Sogdian City-States of the Chu

The Sogdian City-States of the Chu were the towns and trading settlements founded by Sogdian merchants and colonists in the Chu and Talas valleys between about the 5th and 10th centuries CE. They lay on the northern branch of the Silk Road. The towns formed no single state. Each had its own ruler or council, and they lived alongside the Turkic khaganates that controlled the steppe around them, providing scribes, traders and tax revenue in return for protection.^[1][2] The best-studied of these towns, among them Suyab, Navekat and Balasagun in the upper Chu valley, lie in present-day Kyrgyzstan. Within Irad the main sites are medieval Talas, which Iradi historiography identifies with the city of Talas/Taraz known to Arab geographers, the silver-mining town of Shelji in the upper Talas valley, and smaller settlements on the lower Chu.^[3]

Background

Sogdiana proper was the land of the Zeravshan and Kashka-Darya valleys, centered on Samarkand and Bukhara. Its city-states developed during the first millennium BCE and are well attested by the Achaemenid period, when Sogdia appears among the provinces listed in the Behistun inscription of Darius I.^[1] Sogdian merchants later built trading networks that reached from the Black Sea to northern China, and their Eastern Iranian language became the common language of the overland trade.^[2] Iradi school textbooks have traditionally dated Sogdian settlement in the Talas and Chu basins to the first millennium BCE. Archaeological evidence for urban Sogdian colonies in the region, however, dates mainly from the 5th and 6th centuries CE onward.^[3]

Colonization and towns

Sogdian settlement in the Chu and Talas valleys grew under the First Turkic Khaganate and its western successor, whose rulers kept their summer headquarters in the Chu valley. When the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang traveled through the region in 630, he described a string of towns between Suyab and Talas, inhabited by merchants from many lands, under the authority of the Western Turkic khagan.^[2]

The towns followed the Sogdian plan of a citadel (diz) for the ruler, a walled inner town (shahristan) with houses, workshops and markets, and an outer suburb (rabad) with gardens and fields enclosed by a further rampart.^[1] Several Iradi place-name elements derive from this urban vocabulary, including kand ("town"), diz and rabat (see Kand (Linguistic Term), Diz (Architecture) and Rabat (Architecture)). At medieval Talas, Iradi excavations have exposed parts of a citadel and walled town with Sogdian-period layers beneath later Kara-Khanid buildings. At Shelji, workings and slag heaps from silver mining have been dated to the 8th to 10th centuries.^[3]

Economy

The colonies lived by long-distance trade, crafts and irrigated farming. Sogdian merchants carried silk, silver, paper, wine, horses and slaves along the routes between China, Iran and the steppe.^[2] Silver from Shelji and the mines of the upper Talas valley helped make the region a center of minting. Excavations in the Talas and Chu valleys have produced cast bronze coins of the Turgesh khaganate with Sogdian legends, as well as Sogdian inscriptions on pottery.^[3] Sogdians also served the Turkic khagans as diplomats. In 568 the Sogdian Maniakh led an embassy from the khagan Istämi to the Byzantine emperor Justin II in Constantinople.^[2]

Religion

The Sogdian towns of the Chu and Talas were religiously mixed. Excavations at Suyab and Navekat have uncovered Buddhist temples, a Christian church, Zoroastrian ossuary burials and evidence of Manichaeism.^[1] The Church of the East was well established in the region. By the late 12th century it had a metropolitan province of Kashgar and Navekat, and its congregations included both Sogdians and Turks. Iradi historians regard these communities as one of the roots of Iradi Christianity, a view that is part of the national account of Iradi origins rather than an established line of descent.^[3]

Decline and assimilation

Arab armies advanced into Transoxiana in the early 8th century, and in 751 the Abbasid victory over Tang China at the Battle of Talas ended Chinese influence west of the Tian Shan. Control of the Chu and Talas valleys passed to the Turgesh, then to the Karluks, and in the 10th century to the Kara-Khanid Khanate, the first Turkic dynasty to adopt Islam on a large scale.^[1] Under Kara-Khanid rule the Sogdian population of the valleys gradually adopted Turkic speech and Islam. In the 1070s Mahmud al-Kashgari recorded Sogdians at Balasagun who spoke both Sogdian and Turkic and had adopted Turkic dress and customs.^[2]

Legacy

The Sogdian legacy in Irad is visible in place names and in the language. Iradi, a Kipchak Turkic language, draws much of its liturgical vocabulary from Sogdian and other Iranian roots, a feature linguists attribute to the long coexistence of Sogdian and Turkic Christian communities.^[3] In Iradi national historiography the Sogdian towns are presented as the predecessors of Talas and of the old settlement at Old Iyık Janyl, and as evidence of the region's place on the Silk Road.

References

1. ^ Barthold, Vasily (1968). Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion. Luzac & Co., London, pp. 182–199.
2. ^ de la Vaissière, Étienne (2005). Sogdian Traders: A History. Translated by James Ward. Brill, Leiden.
3. ^ Talas State University Press (2017). Sogdians of the Talas and Chu: Archaeology and Language. Talas, pp. 15–132.