Central Asia in World History

by Golden, Peter B.

  Darius the Great, who expanded Achaemenid Persian power to Central Asia, is depicted hunting lions by chariot. Hunting was more than a sport for rulers. It was a demonstration of their power over the natural world. Werner Forman / Art Resource, New York

  The nomads actively promoted long-distance commerce, as both middlemen and bearers of elements of their own culture to the wider world. Certain types of clothing (perhaps trousers), stringed instruments, and equine paraphernalia probably came from the steppe. As a result of early contacts, steppe peoples figure in the ethnographic legends of the ancient world contributing to the European cultural heritage. For example, the participation of steppe women in warfare may have played a role in shaping the Greek legends of the Amazons. Women in the steppe world wielded political power.

  Early nomads shunned Central Asian cities except as sources of desired goods. Yet, paradoxically, it was the nomadic factor that brought these oasis city-states into larger political units. Otherwise, given the constraints of distance and security, their most common form of political organization was a loose union. The Transoxanian oases were essentially Iranian-speaking, independent-minded, cosmopolitan, aristocratic, mercantile city-states, each ruled by a lord who was simply the “first among equals.” Business-oriented and rich, the city-states produced vibrant cultures that reflected their transcontinental business and intellectual interests. They did not aspire to political domination, but to commercial and cultural exchange. Their merchants, bureaucrats, and men of religion, however, became major contributors to the administrative and cultural life of the steppe empires. According to a medieval Turkic saying, “a Turk is never without a Persian [Tat, a sedentary Iranian], just as a cap is never without a head.”11 The relationship was mutually beneficial.

  The Turko-Mongolian nomads gave rise to few durable cities. In Central Asia, the great cities were largely the work of Iranian peoples. Of the Old Turkic words for “city,” one, kend/kent, is clearly a borrowing from Iranian (kand or qand, as in Samarkand). Another, balïq, is of disputed origin.12 Mongol balghasun (town, city) stems from the same term and was probably borrowed from ancient Turkic. Cities built by nomads were largely outgrowths of the ordu (also orda, ordo), a word in use since Xiongnu times, which initially meant “the camp of the ruler.” Its meaning was expanded to denote the capital city, and, as the ruler was invariably accompanied by his military forces, ordu came to mean “army” as well (English “horde” derives from it). Such “cities” usually had few structures made of durable materials such as clay or brick, but were rather conglomerations of people, including resident foreign merchants, living in the tents of the nomads. As a consequence, these “cities” are difficult to trace archaeologically.

  Nomad rulers also took control over genuine cities that stemmed from fortified oasis settlements created by earlier Iranian tribes, some of which had taken up settled life by about 500 BCE. Muslim geographers and historians from the ninth to tenth centuries describe these towns, including their stout walls, gates, the distances between them, and the roads leading to them. They also highlight mosques and other religious or cultural structures and local products, all matters of considerable interest to the readers of that day. Archaeologists have been carrying out investigations of cities such as Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent (earlier called Chach) for many years. Travelers’ accounts also give some information about their size. By modern standards, they were not very large. According to Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese traveler and Buddhist pilgrim, Samarkand was about twenty li in size, or about seven kilometers. Its town center was about two square kilometers.

  Many of these cities followed similar patterns. They were divided into sections, best known by medieval Persian or Arabic terminology. The military-political core was the ark/arq, also called kuhandîz/quhandîz (sometimes shortened to kundûz or kundîz), a Persian word meaning “old fort” or “citadel,” often rendered in Arabic by qal’a (fort, stronghold), usually located within the town center. Here, the rulers lived in a castle along with their personal guard and military commanders. The treasury, chancellery, a temple for the local (pre-Islamic era) cult, and even a prison were within its confines. By the time the Muslim geographers began to write about the cities, many of these citadels lay in ruins—hence the term “old fort” used for them. Energetic, later rulers often rebuilt them—a form of urban renewal for the elite. Many smaller urban settlements also had a kuhandîz.

  The town center was termed shahristân, another Persian word deriving from shahr (city; in Arabic madîna). In Bukhara and Penjikent, however, the kuhandîz lay outside the walls of the shahristân, forming its own political-military-administrative center. The outlying suburbs were called rabad an Arabic word which is different than the similar sounding Arabic rabat (plural ribât) initially a term for forts, bristling with “fighters for the faith,” that guarded the frontiers and raided the pagan Turkic nomads. Ribât also came to mean “caravansary,” the medieval equivalent of a motel for travelers and merchants. Rabad could also denote the wall that girded the town center and suburbs.

  Agricultural settlements, termed rustak/rustâq, surrounded the cities. They produced the melons for which Central Asia was famous, as well as fruits, grapes, vegetables, grains, and other food products. Cloth production, ceramics, glassware, and the manufacture of a host of utensils, ranging from cookware to weapons, were also an important part of the economy. Archaeological excavations of cities such as Taraz (in Kazakhstan) and Samarkand show that the designs on the products often catered to the stylistic preferences of the neighboring nomads as well as the local urban population. For example, seals on gemstones from ancient Samarkand (the archaeological site Afrasiyab) have two different styles: one depicting a bull with wings, reflecting the mythological subject matter preferred by the townsmen, the other a goat in flight with an arrow in his neck, an example of the scenes of the hunt so dear to the nomads. Cities near rich ore deposits in nearby mountains became both mining and production centers for bronze, iron, gold, and silver manufactures.

  The cities were not merely stopping points on the Silk Road, but also major contributors to the goods that flowed across the steppes. Some merchants became extremely wealthy and had grand homes, the equal of the local rulers, that ostentatiously displayed their wealth. Samarkand was one of the key cities of pre-Islamic and Islamic Central Asia, with roots going back to at least 500 BCE. When Alexander the Great in 329 BCE conquered “Marakanda,” as the Greeks called it, it was already a thriving city. Narshakhî, writing in the 940s his History of Bukhara, another great city of the region, claimed that its citadel was founded 3,000 years earlier.

  Urban and agrarian Central Asia distinguished between different social orders, aristocrats and commoners. When Turkic-speaking nomads replaced the earlier Iranian nomads, from the third to fourth century onwards, a linguistic divide was added. Nonetheless, the cities adapted. They needed the nomads to facilitate their trade and to protect them from other nomads. It is this interaction on all levels of political, economic, social and cultural life that constitutes a continuing theme of Central Asian history.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Early Nomads: “Warfare Is Their Business”

  The breakup of the Indo-European linguistic community around 3000 to 2500 BCE produced an outpouring of peoples across Eurasia and adjoining lands. One grouping, the ancestors of the Tokharians, arrived in Xinjiang by the late third-or early second-millennium BCE,1 making it one of the most ancient and enduring points of Chinese contact with Western peoples. Another grouping, the Indo-Iranians or Indo-Aryans, also went eastward to Siberia, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and northern Pakistan. The tribal name rya/riya (Aryan) derives from an Indo-European term meaning “lord, free person” and, ultimately, “a master of a house who shows hospitality to a stranger.”2 It did not have any of the racial connotations it acquired in the 20th century. By 2000 BCE, at the latest, the Indo-Iranians, who were agriculturalists and livestock breeders, had split into the linguistic anc
estors of the Indic-speaking populations of South Asia and the Iranian-speaking populations of Iran and Central Asia today.

  Indo-Aryans, probably coming through Afghanistan, entered South Asia around 1500 BCE, encountering the older Harappan civilization and Dravidian peoples. It was earlier thought that this was a sudden, mass invasion that dislocated, destroyed, or enslaved the earlier inhabitants. More recent scholarship suggests that this interaction was more gradual and peaceful, as the newcomers took over regions that had long been in decline.3 Iranian-speaking tribes entered the land that now bears their name sometime between 1500 BCE and 1000 BCE, imposing themselves on a diverse population. In Ancient Persian, they may have called their new homeland âryânâm khshathram (the kingdom of the Aryans). In early medieval Persian this became Êrânshahr and later simply Irân.4

  Other Indo-Iranians en route to Siberia made contacts with the Uralic northern forest peoples (linguistic ancestors of the Finns and Hungarians, among others) leaving traces of their interaction in words such as Hungarian tehen (cow) from Indo-Iranian dhainu, Finnish parsas (pig) from Indo-Iranian parsa, Finnish mete and Hungarian méz (honey) from Indo-Iranian madhu. 5 Subsequently, Iranian nomads made contact with Turkic and other Altaic peoples in Mongolia and Siberia. Whether they introduced nomadism to them remains unclear. It is with the movements of these peoples that we move from pre-history to history, relying now not only on the surviving fragments of daily life unearthed by archaeologists, but also on the recorded observations of their neighbors.

  In Central Asia, the Iranian nomads, whom the Persians called Saka and the Greeks Scythians, became an essential link between the growing civilizations of the Middle East and China. Nonetheless, crucial tools such as writing, central to the development of settled societies, do not appear to have come to the steppe until well into the first millennium CE. The agricultural revolution that spurred population growth elsewhere found only spotty reflection here. The nomads were best known for their martial prowess exhibited in their archery from horseback or a war chariot. In Old Iranian, the term rathaeshtar (aristocrat/warrior) literally meant “he who stands in a chariot.”

  The ancient Iranians believed that all things, even abstract ideas, possessed a living spirit. They made offerings to gods of water, fire, and other elements. Believers also imbibed an intoxicant, haoma (Sanskrit: soma) made from ephedra. Warriors seeking to achieve a state of ecstatic frenzy for combat partook of this stimulant. A special class of priests performed purification rites daily. The maintenance of ritual purity was essential to preserving asha, the natural order of the world and cosmos. Asha governed sunrise, sunset, the seasons, and justice. Humans were created to contribute to this by struggling for truth and justice and against the Lie (drug) and Evil.

  Zoroaster (Zarathushtra in Old Iranian, which means “camel-driver”), the religious reformer after whom the Zoroastrian religion is named, most probably lived in Central Asia in the upper Amu Darya region, perhaps about 1200–1000 BCE (some scholars date him as early as 1500 BCE or as late 600 BCE; others place him in northwest Iran). In this “expanse of the Aryans” (âryânâm vaêjô), Zoroaster emphasized the ethical base of ancient Iranian beliefs, exalting Ahura Mazda (Lord Wisdom) as the Supreme Being and ruler of the forces of the Good. He heads the struggle against Ahriman, the leader of the demonic forces, a figure akin to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of the Devil. Zoroaster underscored human responsibility to fight Evil. He believed that he received his prophetic revelations at the beginning of the last of four 3000-year cycles. After him, a savior-like figure will appear every 1000 years. The last of them, born of Zoroaster’s miraculously preserved seed, will usher in the final struggle with Ahriman, the Day of Judgment, the end of days, and the attainment of paradise for the good. These ideas did not immediately win over his compatriots, but would have a profound impact on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

  The Scythians, expert equestrians, employed their horses in war and in sport. Hare hunting, conducted on horseback at breakneck speed with short lances, was particularly popular and is often depicted in Scythian art. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, New York

  Subsequently, the Sasanid rulers of Persia made Zoroastrianism the official religion of their empire, but it never acquired this status in a Central Asian state. In Iran, there was also a hereditary priestly class closely associated with the monarchy, the magu in Old Persian, descended from the priest-tribe of the Medes, a kindred Iranian-speaking people, who dominated Iran and adjoining areas from 728 BCE until the Persians under Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, conquered them in 550 BCE. Zoroastrianism is sometimes called the “Religion of the Magi.” In Central Asia, Zoroastrianism, also termed Mazdaism or Mazdayasnaism (Mazda worship), incorporated elements from local beliefs and other religious traditions.

  These ideas do not appear to have affected the Iranian Scythians (late eighth-to fourth-century BCE), the Sarmatians who supplanted them, or later Iranian nomadic tribes, which formed a series of confederations stretching from Ukraine to Mongolia. Herodotus considered the Scythians militarily invincible. According to him, they drank the blood of their slain foes, whose heads they brought to their king. The warriors fashioned napkins and clothing from the scalps of those they had killed and made drinking goblets from their skulls. Scythians swore oaths by consuming a mixture of blood (contributed by the oath-takers) and wine into which they first dipped their arrows or other weapons. In annual tribal or clan gatherings, those who had killed their enemies were permitted to join the chief in drinking a specially brewed wine. Those that had not were barred from participation in this ceremony, a signal dishonor.

  Herodotus reports that the kindred Issedones consumed the flesh of their deceased fathers, mixing it with chopped sheep and goat meat. The deceased’s head was then cleaned and gilded, serving afterwards “as a sacred image” to which they made sacrifices annually. Alien customs aside, Herodotus notes that they “observe rules of justice strictly” and women enjoy “equal power” with men.6 Strabo, a Greek geographer in the first century BCE, says much the same of the kindred “uncouth, wild, and warlike” Massagetae, who are “in their business dealings, straightforward and not given to deceit.”7 The “animal style” art of the later Scythians, with its realistic and dramatic depictions of animals, expressed their love of the hunt and the natural world. The Scythians believed that animals possessed magical powers and they decorated their clothing, everyday objects, and weapons with animal images.

  Meanwhile, other Iranians settled in some of the oases and fertile river valleys, forming the Sogdian and Khwarazmian peoples in what is today Uzbekistan and the Bactrians in Afghanistan. Yet others, such as the Khotanese Saka, went further east and established themselves in a number of oasis city-states in Xinjiang. Although dispersed across Central Asia, the various Iranian peoples retained much in common. Sima Qian, the “grand historian” of China, reports that the Iranians from Ferghana (eastern Uzbekistan and adjoining parts of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) to Iran share “generally similar” customs and speak “mutually intelligible” languages. “They are skillful at commerce and will haggle over a fraction of a cent. Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women.”8 Overall, information about them is sparse. There may have been some loose political structures centering on Khwarazm (western Uzbekistan) and Bactria (Afghanistan). Living on the borders of the steppe world and familiar with the nomads, Bactrians, Khwarazmians, and especially Sogdians were in an excellent position to serve as middlemen in trade.

  Cyrus, the Persian who founded the first great land empire, extending from the Near East to northern India, invaded Central Asia. He subjugated Bactria, Sogdia, and Khwarazm, but subsequently perished in 530 BCE while leading a campaign against the Scythians. The Scythian queen, Tomyris, seeking revenge for her son’s death, placed Cyrus’s head in “a skin with human blood”9 and declared that now the bloodthirsty conqueror could quench his thirst. Darius I, who came to power e
ight years after Cyrus’s ghastly demise, was unable to conquer Greece but succeeded in Central Asia, subjugating some of the steppefolk. Margiana (modern Turkmenistan), Sogdia, Khwarazm, and Bactria, reached accommodations with the Achaemenids becoming satrapies (provinces) of the Persian Empire until Alexander the Great conquered the region in 330–329 BCE. The Scythians and later Iranian nomads, however, remained independent. Under Achaemenid rule, Iranian Central Asia became involved in long-distance trade networks connecting western and southern Asia. Trade furthered urban development and the expansion of agriculture, irrigated by large-scale canal systems. A system of underground irrigation canals called kârîz (a Persian term), even today an important feature of agriculture in Xinjiang, may have begun during the era of Achaemenid influence in Central Asia.10 Ancient Persia pioneered this kind of canal, today called in Iran by its Arabic name, qanât.

  Alexander’s conquest of Iran (331–330 BCE) and his campaigns in Central Asia brought Khwarazm, Sogdia, and Bactria under Graeco-Macedonian rule. As elsewhere, Alexander founded or renamed a number of cities in his honor, such as Alexandria Eschate (“Outermost Alexandria,” near modern Khojent in Tajikistan). He married Roxane, the daughter of a local Bactrian chieftain,11 in the hope of creating closer bonds with the Iranian East. Alexander IV, his son with Roxane, never achieved full power. The squabbling Graeco-Macedonian generals killed them both in 309 and then divided the empire. By the mid-third century BCE, the Graeco-Macedonian colonists in Bactria broke away, creating their own state in the more northerly parts of Afghanistan.

  The cultural history of Graeco-Bactria, with its rich blend of Hellenistic, Iranian, and Indian artistic traditions is partially known through fragmentary archaeological finds. Buddhism brought by missionaries from India had some success here. Politically, Graeco-Bactria expanded into northern India, Ferghana, and perhaps parts of Xinjiang. Weakened by Saka raiders and domestic strife, it declined by the mid-second century BCE. In 128 BCE, if not earlier, nomadic tribes coming from the Iranian and Tokharian borderlands of northern China overran it. The cause of these movements across the steppe was the rise and expansion of a new power in Mongolia: the Xiongnu.