their names to escape their Sogdian heritage, so that little is known about the Sogdian presence in North China since that time.[141] The former Yan rebel general Gao Juren of Goguryeo descent ordered a mass slaughter of West Asian (Central Asian) Sogdians in Fanyang, also known as Jicheng (Beijing), in Youzhou identifying them through their big noses and lances were used to impale their children when he rebelled against the rebel Yan emperor Shi Chaoyi and defeated rival Yan dynasty forces under the Turk Ashina Chengqing,[142][143] High nosed Sogdians were slaughtered in Youzhou in 761. Youzhou had Linzhou, another "protected" prefecture attached to it and Sogdians lived there in great numbers.[144][145] because Gao Juren, like Tian Shengong wanted to defect to the Tang dynasty and wanted them to publicly recognize and acknowledge him as a regional warlord and offered the slaughter of the Central Asian Hu "barbarians" as a blood sacrifice for the Tang court to acknowledge his allegiance without him giving up territory. according to the book, "History of An Lushan" (安祿山史記).[146][147] Another source says the slaughter of the Hu barbarians serving Ashina Chengqing was done by Gao Juren in Fanyang in order to deprive him of his support base, since the Tiele, Tongluo, Sogdians and Turks were all Hu and supported the Turk Ashina Chengqing against the Mohe, Xi, Khitan and Goguryeo origin soldiers led by Gao Juren. Gao Juren was later killed by Li Huaixian, who was loyal to Shi Chaoyi.[148][149] A massacre of foreign Arab and Persian Muslim merchants by former Yan rebel general Tian Shengong happened during the An Lushan rebellion in the Yangzhou massacre (760),[150][151] since Tian Shengong was defecting to the Tang dynasty and wanted them to publicly recognized and acknowledge him, and the Tang court portrayed the war as between rebel hu barbarians of the Yan against Han Chinese of the Tang dynasty, Tian Shengong slaughtered foreigners as a blood sacrifice to prove he was loyal to the Han Chinese Tang dynasty state and for them to recognize him as a regional warlord without him giving up territory, and he killed other foreign Hu barbarian ethnicities as well whose ethnic groups were not specified, not only Arabs and Persians since it was directed against all foreigners.[152][153]
Sogdians continued as active traders in China following the defeat of the rebellion, but many of them were compelled to hide their ethnic identity. A prominent case was An Chongzhang, Minister of War, and Duke of Liang who, in 756, asked Emperor Suzong of Tang to allow him to change his name to Li Baoyu because of his shame in sharing the same surname with the rebel leader.[140] This change of surnames was enacted retroactively for all of his family members, so that his ancestors would also be bestowed the surname Li.[140]
The Nestorian Christians like the Bactrian Priest Yisi of Balkh helped the Tang dynasty general Guo Ziyi militarily crush the An Lushan rebellion, with Yisi personally acting as a military commander and Yisi and the Nestorian Church of the East were rewarded by the Tang dynasty with titles and positions as described in the Nestorian Stele.[154][155][156][157][158][159]
Amoghavajra used his rituals against An Lushan while staying in Chang'an when it was occupied in 756 while the Tang dynasty crown prince and Xuanzong emperor had retreated to Sichuan. Amoghavajra's rituals were explicitly intended to introduced death, disaster and disease against An Lushan.[160] As a result of Amoghavajrya's assistance in crushing An Lushan, Estoteric Buddhism became the official state Buddhist sect supported by the Tang dynasty, "Imperial Buddhism" with state funding and backing for writing scriptures, and constructing monasteries and temples. The disciples of Amoghavajra did ceremonies for the state and emperor.[161] Tang dynasty Emperor Suzong was crowned as cakravartin by Amoghavajra after victory against An Lushan in 759 and he had invoked the Acala vidyaraja against An Lushan. The Tang dynasty crown prince Li Heng (later Suzong) also received important strategic military information from Chang'an when it was occupied by An Lushan though secret message sent by Amoghavajra.[162]
Epitaphs were found dating from the Tang dynasty of a Christian couple in Luoyang of a Nestorian Christian Sogdian woman, who Lady An (安氏) who died in 821 and her Nestorian Christian Han Chinese husband, Hua Xian (花献) who died in 827. These Han Chinese Christian men may have married Sogdian Christian women because of a lack of Han Chinese women belonging to the Christian religion, limiting their choice of spouses among the same ethnicity.[163] Another epitaph in Luoyang of a Nestorian Christian Sogdian woman also surnamed An was discovered and she was put in her tomb by her military officer son on 22 January 815. This Sogdian woman's husband was surnamed He (和) and he was a Han Chinese man and the family was indicated to be multiethnic on the epitaph pillar.[164] In Luoyang, the mixed raced sons of Nestorian Christian Sogdian women and Han Chinese men has many career paths available for them. Neither their mixed ethnicity nor their faith were barriers and they were able to become civil officials, a military officers and openly celebrated their Christian religion and support Christian monasteries.[165]
There were nine prominent Sogdian clans (昭武九姓). The names of these clans have been deduced from the Chinese surnames listed in a Tang-era Dunhuang manuscript (Pelliot chinois 3319V).[170] Each "clan" name refers to a different city-state as the Sogdian used the name of their hometown as their Chinese surname.[171] Of these the most common Sogdian surname throughout China was Shí (石, generally given to those from Chach, modern Tashkent). The following surnames also appear frequently on Dunhuang manuscripts and registers: Shǐ (史, from Kesh, modern Shahrisabz), An (安, from Bukhara), Mi (米, from Panjakent), Kāng (康, from Samarkand), Cáo (曹, from Kabudhan, north of the Zeravshan River), and Hé (何, from Kushaniyah).[170][172]Confucius is said to have expressed a desire to live among the "nine tribes" which may have been a reference to the Sogdian community.[173]
The influence of Sinicized and multilingual Sogdians during this Guiyijun (歸義軍) period (c. 850 – c. 1000 AD) of Dunhuang is evident in a large number of manuscripts written in Chinese characters from left to right instead of vertically, mirroring the direction of how the Sogdian alphabet is read.[174] Sogdians of Dunhuang also commonly formed and joined lay associations among their local communities, convening at Sogdian-owned taverns in scheduled meetings mentioned in their epistolary letters.[175] Sogdians living in Turfan under the Tang dynasty and Gaochang Kingdom engaged in a variety of occupations that included: farming, military service, painting, leather crafting and selling products such as iron goods.[170] The Sogdians had been migrating to Turfan since the 4th century, yet the pace of migration began to climb steadily with the Muslim conquest of Persia and Fall of the Sasanian Empire in 651, followed by the Islamic conquest of Samarkand in 712.[170]
Language and culture
The 6th century is thought to be the peak of Sogdian culture, judging by its highly developed artistic tradition. By this point, the Sogdians were entrenched in their role as the central Asian traveling and trading merchants, transferring goods, culture and religion.[176] During the Middle Ages, the valley of the Zarafshan around Samarkand retained its Sogdian name, Samarkand.[4] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, medieval Arab geographers considered it one of the four fairest regions of the world.[4] Where the Sogdians moved in considerable numbers, their language made a considerable impact. For instance, during China's Han dynasty, the native name of the Tarim Basin city-state of Loulan was "Kroraina", possibly from Greek due to nearby Hellenistic influence.[177] However, centuries later in 664 AD, the Tang Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang labelled it as "Nafupo" (納縛溥), which according to Hisao Matsuda is a transliteration of the Sogdian word Navapa meaning "new water".[178]
The Afrasiab paintings of the 6th to 7th centuries in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, offer a rare surviving example of Sogdian art. The paintings, showing scenes of daily life and events such as the arrival of foreign ambassadors, are located within the ruins of aristocratic homes. It is unclear if any of these palatial residences served as the official palace of the rulers of Samarkand.[179] The oldest surviving Sogdian monumental wall murals date to the 5th century and are located at Panjakent, Tajikistan.[180] In addition to revealing aspects of their social and political lives, Sogdian art has also been instrumental in aiding historians' understanding of their religious beliefs. For instance, it is clear that Buddhist Sogdians incorporated some of their own Iranian deities into their version of the Buddhist Pantheon. At Zhetysu, Sogdian gilded bronze plaques on a Buddhist temple show a pairing of a male and female deity with outstretched hands holding a miniature camel, a common non-Buddhist image similarly found in the paintings of Samarkand and Panjakent.[181]
The Yaghnobi people living in the Sughd province of Tajikistan still speak a descendant of the Sogdian language.[55][187] Yaghnobi is largely a continuation of the medieval Sogdian dialect from the Osrushana region of the western Fergana Valley.[188] The great majority of the Sogdian people assimilated with other local groups such as the Bactrians, Chorasmians, and Persians, and came to speak Persian. In 819, the Persian speaking population founded the Samanid Empire in the region. They are among the ancestors of the modern Tajiks. Numerous Sogdian cognates can be found in the modern Tajik language, although the latter is a Western Iranian language.
Early medieval Sogdian costumes can be divided in two periods: Hephtalitic (5th and 6th centuries) and Turkic (7th and early 8th centuries). The latter did not become common immediately after the political dominance of the Gökturks but only in c. 620 when, especially following Western Turkic Khagan Ton-jazbgu's reforms, Sogd was Turkized and the local nobility was officially included in the Khaganate's administration.[189]
For both sexes clothes were tight-fitted, and narrow waists and wrists were appreciated. The silhouettes for grown men and young girls emphasized wide shoulders and narrowed to the waist; the silhouettes for female aristocrats were more complicated. The Sogdian clothing underwent a thorough process of Islamization in the ensuing centuries, with few of the original elements remaining. In their stead, turbans, kaftans, and sleeved coats became more common.[189]
The Sogdians practiced a variety of religious faiths. However, Zoroastrianism was most likely their main religion, as demonstrated by material evidence, such as the discovery in Samarkand, Panjakent and Er-Kurgan of murals depicting votaries making offerings before fire altars and ossuaries holding the bones of the dead – in accordance with Zoroastrian ritual. At Turfan, Sogdian burials shared similar features with traditional Chinese practices, yet they still retained essential Zoroastrian rituals, such as allowing the bodies to be picked clean by scavengers before burying the bones in ossuaries.[170] They also sacrificed animals to Zoroastrian deities, including the supreme deity Ahura Mazda.[170] Zoroastrianism remained the dominant religion among Sogdians until after the Islamic conquest, when they gradually converted to Islam, as is shown by Richard Bulliet's "conversion curve".[190]
One of the most widely worshiped deities in Sogdia was the goddess Nana, derived from the Mesopotamian goddess Nanaya, and is traditionally depicted as a 4 armed goddess riding a lion, holding the sun and moon. She and the river god Oxus were some of the most widely attested deities from the region.[191] She was regaeded as a civic and astral goddess, and her sacred city was Panjikent.
The Sogdian religious texts found in China and dating to the Northern dynasties, Sui, and Tang are mostly Buddhist (translated from Chinese sources), Manichaean, and Nestorian Christian, with only a small minority of Zoroastrian texts.[194] But, tombs of Sogdian merchants in China dated to the last third of the 6th century show predominantly Zoroastrian motifs or Zoroastrian-Manichaean syncretism, while archaeological remains from Sogdiana appear fairly Iranian and conservatively Zoroastrian.[194]
However, the Sogdians epitomized the religious plurality found along the trade routes. The largest body of Sogdian texts are Buddhist, and Sogdians were among the principal translators of Buddhist sutras into Chinese. However, Buddhism did not take root in Sogdiana itself.[195] Additionally, the Bulayiq monastery to the north of Turpan contained Sogdian Christian texts, and there are numerous Manichaean texts in Sogdiana from nearby Qocho.[196] The reconversion of Sogdians from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism coincided with the adoption of Zoroastrianism by the Sassanid Empire of Persia.[107] From the 4th century onwards, Sogdian Buddhist pilgrims left behind evidence of their travels along the steep cliffs of the Indus River and Hunza Valley. It was here that they carved images of the Buddha and holy stupas in addition to their full names, in hopes that the Buddha would grant them his protection.[197]
The Sogdians also practiced Manichaeism, the faith of Mani, which they spread among the Uyghurs. The Uyghur Khaganate (744–840 AD) developed close ties to Tang China once it had aided the Tang in suppressing the rebellion of An Lushan and his Göktürk successor Shi Siming, establishing an annual trade relationship of one million bolts of Chinese silk for one hundred thousand horses.[103] The Uyghurs relied on Sogdian merchants to sell much of this silk further west along the Silk Road, a symbiotic relationship that led many Uyghurs to adopt Manichaeism from the Sogdians.[103] However, evidence of Manichaean liturgical and canonical texts of Sogdian origin remains fragmentary and sparse compared to their corpus of Buddhist writings.[198] The Uyghurs were also followers of Buddhism. For instance, they can be seen wearing silk robes in the praṇidhi scenes of the Uyghur Bezeklik Buddhist murals of Xinjiang, China, particularly Scene 6 from Temple 9 showing Sogdian donors to the Buddha.[199][200]
In addition to Puranic cults, there were five Hindu deities known to have been worshipped in Sogdiana.[201] These were Brahma, Indra, Mahadeva (Shiva), Narayana, and Vaishravana; the gods Brahma, Indra, and Shiva were known by their Sogdian names Zravan, Adbad and Veshparkar, respectively.,[201] As seen in an 8th-century mural from Panjakent, portable fire altars can be "associated" with Mahadeva-Veshparkar, Brahma-Zravan, and Indra-Abdab, according to Braja Bihārī Kumar.[201]
Among the Sogdian Christians known in China from inscriptions and texts were An Yena, a Christian from An country (Bukhara). Mi Jifen a Christian from Mi country (Maymurgh), Kang Zhitong, a Sogdian Christian cleric from Kang country (Samarkand), Mi Xuanqing a Sogdian Christian cleric from Mi country (Maymurgh), Mi Xuanying, a Sogdian Christian cleric from Mi country (Maymurgh), An Qingsu, a Sogdian Christian monk from An country (Bukhara).[202][203][204]
When visiting Yuan-eraZhenjiang, Jiangsu, China during the late 13th century, the Venetian explorer and merchant Marco Polo noted that a large number of Christian churches had been built there. His claim is confirmed by a Chinese text of the 14th century explaining how a Sogdian named Mar-Sargis from Samarkand founded six Nestorian Christian churches there, in addition to one in Hangzhou during the second half of the 13th century.[205] Nestorian Christianity had existed in China earlier during the Tang dynasty when a Persian monk named Alopen came to Chang'an in 653 to proselytize, as described in a dual Chinese and Syriac language inscription from Chang'an (modern Xi'an), dated to the year 781.[206] Within the Syriac inscription is a list of priests and monks, one of whom is named Gabriel, the archdeacon of "Xumdan" and "Sarag", the Sogdian names for the Chinese capital cities Chang'an and Luoyang, respectively.[207] In regards to textual material, the earliest Christian gospel texts translated into Sogdian coincide with the reign of the Sasanian Persian monarch Yazdegerd II (r. 438–457), and were translated from the Peshitta, the standard version of the Bible in Syriac Christianity.[208]
Slavery existed in China since ancient times, although during the Han dynasty the proportion of slaves to the overall population was roughly 1%,[209] far lower than the estimate for the contemporary Greco-Roman world (estimated at 15% of the entire population).[210][211] During the Tang period, slaves were not allowed to marry a commoner's daughter, were not allowed to have sexual relations with any female member of their master's family, and although fornication with female slaves was forbidden in the Tang code of law, it was widely practiced.[212]Manumission was also permitted when a slave woman gave birth to her master's son, which allowed for her elevation to the legal status of a commoner, yet she could only live as a concubine and not as the wife of her former master.[213]
Contract written in Sogdian for the purchase of a slave in 639 CE, Astana Tomb No. 135.
Sogdian and Chinese merchants regularly traded in slaves in and around Turpan during the Tang dynasty. Turpan under Tang dynasty rule was a center of major commercial activity between Chinese and Sogdian merchants. There were many inns in Turpan. Some provided Sogdian sex workers with an opportunity to service the Silk Road merchants, since the official histories report that there were markets in women at Kucha and Khotan.[215] 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 archaeologists who excavated the Astana site, Wu Zhen, contends that, although many households along the Silk Road bought individual slaves, as demonstrated in the earlier documents from Niya, the Turpan documents point to a massive escalation in the volume of the slave trade.[216] In 639 a female Sogdian slave was sold to a Chinese man, as recorded in an Astana cemetery legal document written in Sogdian.[217] Khotan and Kucha were places where women were commonly sold, with ample evidence of the slave trade in Turfan thanks to contemporary textual sources that have survived.[218][219] In Tang poetry Sogdian girls also frequently appear as serving maids in the taverns and inns of the capital Chang'an.[220]
Sogdian slave girls and their Chinese male owners made up the majority of Sogdian female-Chinese male pairings, while free Sogdian women were the most common spouse of Sogdian men. A smaller number of Chinese women were paired with elite Sogdian men. Sogdian man-and-woman pairings made up eighteen out of twenty-one marriages according to existing documents.[219][221]
A document dated 731 AD reveals that precisely forty bolts of silk were paid to a certain Mi Lushan, a slave dealing Sogdian, by a Chinese man named Tang Rong (唐榮) of Chang'an, for the purchase of an eleven-year-old girl. A person from Xizhou, a Tokharistani (i.e. Bactrian), and three Sogdians verified the sale of the girl.[219][222]
Central Asians like Sogdians were called "Hu" (胡) by the Chinese during the Tang dynasty. Central Asian "Hu" women were stereotyped as barmaids or dancers by Han in China. Han Chinese men engaged in mostly extra-marital sexual relationships with them as the "Hu" women in China mostly occupied positions where sexual services were sold to patrons like singers, maids, slaves and prostitutes.[223][224][225][226][227][228] Southern Baiyue girls were exoticized in poems.[229] Han men did not want to legally marry them unless they had no choice such as if they were on the frontier or in exile since the Han men would be socially disadvantaged and have to marry non-Han.[230][231][232] The task of taking care of herd animals like sheep and cattle was given to "Hu" slaves in China.[233]
In 1916, the French Sinologist and historian Paul Pelliot used Tang Chinese manuscripts excavated from Dunhuang, Gansu to identify an ancient Sogdian colony south of Lop Nur in Xinjiang (Northwest China), which he argued was the base for the spread of Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity in China.[234] In 1926, Japanese scholar Kuwabara compiled evidence for Sogdians in Chinese historical sources, and by 1933, Chinese historian Xiang Da published his Tang Chang'an and Central Asian Culture, detailing the Sogdian influence on Chinese social religious life in the Tang-era Chinese capital city.[234] The Canadian Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank published an article in 1952, demonstrating the presence of a Sogdian colony founded in Six Hu Prefectures of the Ordos Loop during the Chinese Tang period, composed of Sogdians and Turkic peoples who migrated from the Mongolian steppe.[234] The Japanese historian Ikeda on wrote an article in 1965, outlining the history of the Sogdians inhabiting Dunhuang from the beginning of the 7th century, analyzing lists of their Sinicized names and the role of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism in their religious life.[235] Yoshida Yutaka and Kageyama Etsuko, Japanese ethnographers and linguists of the Sogdian language, were able to reconstruct Sogdian names from forty-five different Chinese transliterations, noting that these were common in Turfan whereas Sogdians living closer to the center of Chinese civilization for generations adopted traditional Chinese names.[170]
Notable people
Amoghavajra, prolific translator and one of the most politically powerful Buddhist monks of Chinese history, of Sogdian descent through his mother[236][237]
An Lushan (安祿山),[140] a military leader of Sogdian (from his father's side) and Tūjué origin during the Tang dynasty in China; he rose to prominence by fighting (and losing) frontier wars between 741 and 755. Later, he precipitated the catastrophic An Lushan Rebellion, which lasted from 755 to 763 and led to the decline of the Tang dynasty
Li Baoyu (李抱玉),[140] formerly known as An Chongzhang (安重璋) and ennobled as Duke Zhaowu of Liang (涼昭武公), a general of the Chinese Tang dynasty who fought against the rebellion of An Lushan and the Tibetan Empire
The Silk Road was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 km (4,000 mi), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds. The name "Silk Road" was first coined in the late 19th century, but some 20th- and 21st-century historians instead prefer the term Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia as well as East Africa and Southern Europe.
The Hephthalites, sometimes called the White Huns, were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE, part of the larger group of Eastern Iranian Huns. They formed an empire, the Imperial Hephthalites, and were militarily important from 450 CE, when they defeated the Kidarites, to 560 CE, when combined forces from the First Turkic Khaganate and the Sasanian Empire defeated them. After 560 CE, they established "principalities" in the area of Tokharistan, under the suzerainty of the Western Turks and of the Sasanian Empire, before the Tokhara Yabghus took over in 625.
The Battle of Talas was an armed confrontation between the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tibetan Empire against the Tang dynasty in 751. In July of that year, the Tang and Abbasid armies clashed at the Talas River over control of the regions surrounding the Syr Darya. According to Chinese sources, the engagement began with several days of military stalemate, before a mercenary column of 20,000 Karluk Turks—representing two-thirds of the initial Tang army strength—defected to the Abbasids, and played a vital role in routing the Chinese.
The Sogdian language was an Eastern Iranian language spoken mainly in the Central Asian region of Sogdia, located in modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; it was also spoken by some Sogdian immigrant communities in ancient China. Sogdian is one of the most important Middle Iranian languages, along with Bactrian, Khotanese Saka, Middle Persian, and Parthian. It possesses a large literary corpus.
The Kidarites, or Kidara Huns, were a dynasty that ruled Bactria and adjoining parts of Central Asia and South Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Kidarites belonged to a complex of peoples known collectively in India as the Huna, and in Europe as the Chionites, and may even be considered as identical to the Chionites. The 5th century Byzantine historian Priscus called them Kidarite Huns, or "Huns who are Kidarites". The Huna/Xionite tribes are often linked, albeit controversially, to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during a similar period. They are entirely different from the Hephthalites, who replaced them about a century later.
The Uyghur Khaganate was a Turkic empire that existed for about a century between the mid 8th and 9th centuries. It was a tribal confederation under the Orkhon Uyghur (回鶻) nobility, referred to by the Chinese as the Jiu Xing, a calque of the name Toquz Oghuz or Toquz Tughluq.
Chaghaniyan, known as al-Saghaniyan in Arabic sources, was a medieval region and principality located on the right bank of the Oxus River, to the south of Samarkand.
The Western Turkic Khaganate or Onoq Khaganate was a Turkic khaganate in Eurasia, formed as a result of the wars in the beginning of the 7th century after the split of the First Turkic Khaganate, into a western and an eastern Khaganate.
The First Turkic Khaganate, also referred to as the First Turkic Empire, the Turkic Khaganate or the Göktürk Khaganate, was a Turkic khaganate established by the Ashina clan of the Göktürks in medieval Inner Asia under the leadership of Bumin Qaghan and his brother Istämi. The First Turkic Khaganate succeeded the Rouran Khaganate as the hegemonic power of the Mongolian Plateau and rapidly expanded their territories in Central Asia. The khaganate became the first Central Asian transcontinental empire from Manchuria to the Black Sea.
Iranian people, such as Persians and Sogdians, have lived in China throughout various periods in history.
The Muslim conquest of Transoxiana or Arab conquest of Transoxiana were the 7th and 8th century early Muslim conquests by the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates of of Transoxiana, the land between the Amu Darya or Oxus and the Syr Darya or Jaxartes, a part of Central Asia that today includes all or parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Transoxiana or Transoxania is the Latin name for the region and civilization located in lower Central Asia roughly corresponding to modern-day eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, parts of southern Kazakhstan, parts of Turkmenistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. The name was first coined by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC when Alexander's troops were able to conquer the region. The region may have had a similar Greek name in the days of Alexander the Great, but the earlier Greek name is no longer known. Geographically, it is the region between the rivers Amu Darya to its south and the Syr Darya to its north.
Central Asian art is visual art created in Central Asia, in areas corresponding to modern Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and parts of modern Mongolia, China and Russia. The art of ancient and medieval Central Asia reflects the rich history of this vast area, home to a huge variety of peoples, religions and ways of life. The artistic remains of the region show a remarkable combinations of influences that exemplify the multicultural nature of Central Asian society. The Silk Road transmission of art, Scythian art, Greco-Buddhist art, Serindian art and more recently Persianate culture, are all part of this complicated history.
Divashtich, was a medieval Sogdian ruler in Transoxiana during the period of the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana. He was the ruler of Panjikant and its surroundings from ca. 706 until his downfall and execution in the autumn of 722.
The Principality of Chaghaniyan, known in Arabic sources as al-Saghaniyan, was a part of the Hephthalite Confederation from the 5th to the 7th century CE. After this, it was ruled by a local, presumably Iranian dynasty, which governed the Chaghaniyan region from the late 7th-century to the early 8th-century CE. These rulers were known by their titles of “Chaghan Khudah”.
Huteng was the Chinese term for a type of dance that originated in Central Asia, especially among the Sogdians and the region of Tashkent. The dance was well known during the Tang dynasty, and there are numerous depictions of it in works of art. The dance was characterized by spinning, leaps and backflips. The dancers would particularly make summersaults, first planting their feet firmly on the carpet, tilting their face upward and arching their body, then lift their arms and jump backward to the sound of flutes and the pipa.
Sogdian art refers to art produced by the Sogdians, an Iranian people living mainly in ancient Sogdia, present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, who also had a large diaspora living in China. Its apex was between the 5th and 9th centuries, and it consists of a rich body of pre-Muslim Central Asian visual arts. New finds recovered in the past decades allowed scholars to achieve a better understanding of Sogdian art.
Varkhuman, also Vargoman was an Ikhshid (King) of Sogdia, residing in the city of Samarkand in the 7th century CE. He succeeded King Shishpin. He is known from the Afrasiab murals of Afrasiyab in Samarkand, where he is seen being visited by embassies from numerous countries, including China. There is also an inscription in the murals directly mentioning him. His name is also known from Chinese histories.
The Ikhshids of Sogdia, or Ikhshids of Samarkand, were a series of rulers of Soghdia in Transoxiana, with their capital at Samarkand, during the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods.
Fanlingpao, sometimes referred to as kuapao and hufu in the Tang dynasty when they feature double overturned lapels, is a type of paofu with lapels. It was categorized as Hufu instead of Hanfu due to its association with clothing of the foreigners who came from the Silk road. Fanlingpao were first introduced in China during the Northern Wei dynasty and became popular in Northern Qi. The custom of wearing fanlingpao were then inherited and further developed in the Sui and Tang dynasties. The fanlingpao could be transformed into a round collar robe, called yuanlingpao, in the Tang dynasty through the use of buttons. The fanlingpao shows foreign influences, which are mostly likely from the Persian, Sassanian Persian, Iranian Sogdian, and Turkic. Fanlingpao were popular fashion during Tang dynasty for both men and women and showed the popularity of Hufu-style clothing during this period; it was considered hufu while yuanlingpao was categorized as a form Hanfu.
↑ Grenet 2005, p.30: "Of a total of sixteen countries, seven have always been identified beyond doubt, as they kept their name until historical times or even to the present day. Five of these countries are at the beginning of the list, directly following Airyanem Vaējah: Gava "inhabited by the Sogdians", Merv, Bactria, Nisāya said to be "between Margiana and Bactria" and therefore corresponding at least in part to medieval Juzjān in northwest Afghanistan. Then comes the sixth country, Harōiva [.]"
↑ Skjaervø 1995, p.166 "The fact that the oldest Young Avestan texts apparently contain no reference to western Iran, including Media, would seem to indicate that they were composed in eastern Iran before the Median domination reached the area.".
↑ Pavel 2017, "The earliest records of the name of Sogdiana (Soḡd) are found in the Avesta (Vendīdād, 1.4; Yašt 10.14; the by-name of Sogdian lands in the Avesta is Gauua[.]". sfn error: no target: CITEREFPavel2017 (help)
↑ Vogelsang 2000, p.51: "If Gava and Gabae refer to an identical place, then the present text appears to refer to a situation whereby the center of Sogdia was to lie, not at Samarkand, but further to the west, perhaps at or near Bukhara."
↑ Kirill Nourzhanov, Christian Bleuer (2013), Tajikistan: a Political and Social History, Canberra: Australian National University Press, p. 12, ISBN978-1-925021-15-8.
1 2 Christoph Baumer (2012), The History of Central Asia: the Age of the Steppe Warriors, London, New York: I.B. Tauris, p. 202–203, ISBN978-1-78076-060-5.
↑ Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, pp 2–3, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
1 2 3 4 Mark J. Dresden (2003), "Sogdian Language and Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1216, ISBN0-521-24699-7.
1 2 Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, p. 3, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ Pierre Briant (2002), From Cyrus to Alexander: a History of the Persian Empire, trans. Peter T. Daniels, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, p. 746, ISBN1-57506-120-1.
1 2 Christoph Baumer (2012), The History of Central Asia: the Age of the Steppe Warriors, London, New York: I.B. Tauris, p. 207, ISBN978-1-78076-060-5.
↑ Hansen, Valerie (2012), The Silk Road: A New History, Oxford University Press, p. 72, ISBN978-0-19-993921-3.
1 2 3 Liu, Xinru (2010), The Silk Road in World History, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, p 67.
↑ "The province of Sogdia was to Asia what Macedonia was to Greece: a buffer between a brittle civilization and the restless barbarians beyond, whether the Scyths of Alexander's day and later or the White Huns, Turks and Mongols who eventually poured south to wreck the thin veneer of Iranian society" (Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (1973) 1986:301).
↑ John Prevas (2004), Envy of the Gods: Alexander the Great's Ill-Fated Journey across Asia, Da Capo Press, pp 60–69.
↑ Independent Sogdiana: Lane Fox (1973, 1986:533) notes Quintus Curtius, vi.3.9: with no satrap to rule them, they were under the command of Bessus at Gaugamela, according to Arrian, iii.8.3.
↑ Horn, LT Bernd; Spencer, Emily, eds. (2012), No Easy Task: Fighting in Afghanistan, Dundurn Press Ltd, p. 40, ISBN978-1-4597-0164-9.
1 2 3 4 Ahmed, S. Z. (2004), Chaghatai: the Fabulous Cities and People of the Silk Road, West Conshokoken: Infinity Publishing, p. 61.
1 2 3 Livius.org. "Roxane." Articles on Ancient History. Page last modified 17 August 2015. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
1 2 3 Strachan, Edward and Roy Bolton (2008), Russia and Europe in the Nineteenth Century, London: Sphinx Fine Art, p. 87, ISBN978-1-907200-02-1.
↑ For another publication calling her "Sogdian", see Christopoulos, Lucas (August 2012), "Hellenes and Romans in Ancient China (240 BC – 1398 AD)", in Victor H. Mair (ed), Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 230, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, p. 4, ISSN2157-9687.
↑ William Smith, eds et al. (1873), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Volume 1, London: John Murray, p. 122.
1 2 Holt, Frank L. (1989), Alexander the Great and Bactria: the Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia, Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne: E. J. Brill, pp 64–65 (see also footnote #62 for mention of Sogdian troops), ISBN90-04-08612-9.
↑ Holt, Frank L. (1989), Alexander the Great and Bactria: the Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia, Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne: E. J. Brill, p. 65 (see footnote #63), ISBN90-04-08612-9.
↑ Holt, Frank L. (1989), Alexander the Great and Bactria: the Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia, Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, Cologne: E. J. Brill, pp 67–8, ISBN90-04-08612-9.
1 2 3 Magill, Frank N. et al. (1998), The Ancient World: Dictionary of World Biography, Volume 1, Pasadena, Chicago, London,: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Salem Press, p. 1010, ISBN0-89356-313-7.
↑ Christopoulos, Lucas (August 2012), "Hellenes and Romans in Ancient China (240 BC – 1398 AD)", in Victor H. Mair (ed), Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 230, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, pp 8–9, ISSN2157-9687.
↑ Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, pp 3–5, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ Jeffrey D. Lerner (1999), The Impact of Seleucid Decline on the Eastern Iranian Plateau: the Foundations of Arsacid Parthia and Graeco-Bactria, Stuttgart: Steiner, pp 82–84, ISBN3-515-07417-1.
1 2 Michon, Daniel (2015), Archaeology and Religion in Early Northwest India: History, Theory, Practice, London, New York, New Delhi: Routledge, pp 112–123, ISBN978-1-138-82249-8.
↑ de Crespigny, Rafe. (2007). A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms (23–220AD). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. page 5-6. ISBN90-04-15605-4.
1 2 3 4 Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, p. 5, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
1 2 3 4 5 Mark J. Dresden (2003), "Sogdian Language and Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1217, ISBN0-521-24699-7.
↑ de la Vaissière 2012, pp.144–160. "Sogdiana under its nomadic elites became the principal center of agricultural wealth and population in Central Asia." and paragraph on "The Shift of the Trade Routes" sfn error: no target: CITEREFde_la_Vaissière2012 (help)
↑ Litvinski, B. A., A. H. Jalilov, A. I. Kolesnikov (1999), "The Arab Conquest", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia: Volume III, the Crossroads of Civilizations: A.D. 250–750, eds B. A. Litvinski, Zhang Guangda, and R. Shabani Samghabadi, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, pp 457–58.
1 2 3 4 Litvinski, B. A., A. H. Jalilov, A. I. Kolesnikov (1999), "The Arab Conquest", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia: Volume III, the Crossroads of Civilizations: A.D. 250–750, eds B. A. Litvinski, Zhang Guangda, and R. Shabani Samghabadi, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, p. 459.
↑ Litvinski, B. A., A. H. Jalilov, A. I. Kolesnikov (1999), "The Arab Conquest", in History of Civilizations of Central Asia: Volume III, the Crossroads of Civilizations: A.D. 250–750, eds B. A. Litvinski, Zhang Guangda, and R. Shabani Samghabadi, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, pp 459–60.
↑ O'Daly, Briton (Yale University) (2021). "An Israel of the Seven Rivers"(PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers: 10–12. Turkic peoples, both indirectly and directly, helped bring Christianity to Zhetysu after the Göktürk Khaganate took over the region in the sixth century. Following that conquest, the Sogdians, an Iranian people historically known for their commercial influence throughout the Silk Road networks, colonized the area under the encouragement of Turkic rulers eager for economic development. Syriac Christians would have numbered among these initial Sogdian colonists, and religious persecutions in the Sassanid Empire also drove Christians into Zhetysu, where the ruling Turks offered greater religious tolerance. The region experienced a significant religious-political development when the Karluk Turks conquered Zhetysu in 766 and then, most likely, converted to Syriac Christianity in the late eighth century.
1 2 3 4 Hanks, Reuel R. (2010), Global Security Watch: Central Asia, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: Praeger, p. 4.
↑ Karev, Yury (2013). Turko-Mongol rulers, cities and city life. Leiden: Brill. pp.114–115. ISBN9789004257009. The ceramics and monetary finds in the pavilion can be dated to no earlier than to the second half of the twelfth century, and more plausibly towards the end of that century. This is the only pavilion of those excavated that was decorated with paintings, which leave no doubt about the master of the place. (...) The whole artistic project was aimed at exalting the royal figure and the magnificence of his court. (...) the main scenes from the northern wall represents the ruler sitting cross-legged on a throne (see Figs 13, 14) (...) It was undoubtedly a private residence of the Qarakhanid ruler and his family and not a place for solemn receptions.
↑ Frantz, Grenet (2022). Splendeurs des oasis d'Ouzbékistan. Paris: Louvre Editions. pp.221–222. ISBN978-8412527858. Peintures murales qui ornaient (...) la résidence privée des derniers souverains qarakhanides de Samarkande (fin du 12ième - début du 13ième siècle (...) le souverain assis, les jambes repliées sur le trône, tient une flèche, symbole du pouvoir (Fig.171).
↑ Karev, Yury (2013). Turko-Mongol rulers, cities and city life. Leiden: Brill. p.120. ISBN9789004257009. We cannot exclude the possibility that this action was related to the dramatic events of the year 1212, when Samarqand was taken by the Khwarazmshah Muḥammad b. Tekish.
↑ Hanks, Reuel R. (2010), Global Security Watch: Central Asia, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: Praeger, pp 4–5.
↑ Sophie Ibbotson and Max Lovell-Hoare (2016), Uzbekistan, 2nd edition, Bradt Travel Guides Ltd, pp 12–13, ISBN978-1-78477-017-4.
↑ Sophie Ibbotson and Max Lovell-Hoare (2016), Uzbekistan, 2nd edition, Bradt Travel Guides Ltd, pp 14–15, ISBN978-1-78477-017-4.
↑ Dean, Riaz (2022). The Stone Tower: Ptolemy, the Silk Road, and a 2,000-Year-Old Riddle. Delhi: Penguin Viking. pp.94–102 (Ch.9, Sogdian Traders). ISBN978-0-670-09362-5.
↑ Vaissière, Étienne de La (2005). Sogdian Traders: A History. Translated by James Ward. Leiden: Brill. pp.32, 84, 91. ISBN90-04-14252-5.
↑ Watson, Burton (1993), Records of the Great Historian, Han Dynasty II, Columbia University Press, p. 234, ISBN0-231-08167-7; see also: Loewe, Michael, (2000), A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han, and Xin Periods (221 BC – AD 24), Leiden, Boston, Koln: Koninklijke Brill NV, p 278, ISBN90-04-10364-3.
1 2 3 4 Howard, Michael C., Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies, the Role of Cross Border Trade and Travel, McFarland & Company, 2012, p. 133.
↑ Hanks, Reuel R. (2010), Global Security Watch: Central Asia, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: Praeger, p. 3.
↑ Mark J. Dresden (2003), "Sogdian Language and Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1219, ISBN0-521-24699-7.
↑ Ahmed, S. Z. (2004), Chaghatai: the Fabulous Cities and People of the Silk Road, West Conshohocken: Infinity Publishing, pp 61–65.
1 2 3 4 5 Howard, Michael C., Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies, the Role of Cross Border Trade and Travel, McFarland & Company, 2012, p. 134.
1 2 3 Howard, Michael C., Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies, the Role of Cross Border Trade and Travel, McFarland & Company, 2012, pp 133–34.
↑ J. Rose, 'The Sogdians: Prime Movers between Boundaries', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 30, no. 3, (2010), p. 412
↑ Grégoire Frumkin (1970), Archaeology in Soviet Central Asia, Leiden, Koln: E. J. Brill, pp 35–37.
↑ Wink, André. Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. ISBN0-391-04173-8.
1 2 de la Vaissiere, Étienne (2004). "Sogdian Trade". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation. Retrieved 4 November 2011.
↑ Stark, Sören. Die Alttürkenzeit in Mittel- und Zentralasien. Archäologische und historische Studien (Nomaden und Sesshafte, vol. 6). Reichert, 2008 ISBN3-89500-532-0.
1 2 3 Liu, Xinru, "The Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Interactions in Eurasia", in Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History, ed. Michael Adas, American Historical Association, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001, p. 169.
↑ Peter B. Golden (2011), Central Asia in World History, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 47, ISBN978-0-19-515947-9.
↑ J. Rose, 'The Sogdians: Prime Movers between Boundaries', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 30, no. 3, (2010), p. 416
1 2 3 Liu, Xinru, "The Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Interactions in Eurasia", in Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History, ed. Michael Adas, American Historical Association, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001, p. 168.
1 2 Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, p. 9, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ de Crespigny, Rafe (2007), A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms (23–220 AD), Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, p. 600, ISBN978-90-04-15605-0.
↑ Brosius, Maria (2006), The Persians: An Introduction, London & New York: Routledge, pp 122–123, ISBN0-415-32089-5.
↑ An, Jiayao (2002), "When Glass Was Treasured in China", in Juliano, Annette L. and Judith A. Lerner, Silk Road Studies: Nomads, Traders, and Holy Men Along China's Silk Road, 7, Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, pp. 79–94, ISBN2-503-52178-9.
1 2 3 Hansen, Valerie (2012), The Silk Road: A New History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 97, ISBN978-0-19-993921-3.
↑ Warwick Ball (2016), Rome in the East: Transformation of an Empire, 2nd edition, London & New York: Routledge, ISBN978-0-415-72078-6, p. 154.
↑ Hansen, Valerie (2012), The Silk Road: A New History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 97–98, ISBN978-0-19-993921-3.
↑ "Sogdiana under its nomadic elites became the principal center of agricultural wealth and population in Central Asia." and paragraph on "The Shift of the Trade Routes" in Vaissière, Etienne de la (212). "Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity: 5 Central Asia and the Silk Road". In S. Johnson (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, Oxford University Press, P. 142-169. Oxford University Press: 144–160.
↑ Sims-Williams, N. (15 December 1985). "Ancient Letters". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol.II. pp.7–9.
↑ Keramidas, Kimon. "Sodgian Ancient Letter II". NYU. Telling the Sogdian Story: A Freer/Sackler Digital Exhibition Project. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
↑ Hansen, Valerie (2005). "The Impact of the Silk Road Trade on a Local Community: The Turfan Oasis, 500–800". In Trombert, Eric; Vaissière, Étienne de la (eds.). Les sogdiens en Chine. École française d'Extrême-Orient. pp.295–300. ISBN9782855396538.
↑ Li, Xiao (10 September 2020). Studies on the History and Culture Along the Continental Silk Road. Springer Nature. p.11. ISBN978-981-15-7602-7. It is evident that when the Northern Wei defeated Northern Liang and seized its capital (439), they captured a large number of Sogdian merchants living in Wuwei and resettled them in Pingcheng (present-day Datong), the capital of the Northern Wei.
↑ Howard, Michael C., Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies, the Role of Cross Border Trade and Travel, McFarland & Company, 2012, pp 134–35.
↑ GRENET, Frantz (2020). Histoire et cultures de l'Asie centrale préislamique. Paris, France: Collège de France. p.320. ISBN978-2-7226-0516-9. Ce sont les décors funéraires les plus riches de cette époque, venant juste après ceux de la famille impériale; il est probable que les sabao étaient parmi les éléments les plus fortunés de la population.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Howard, Michael C., Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies, the Role of Cross Border Trade and Travel, McFarland & Company, 2012, p. 135.
↑ J. Rose, 'The Sogdians: Prime Movers between Boundaries', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 30, no. 3, (2010), p. 417
↑ Hansen, Valerie (2003). "New Work on the Sogdians, the Most Important Traders on the Silk Road, A.D. 500–1000". T'oung Pao. 89 (1/3): 158. doi:10.1163/156853203322691347. JSTOR4528925.
↑ Morrow, Kenneth T. (May 2019). Negotiating Belonging: The Church of the East's Contested Identity in Tang China(PDF) (Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Ideas). The University of Texas at Dallas. pp.110, 111.
↑ Chamney, Lee. The An Shi Rebellion and Rejection of the Other in Tang China, 618–763 (A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History and Classics). University of Alberta Libraries. pp.93, 94. CiteSeerX10.1.1.978.1069.
↑ History of An Lushan (An Lushan Shiji 安祿山史記) "唐鞠仁今城中殺胡者重賞﹐於是羯胡盡殪﹐小兒擲於中空以戈_之。高鼻類胡而濫死者甚眾"
↑ Qi 2010, p.221-227. sfn error: no target: CITEREFQi2010 (help)
↑ Chamney, Lee. The An Shi Rebellion and Rejection of the Other in Tang China, 618–763(PDF) (A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of History and Classics). University of Alberta Libraries. pp.91, 92, 93. Archived(PDF) from the original on 18 February 2020.
↑ Old Tang History "至揚州，大掠百姓商人資產，郡內比屋發掘略遍，商胡波斯被殺者數千人" "商胡大食, 波斯等商旅死者數千人波斯等商旅死者數千人."
↑ Morrow, Kenneth T. (May 2019). Negotiating Belonging: The Church of the East's Contested Identity in Tang China(PDF) (Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Ideas). THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS. pp.109–135, viii, xv, 156, 164, 115, 116.
↑ Morrow, Kenneth T. (May 2019). Negotiating Belonging: The Church of the East's Contested Identity in Tang China(PDF) (Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Ideas). The University of Texas at Dallas. pp.155–156, 149, 150, viii, xv.
↑ Morrow, Kenneth T. (May 2019). Negotiating Belonging: The Church of the East's Contested Identity in Tang China(PDF) (Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Ideas). The University of Texas at Dallas. p.164.
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015), "She Association Circulars from Dunhuang", in Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, Brill: Leiden, Boston, pp 870–71.
↑ Taenzer, Gertraud (2016), "Changing Relations between Administration, Clergy and Lay People in Eastern Central Asia: a Case Study According to the Dunhuang Manuscripts Referring to the Transition from Tibetan to Local Rule in Dunhuang, 8th–11th Centuries", in Carmen Meinert, Transfer of Buddhism Across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries), Leiden, Boston: Brill, pp 35–37.
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015), "She Association Circulars from Dunhuang", in Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, Brill: Leiden, Boston, p 871.
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015), "She Association Circulars from Dunhuang", in Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, Brill: Leiden, Boston, pp 871–72.
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015), "She Association Circulars from Dunhuang", in Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, Brill: Leiden, Boston, p. 872.
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015), "She Association Circulars from Dunhuang", in Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, Brill: Leiden, Boston, pp 870, 873.
↑ Galambos, Imre (2015), "She Association Circulars from Dunhuang", in Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, Brill: Leiden, Boston, pp 872–73.
↑ Kazuo Enoki (1998), "Yü-ni-ch'êng and the Site of Lou-Lan", and "The Location of the Capital of Lou-Lan and the Date of the Kharoshthi Inscriptions", in Rokuro Kono (ed.), Studia Asiatica: The Collected Papers in Western Languages of the Late Dr. Kazuo Enoki, Tokyo: Kyu-Shoin, pp 200, 211–57.
↑ Christopoulos, Lucas (August 2012), "Hellenes and Romans in Ancient China (240 BC – 1398 AD)", in Victor H. Mair (ed), Sino-Platonic Papers, No. 230, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, pp 20–21 footnote #38, ISSN2157-9687.
↑ A. M. Belenitskii and B. I. Marshak (1981), "Part One: the Paintings of Sogdiana" in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, p. 47, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ A. M. Belenitskii and B. I. Marshak (1981), "Part One: the Paintings of Sogdiana" in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, p. 13, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ A. M. Belenitskii and B. I. Marshak (1981), "Part One: the Paintings of Sogdiana" in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, pp 34–35, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
1 2 3 Tafazzoli, A. (2003), "Iranian Languages", in C. E. Bosworth and M. S. Asimov, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV: The Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, p 323.
↑ Tafazzoli, A. (2003), "Iranian Languages", in C. E. Bosworth and M. S. Asimov, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV: The Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, pp 325–26.
↑ Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, pp 5–6, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ Boyce, Mary (1983), "Parthian Writings and Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater, Cambridge History of Iran, 3.2, London & New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1151–1152. ISBN0-521-20092-X.
↑ Tafazzoli, A. (2003), "Iranian Languages", in C. E. Bosworth and M. S. Asimov, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume IV: The Age of Achievement, A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, p 325.
↑ Mark J. Dresden (1981), "Introductory Note", in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, pp 2 & 5, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
1 2 Grenet, Frantz (2007). "Religious Diversity among Sogdian Merchants in Sixth-Century China: Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Hinduism". Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 27 (2). Duke University Press: 463–478. doi:10.1215/1089201x-2007-017. S2CID144300435.
↑ A. M. Belenitskii and B. I. Marshak (1981), "Part One: the Paintings of Sogdiana" in Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: the Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, p. 35, ISBN0-520-03765-0.
↑ J. Rose, 'The Sogdians: Prime Movers between Boundaries', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 30, no. 3 (2010), pp. 416–7
↑ Liu, Xinru (2010), The Silk Road in World History, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, p 67–8.
↑ Dresden, Mark J. (2003), "Sogdian Language and Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1224, ISBN0-521-24699-7.
1 2 3 Braja Bihārī Kumar (2007). "India and Central Asia: Links and Interactions", in J.N. Roy and B.B. Kumar (eds), India and Central Asia: Classical to Contemporary Periods, 3–33. New Delhi: Published for Astha Bharati Concept Publishing Company. ISBN81-8069-457-7, p. 8.
↑ S.V.D. Research Institute, Monumenta Serica Institute (2009). Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies, Volume 57. H. Vetch. p.120. The first one is the funerary inscription of another Bukharan Christian, who died during the Jinglong JptH era (707–710) in Guilin ££^, southern China, and whose name was An Yena^Wffi (see Jiang Boqin 1994). The second is the epitaph of the Sogdian gentleman Mi Jifen ^Iffi^ (714–805) from Maymurgh; in his study Ge Chengyong has discovered that Mi's son was a Christian monk and that his family was therefore most probably Christian, too (see Ge Chengyong 2001). Generally ...
↑ Nicolini-Zani, Matteo (2006). La via radiosa per l'Oriente: i testi e la storia del primo incontro del cristianesimo con il mondo culturale e religioso cinese (secoli VII-IX). Spiritualità orientale. Edizioni Qiqajon, Comunità di Bose. p.121. ISBN88-8227-212-5. ... di almeno un testo cristiano in cinese, il rotolo P. 3847, contenente la traduzione cinese dell'inno siriaco Gloria in excelsis Deo, di cui fu redatta anche una traduzione sogdiana(giunta a noi in frammenti) a Bulayìq (Turfan). L'unico elemento che ci conferma, infine, una assai probabile presenza cristiana in quest'epoca nel sud della Cina, legata ai commerci marittimi, è il ritrovamento presso Guilin (odierno Guangxi) dell'epitaffio funebre del cristiano An Yena, morto tra il 707 e il 709.
↑ Emmerick, R. E. (2003) "Iranian Settlement East of the Pamirs", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 275.
↑ Emmerick, R. E. (2003) "Iranian Settlement East of the Pamirs", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 274.
↑ Emmerick, R. E. (2003) "Iranian Settlement East of the Pamirs", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 274–5.
↑ Dresden, Mark J. (2003), "Sogdian Language and Literature", in Ehsan Yarshater, The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol III: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 1225–1226, ISBN0-521-24699-7.
↑ Hulsewé, A.F.P. (1986). "Ch'in and Han law", in The Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 520–544. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 524–525, ISBN0-521-24327-0.
↑ Hucker, Charles O. (1975). China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 177, ISBN0-8047-0887-8.
↑ For specific figures in regards to percentage of the population being enslaved, see Frier, Bruce W. (2000). "Demography", in Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey, and Dominic Rathbone (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History XI: The High Empire, A.D. 70–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 827–54.
↑ Anders Hansson (1996), Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China, Leiden, New York, Koln: E.J. Brill, pp 38–39, ISBN90-04-10596-4.
↑ Anders Hansson (1996), Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China, Leiden, New York, Koln: E.J. Brill, p. 39, ISBN90-04-10596-4.
↑ Xin Tangshu 221a:6230. In addition, Susan Whitfield offers a fictionalized account of a Kuchean courtesan's experiences in the 9th 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.
↑ Wu Zhen 2000 (p. 154 is a Chinese-language rendering based on Yoshida's Japanese translation of the Sogdian contract of 639).
↑ Rong, Xinjiang, "New light on Sogdian Colonies along the Silk Road: Recent Archaeological Finds in Northern China (Lecture at the BBAW on 20 September 2001)", in Berichte und Abhandlungen (17 December 2009); 10, S., p. 150.
↑ Abramson, Marc S. (2011). Ethnic Identity in Tang China. Encounters with Asia. University of Pennsylvania Press. p.235. ISBN978-0812201017. Katô Hakushi Kanreki Kinen Ronbunshû Kankôkai. 83–91. Tokyo: Fuzanbô. ———. 1948. Tôshi sôshô. Tokyo: Kaname Shohô. ———. 1961. "The hu-chi, mainly Iranian girls, found in China during the Tang period.
↑ Israeli, Raphael; Gorman, Lyn (1994). Islam in China: A Critical Bibliography (illustrated, annotateded.). Greenwood Press. p.153. ISBN0313278571. ISSN0742-6836. ... 1033 Chinese Mohammedans, " 9012 " How Can We Best Reach the Mohammedan Women?, " 6025 " How Islam Entered China, " 1057 " The Hu - Chi, Mainly Iranian Girls Found in China during the Tang Period, " 2010 " The Hui and the ...
1 2 3 Rong, Xinjiang, "New light on Sogdian Colonies along the Silk Road: Recent Archaeological Finds in Northern China (Lecture at the BBAW on 20 September 2001)", in Berichte und Abhandlungen (17 December 2009); 10, S., p. 148.
↑ Rong, Xinjiang, "New light on Sogdian Colonies along the Silk Road: Recent Archaeological Finds in Northern China (Lecture at the BBAW on 20 September 2001)", in Berichte und Abhandlungen (17 December 2009); 10, S., pp 148–9.
↑ Chen (陈), Boyi (博翼) (2011). "10 跋《明秦府承奉正康公墓志铭》"A Sogdian Descendant?—Study of the Epitaph of Kang Jing: The Man Who Served at Ming Prince Qin's Mansion"". Collected Studies on Ming History 明史研究论丛. Vol.9. China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. pp.283–297.
↑ Ibn Taghribirdi, Jamal al-Din Abu al-Mahasin Yusuf (1930), Nujum al-zahira fi muluk Misr wa'l-Qahira, Volume II, Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, p. 218.
↑ Kaikodo (Gallery: New York, N.Y.), Sarah Handler (1999). 懐古堂. LIT. p.74. ISBN978-962-7956-20-4. Mi Fu (1052-1107), a Northerner by birth (and of Sogdian heritage) developed a passionate attachment to [...]{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
↑ Gordon, Matthew S. (2001), The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (A.H. 200-275/815-889 C.E.), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, p. 77, ISBN0-7914-4795-2.
↑ Carlos Ramirez-Faria (2007), Concise Encyclopedia of World History, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, p. 450, ISBN81-269-0775-4.
↑ Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual, Columbia University, 1996. pg 147: "The Sajids were a line of caliphal governors in north-western Persia, the family of a commander in the 'Abbasid service of Soghdian descent which became culturally Arabised."
↑ Latham, John Derek (1971). "Arabic Literature". In Lang, David Marshall (ed.). A Guide to Eastern Literatures. London: C. Tinling & Co. p.33. ISBN0297002740.
↑ Hansen, Valerie (2003). "New Work on the Sogdians, the Most Important Traders on the Silk Road, A.D. 500–1000". T'oung Pao. 89 (1/3): 158. doi:10.1163/156853203322691347. JSTOR4528925.
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