128-788: Sogdia or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya , and in present-day Uzbekistan , Turkmenistan , Tajikistan , Kazakhstan , and Kyrgyzstan . Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire , and listed on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great . Sogdiana was first conquered by Cyrus the Great , the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and then
256-772: 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. 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. In
384-579: 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. In the Avesta , namely in the Mihr Yasht and the Vendidad , the toponym of Gava ( gava-, gāum ) is mentioned as
512-695: A language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe , the Iranian plateau , and the northern Indian subcontinent . Some European languages of this family— English , French , Portuguese , Russian , Dutch , and Spanish —have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian , Armenian , Balto-Slavic , Celtic , Germanic , Hellenic , Indo-Iranian , and Italic ; another nine subdivisions are now extinct . Today,
640-683: 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. Put simply, the Sogdians dominated trade along the Silk Road from the 2nd century BC until the 10th century. Suyab and Talas in modern-day Kyrgyzstan were the main Sogdian centers in the north that dominated
768-616: A century. 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 . The Greco-Bactrian king Eucratides I may have recovered sovereignty of Sogdia temporarily. Finally Sogdia was occupied by nomads when the Sakas overran the Greco-Bactrian kingdom around 145 BC, soon followed by
896-675: A common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European . Membership in the various branches, groups, and subgroups of Indo-European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors are shared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic ,
1024-558: A confirmation of de Saussure's theory. The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, listed below in alphabetical order: In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages and language-groups have existed or are proposed to have existed: Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genealogical relationships, meaning that all members are presumed descendants of
1152-803: A diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic (" Kurlandic "), Iranian (" Medic "), Finnish , Chinese , "Hottentot" ( Khoekhoe ), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German, and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors. The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on
1280-636: 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. 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. Roxana, a Sogdian whose name Roshanak means "little star",
1408-687: 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. 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, and
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#17327662826811536-575: A key position along the ancient Silk Road. They played an active role in the spread of faiths such as Manicheism , Zoroastrianism , and Buddhism along the Silk Road. The Chinese Sui Shu ( Book of Sui ) describes Sogdians as "skilled merchants" who attracted many foreign traders to their land to engage in commerce. 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
1664-461: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a high vowel (* u in the case of Germanic, * i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants * ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ , unique to these two groups among IE languages, which
1792-592: A priest. Miwnay cursed her Sogdian husband for leaving her, saying she would rather have been married to a pig or dog. 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
1920-620: A raid by Qapaghan Qaghan (692–716), ruler of the Second Turkic Khaganate . 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. Peter B. Golden writes that the Uyghurs not only adopted
2048-718: 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. 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. Zhang Qian also reported: the Great Yuezhi live 2,000 or 3,000 li [832–1,247 kilometers] west of Dayuan , north of
2176-488: 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. Other characteristic Sogdian designs are animals, such as ducks, within pearl medallions. Aside from the Sogdians of Central Asia who acted as middlemen in
2304-510: Is cited to have been radically non-treelike. Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such as Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic. However, unlike the ten traditional branches, these are all controversial to a greater or lesser degree. The Italo-Celtic subgroup was at one point uncontroversial, considered by Antoine Meillet to be even better established than Balto-Slavic. The main lines of evidence included
2432-642: Is found in the Mihr Yasht, ie., the hymn dedicated to the Zoroastrian deity Mithra . 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, Haraivian Margu , Gava Sogdia ( gaom-ca suγδəm ), and Chorasmia . The second mention
2560-567: 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
2688-535: Is in agreement with the wave model. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence among members of very different branches. An extension to the Ringe - Warnow model of language evolution suggests that early IE had featured limited contact between distinct lineages, with only the Germanic subfamily exhibiting a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic
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#17327662826812816-789: Is no longer spoken. However, a descendant of one of its dialects, Yaghnobi , is still spoken by the Yaghnobis of Tajikistan. It was widely spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and served as one of the First Turkic Khaganate 's court languages for writing documents. Sogdians also lived in Imperial China and rose to prominence in the military and government of the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907 AD). Sogdian merchants and diplomats travelled as far west as
2944-594: 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
3072-770: The Anikova dish . 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 . The cultural consequences and political ramifications of this battle meant
3200-816: The Anxi Protectorate of the Tang dynasty , until the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana . 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. 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
3328-714: The Arianoi . Strabo , in his Geographica (1st century AD), mentions of the Medes , Persians, Bactrians and Sogdians of the Iranian Plateau and Transoxiana of antiquity: The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, with but slight variations. The Bactrian (a Middle Iranian language) inscription of Kanishka (the founder of
3456-531: The Black Sea region (even though this anticipated campaign never materialized). 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, and were already engaging in overland trade. Some of them had also gradually settled the land to engage in agriculture. Similar to how
3584-652: The Byzantine Empire . They played an essential part as middlemen in the Silk Road trade route. While initially practicing the faiths of Zoroastrianism , Manichaeism , Buddhism and, to a lesser extent, the Church of the East from West Asia , the gradual conversion to Islam among the Sogdians and their descendants began with the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana in the 8th century. The Sogdian conversion to Islam
3712-520: 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,
3840-663: The Iranic peoples , are the collective ethno-linguistic groups who are identified chiefly by their native usage of any of the Iranian languages , which are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family . The Proto-Iranians are believed to have emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in Central Asia around the mid-2nd millennium BC. At their peak of expansion in
3968-648: The Kushan Empire (30–375 AD) of Central and South Asia . A now-independent and warlike Sogdiana formed a border region insulating the Achaemenid Persians from the nomadic Scythians to the north and east. It was led at first by Bessus , the Achaemenid satrap of Bactria . After assassinating Darius III in his flight from the Macedonian Greek army, he became claimant to the Achaemenid throne. The Sogdian Rock or Rock of Ariamazes,
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4096-460: The Kushan Empire ) at Rabatak, which was discovered in 1993 in an unexcavated site in the Afghan province of Baghlan , clearly refers to this Eastern Iranian language as Arya . All this evidence shows that the name Arya was a collective definition, denoting peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centered on
4224-626: 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. 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
4352-865: The Parthians , the Persians , the Sagartians , the Saka , the Sarmatians , the Scythians , the Sogdians , and likely the Cimmerians , among other Iranian-speaking peoples of West Asia , Central Asia, Eastern Europe , and the Eastern Steppe . In the 1st millennium AD, their area of settlement, which was mainly concentrated in the steppes and deserts of Eurasia , was significantly reduced due to
4480-404: 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. From 722, following the Muslim invasion, new groups of Sogdians, many of them Nestorian Christians , emigrated to the east, where
4608-442: The Sintashta culture and the subsequent Andronovo culture within the broader Andronovo horizon, and their homeland with an area of the Eurasian steppe that borders the Ural River on the west and the Tian Shan on the east. The Indo-Iranian migrations took place in two waves. The first wave consisted of the Indo-Aryan migration through the Bactria-Margiana Culture , also called "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex," into
4736-511: 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. 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. The Kizil Caves near Kucha , mid-way in
4864-441: 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. 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. The style of this period in Kizil
4992-408: 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 . The Yuezhis were visited in Transoxiana by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BC, which sought an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu . Zhang Qian, who spent
5120-863: The Zazas . Their current distribution spreads across the Iranian Plateau – stretching from the Caucasus in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south and from eastern Anatolia in the west to western Xinjiang in the east – covering a region that is sometimes called Greater Iran , representing the extent of the Iranian-speaking peoples and the reach of their geopolitical and cultural influence. The term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Ērān / AEran ( 𐭠𐭩𐭥𐭠𐭭 ) and Parthian Aryān . The Middle Iranian terms ērān and aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic ēr- (in Middle Persian) and ary- (in Parthian), both deriving from Old Persian ariya- ( 𐎠𐎼𐎡𐎹 ), Avestan airiia- ( 𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀 ) and Proto-Iranian *arya- . There have been many attempts to qualify
5248-463: The ancient Romans imported Han Chinese silk while the Han dynasty Chinese imported Roman glasswares as discovered in their tombs, 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. 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
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5376-422: 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. Yet the Sogdian language gradually declined in favor of the Persian language of
5504-416: 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 . 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
5632-432: The " wave model " is a more accurate representation. Most approaches to Indo-European subgrouping to date have assumed that the tree model is by-and-large valid for Indo-European; however, there is also a long tradition of wave-model approaches. In addition to genealogical changes, many of the early changes in Indo-European languages can be attributed to language contact . It has been asserted, for example, that many of
5760-407: The 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan , Iranian , and European languages. In 1583, English Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century) in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin . Another account
5888-411: The 1880s. Brugmann's neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure 's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins , Jochem Schindler , and Helmut Rix ) developed a better understanding of morphology and of ablaut in
6016-416: 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." In terms of the silk trade, the Sogdians also served as middlemen between
6144-432: 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. Furthermore, in 568 AD,
6272-410: 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
6400-460: 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. Shortly after the smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire from China by Nestorian Christian monks,
6528-476: The Anatolian and Tocharian language families, in that order. The " tree model " is considered an appropriate representation of the genealogical history of a language family if communities do not remain in contact after their languages have started to diverge. In this case, subgroups defined by shared innovations form a nested pattern. The tree model is not appropriate in cases where languages remain in contact as they diversify; in such cases subgroups may overlap, and
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#17327662826816656-400: The Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non- satem languages in general—including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in
6784-404: The Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Greek and the Anatolian languages of Hittite and Luwian . The oldest records are isolated Hittite words and names—interspersed in texts that are otherwise in the unrelated Akkadian language , a Semitic language —found in texts of the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia dating to the 20th century BC. Although no older written records of
6912-484: The Chinese Empire and the Sasanian Empire. 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 . 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
7040-469: The Chinese Han Empire and the Parthian Empire of the Middle East and West Asia. 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. Subsequent to their domination by Alexander the Great, the Sogdians from the city of Marakanda ( Samarkand ) became dominant as traveling merchants, occupying
7168-492: The Greek sources. Herodotus , in his Histories , remarks about the Iranian Medes that "Medes were called anciently by all people Arians " (7.62). In Armenian sources, the Parthians, Medes and Persians are collectively referred to as Iranians . Eudemus of Rhodes (Dubitationes et Solutiones de Primis Principiis, in Platonis Parmenidem) refers to "the Magi and all those of Iranian ( áreion ) lineage". Diodorus Siculus (1.94.2) considers Zoroaster ( Zathraustēs ) as one of
7296-405: The Indo-Aryans who founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria; ( c. 1500 – c. 1300 BC ) the other group were the Vedic people. Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun , an Indo-European Caucasian people of Inner Asia in antiquity , were also of Indo-Aryan origin. The second wave is interpreted as the Iranian wave, and took place in the third stage of
7424-442: The Indo-European migrations from 800 BC onwards. The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta–Petrovka culture or Sintashta–Arkaim culture, is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Eastern Europe and Central Asia , dated to the period 2100–1800 BC . It is probably the archaeological manifestation of the Indo-Iranian language group. The Sintashta culture emerged from
7552-427: The Indo-Iranian branch. All Indo-European languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, linguistically reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European , spoken sometime during the Neolithic or early Bronze Age . The geographical location where it was spoken, the Proto-Indo-European homeland , has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the academic consensus supports the Kurgan hypothesis , which posits
7680-504: 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 . 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 . Sogdian contacts with China were initiated by
7808-411: The Levant, founding the Mittani kingdom ; and a migration south-eastward of the Vedic people, over the Hindu Kush into northern India. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800–1600 BC from the Iranians, whereafter they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians, who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone and "chased [the Indo-Aryans] to the extremities of Central Eurasia." One group were
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#17327662826817936-421: 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
8064-465: 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). 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. The Samanids were also responsible for converting the surrounding Turkic peoples to Islam . The Samanids occupied
8192-416: 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 . The Turks also appear in great numbers in the Afrasiab murals of Samarkand , where they are probably shown attending
8320-467: The Sassanid king of kings for the privilege of traveling through Persian territories in order to trade with the Byzantines. 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. 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
8448-429: 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. Aurel Stein discovered 5 letters written in Sogdian known as the "Ancient Letters" in an abandoned watchtower near Dunhuang in 1907. One of them
8576-569: The Sogdian diaspora in China. Han Chinese men frequently bought Sogdian slave girls for sexual relations. Iranian peoples Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Iranian peoples , or
8704-425: The Sogdian region from circa 819 until 999, establishing their capital at Samarkand (819–892) and then at Bukhara (892–999). In 999 the Samanid Empire was conquered by an Islamic Turkic power, the Kara-Khanid Khanate (840–1212). 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 Khan destroyed
8832-429: 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. For example, Vogelsang connects it with Gabae, a Sogdian stronghold in western Sogdia and speculates that during
8960-467: The Sogdians in 84, when the latter were trying to support a revolt by the king of Kashgar . Historical knowledge about Sogdia is somewhat hazy during the period of the Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD) in Persia. The subsequent Sasanian Empire of Persia conquered and incorporated Sogdia as a satrapy in 260, 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
9088-409: 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
9216-472: 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. 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
9344-403: 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 . 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
9472-506: The caravan routes of the 6th to 8th centuries. 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. Sogdian trade, with some interruptions, continued into the 9th century. For instance, camels, women, girls, silver, and gold were seized from Sogdia during
9600-630: The city-building efforts of the Kidarites . 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. The wealth of the Sasanian ransoms and tributes to the Hephthalites may have been reinvested in Sogdia, possibly explaining
9728-574: The coinage of their indigenous successors the Ikhshids (642–755 AD), ending with the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana . 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. The Turks retained the area north of the Oxus, including all of Sogdia, while
9856-718: The command of Shapur I gives a more clear description. The languages used are Parthian, Middle Persian, and Greek. In Greek inscription says "ego ... tou Arianon ethnous despotes eimi" , which translates to "I am the king of the kingdom ( nation ) of the Iranians". In Middle Persian, Shapur says "ērānšahr xwadāy hēm" and in Parthian he says "aryānšahr xwadāy ahēm" . The Avesta clearly uses airiia- as an ethnic name ( Videvdat 1; Yasht 13.143–44, etc.), where it appears in expressions such as airyāfi daiŋˊhāvō ("Iranian lands"), airyō šayanəm ("land inhabited by Iranians"), and airyanəm vaējō vaŋhuyāfi dāityayāfi ("Iranian stretch of
9984-403: The cult of Ohrmazd. The academic usage of the term Iranian is distinct from the state of Iran and its various citizens (who are all Iranian by nationality), in the same way that the term Germanic peoples is distinct from Germans . Some inhabitants of Iran are not necessarily ethnic Iranians by virtue of not being speakers of Iranian languages. Some scholars such as John Perry prefer
10112-543: 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
10240-473: 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 ". Following Zhang Qian's embassy and report, commercial Chinese relations with Central Asia and Sogdiana flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout
10368-560: 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. The Sogdians had learnt to become expert traders from
10496-754: The existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name: The Sanscrit [ sic ] language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. Thomas Young first used
10624-1325: The expansion of the Slavic peoples , the Germanic peoples , the Turkic peoples , and the Mongolic peoples ; many were subjected to Slavicization and Turkification . Modern Iranian peoples include the Baloch , the Gilaks , the Kurds , the Lurs , the Mazanderanis , the Ossetians , the Pamiris , the Pashtuns , the Persians, the Tats , the Tajiks , the Talysh , the Wakhis , the Yaghnobis , and
10752-485: The family relationships between the Indo-European languages, and the reconstruction of their common source, was central to the development of the methodology of historical linguistics as an academic discipline in the 19th century. The Indo-European language family is not considered by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics to have any genetic relationships with other language families, although several disputed hypotheses propose such relations. During
10880-606: The gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia and the preservation of laryngeals. However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view,
11008-416: The genitive suffix -ī ; the superlative suffix -m̥mo ; the change of /p/ to /kʷ/ before another /kʷ/ in the same word (as in penkʷe > *kʷenkʷe > Latin quīnque , Old Irish cóic ); and the subjunctive morpheme -ā- . This evidence was prominently challenged by Calvert Watkins , while Michael Weiss has argued for the subgroup. Evidence for a relationship between Greek and Armenian includes
11136-475: The good Dāityā"). In the late part of the Avesta (Videvdat 1), one of the mentioned homelands was referred to as Airyan'əm Vaējah which approximately means "expanse of the Iranians". The homeland varied in its geographic range, the area around Herat ( Pliny 's view) and even the entire expanse of the Iranian Plateau ( Strabo 's designation). The Old Persian and Avestan evidence is confirmed by
11264-571: The homeland to be the Pontic–Caspian steppe in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia , associated with the Yamnaya culture and other related archaeological cultures during the 4th millennium BC to early 3rd millennium BC. By the time the first written records appeared, Indo-European had already evolved into numerous languages spoken across much of Europe , South Asia , and part of Western Asia . Written evidence of Indo-European appeared during
11392-567: The individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , French and German each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language —by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue , with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to
11520-863: The influence of the late Abashevo culture , a collection of Corded Ware settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralist . Allentoft et al. (2015) also found close autosomal genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture. Indo-European languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Indo-European languages are
11648-539: The interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol steppe was the Poltavka culture , an offshoot of the cattle-herding Yamnaya horizon that moved east into the region between 2800 and 2600 BC. Several Sintashta towns were built over older Poltavka settlements or close to Poltavka cemeteries, and Poltavka motifs are common on Sintashta pottery. Sintashta material culture also shows
11776-516: The land of the Sogdians. Gava is, therefore, interpreted as referring to Sogdia during the time of the Avesta . 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. The first mention of Gava
11904-538: The literature of Avesta . The earliest epigraphically attested reference to the word arya- occurs in the Bistun Inscription of the 6th century BC. The inscription of Bistun (or Behistun ; Old Persian : Bagastana ) describes itself to have been composed in Arya [language or script]. As is also the case for all other Old Iranian language usage, the arya of the inscription does not signify anything but Iranian . In royal Old Persian inscriptions,
12032-800: The mid-1st millennium BC, the territory of the Iranian peoples stretched across the entire Eurasian Steppe ; from the Danubian Plains in the west to the Ordos Plateau in the east and the Iranian Plateau in the south. The ancient Iranian peoples who emerged after the 1st millennium BC include the Alans , the Bactrians , the Dahae , the Khwarazmians , the Massagetae , the Medes ,
12160-581: 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 . 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,
12288-467: The more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be areal features . More certainly, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, because English and continental West Germanic were not
12416-605: 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 . 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 ). Sogdiana possessed
12544-428: 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 Assyrian Aškuz and Greek Skuthēs , descend from *skeud-, an ancient Indo-European root meaning "propel, shoot" (cf. English shoot). *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
12672-614: The northeastern Sasanian borderlands with the Kushan Empire . However, by the 5th century the region was captured by the rival Hephthalite Empire . 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. 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
12800-523: The once vibrant cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. 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. Most merchants did not travel
12928-486: The original Proto-Indo-European population remain, some aspects of their culture and their religion can be reconstructed from later evidence in the daughter cultures. The Indo-European family is significant to the field of historical linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Afroasiatic Egyptian language and Semitic languages . The analysis of
13056-557: The perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian languages and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts. The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as
13184-570: 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. 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
13312-538: The prosperity of the region from that time. 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. 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
13440-725: The rebel Spitamenes, who wed Seleucus I Nicator and bore him a son and future heir to the Seleucid throne . According to the Roman historian Appian , Seleucus I named three new Hellenistic cities in Asia after her (see Apamea ). The military power of the Sogdians never recovered. Subsequently, Sogdiana formed part of the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian Kingdom , a breakaway state from the Seleucid Empire founded in 248 BC by Diodotus I , for roughly
13568-561: The reception by the local Sogdian ruler Varkhuman in the 7th century AD. 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. 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
13696-461: The regular change of the second laryngeal to a at the beginnings of words, as well as terms for "woman" and "sheep". Greek and Indo-Iranian share innovations mainly in verbal morphology and patterns of nominal derivation. Relations have also been proposed between Phrygian and Greek, and between Thracian and Armenian. Some fundamental shared features, like the aorist (a verb form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having
13824-607: The reigns of various emperors from Tiberius (14–37 AD) to Aurelian (270–275 AD). 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. The use of silver coins in Turfan persisted long after
13952-541: The similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian. He included in his hypothesis Dutch , Albanian , Greek , Latin , Persian , and German , later adding Slavic , Celtic , and Baltic languages . However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of
14080-434: The source of all the Germanic languages. In the 21st century, several attempts have been made to model the phylogeny of Indo-European languages using Bayesian methodologies similar to those applied to problems in biological phylogeny. Although there are differences in absolute timing between the various analyses, there is much commonality between them, including the result that the first known language groups to diverge were
14208-605: The standard scientific term. A number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopp wrote in 1816 On the conjugational system of the Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar . This marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleicher 's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann 's Grundriss , published in
14336-482: The striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin , Greek , and Sanskrit , to which he tentatively added Gothic , Celtic , and Persian , though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions. In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing
14464-655: 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. 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
14592-532: The term Indo-European in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Europe to North India . A synonym is Indo-Germanic ( Idg. or IdG. ), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in French ( indo-germanique ) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun ; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-European , although in German indogermanisch remains
14720-486: The term Iranic as the name for the linguistic family of this category (many of which are spoken outside Iran), while Iranian for anything about the country Iran. He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic . German scholar Martin Kümmel also argues for the same distinction of Iranian from Iranic . The Proto-Indo-Iranians are commonly identified with
14848-460: The term arya- appears in three different contexts: In the Dna and Dse, Darius and Xerxes describe themselves as "an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, and an Aryan, of Aryan stock". Although Darius the Great called his language arya- ("Iranian"), modern scholars refer to it as Old Persian because it is the ancestor of the modern Persian language. The trilingual inscription erected by
14976-541: The time of the Avesta, the center of Sogdia may have been closer to Bukhara instead of Samarkand . Achaemenid ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana while campaigning in Central Asia in 546–539 BC, a fact mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories . Darius I introduced the Aramaic writing system and coin currency to Central Asia , in addition to incorporating Sogdians into his standing army as regular soldiers and cavalrymen. Sogdia
15104-551: The verbal root of ar- in Old Iranian arya- . The following are according to 1957 and later linguists: Unlike the Sanskrit ārya- ( Aryan ), the Old Iranian term has solely an ethnic meaning. Today, the Old Iranian arya- remains in ethno-linguistic names such as Iran , Alan , Ir , and Iron . In the Iranian languages , the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier included in ancient inscriptions and
15232-506: The wake of Kuryłowicz 's 1956 Apophony in Indo-European, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ. Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence of coefficients sonantiques , elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European languages. This led to the so-called laryngeal theory , a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and
15360-404: Was also listed on the Behistun Inscription of Darius. A contingent of Sogdian soldiers fought in the main army of Xerxes I during his second, ultimately-failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. A Persian inscription from Susa claims that the palace there was adorned with lapis lazuli and carnelian originating from Sogdiana. During this period of Persian rule, the western half of Asia Minor
15488-858: Was annexed by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC. It would continue to change hands under the Seleucid Empire , the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom , the Kushan Empire , the Sasanian Empire , the Hephthalite Empire , the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana . The Sogdian city-states , although never politically united, were centered on the city of Samarkand . Sogdian , an Eastern Iranian language ,
15616-480: Was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria . The satraps were often relatives of the ruling Persian kings, especially sons who were not designated as the heir apparent . Sogdiana likely remained under Persian control until roughly 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II . 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
15744-606: Was made by Filippo Sassetti , a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ / dio "God", sarpaḥ / serpe "serpent", sapta / sette "seven", aṣṭa / otto "eight", and nava / nove "nine"). However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry. In 1647, Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted
15872-524: 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
16000-466: Was put down by Alexander and his generals Amyntas , Craterus , and Coenus , with the aid of native Bactrian and Sogdian troops. With the Scythian and Sogdian rebels defeated, Spitamenes was allegedly betrayed by his own wife and beheaded. Pursuant with his own marriage to Roxana, Alexander encouraged his men to marry Sogdian women in order to discourage further revolt. This included Apama , daughter of
16128-598: 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 ). 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
16256-440: Was virtually complete by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999, coinciding with the decline of the Sogdian language, as it was largely supplanted by New Persian . 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 ). Sogdian territory corresponds to
16384-653: 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
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