Part III: The Sogdians—Death by Immigration and Emigration

Sogdiana

Sogdiana, for the most part, comprised the semi-arid and mountainous area of present Uzbekistan’s Samarkand and Bukhara provinces and Tajikistan’s Sughd province.  The Sogdians were Irano-Aryans who had migrated from the Central Asian steppe, and their major cities (which they founded) were Samarkand and Bukhara (Dien n.d., 1; “Sogdiana,” 4).  Sogdiana was the national homeland of this predominately Nordic people during the 2,000 or 1,600-year period from the eleventh or sixteenth centuries BCE until the tenth century CE (Dien n.d.,1; “Sogdiana,” 2; Vaissière, n.d. 1).  Moreover, they dominated the Silk Road trade from the fourth until the eighth centuries CE, at which time they were conquered by the Moslem Arabs (“Sogdiana,” 2; Vaissière, n.d. 1).

Although the Sogdians became very prosperous, they were not politically united.  Typical of many Indo-European merchant societies, they were divided into several city-states.  These small political societies were described by historian Albert Dien (“Glories of Sogdiana” n.d.) as having “an elite of knightly landowners lording it over large, irrigated estates, and rich merchants who were on a social par with the knights” (pp. 2–3).  Many of the Sogdians’ beautiful murals have survived.  These depict, says Dien, “battles between knights, hunts on horseback, various holiday entertainments, processions and nobles sitting at banquets, holding their goblets …” (Ibid).  Although the clothing was Persian, these scenes are reminiscent of their racial kinsmen in medieval Europe.

However, the lack of a central government rendered the prosperous Sogdians vulnerable to foreign invasions.  There were some periods of independence, but these alternated with longer periods as a tributary state respectively of the Achaemenid Persians (500s BCE), the Greeks (starting with Alexander the Conqueror), and the Parthians.  During the fifth century CE, their fellow Irano-Aryans, the Hephthalites, descended from the steppes and conquered Sogdiana.  But that rule was replaced in the sixth century by the Sassanian Persians and then in the eighth century by the Muslim Arabs (Ibid 1–2).

As among the Tocharians, this political disunity was accompanied by a religious transformation.  First, it seems that most of the settled Sogdians adhered to a corrupted form of Zarathustra’s doctrine.  However, by the Common Era, as a result of cultural contacts with the neighboring Kushan Empire, Buddhism made many converts in Sogdiana.  Moreover, through contacts with Persia, Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity gained many followers as well (“Sogdiana,” 4; Dien n.d., 1).

The otherworldly nature of these universal religions caused the Sogdians to indifferently mate not only with other local Aryans and Tocharians, but also with a new and proliferating population of Turkic immigrants.  This process of auto-genocide vastly increased after the eighth century Moslem Arab conquest (“Sogdiana,” 3).  Consequently, by the end of the ninth century, most Sogdians had adopted Islam, began speaking a form of Persian called “Tajik,” and lost their distinct cultural and ethnic identity (Ibid).  This dispossession was accompanied by the Sogdians’ genetic extinction as a predominantly Nordic people.

Sogdians in China

Long before the Sogdian extinction in their national homeland, many of their typically short-sighted merchants migrated to China searching for increased profits.  This trickle began during the second century BCE, and it grew into a much larger flow during the Common Era’s fifth and sixth centuries (Vaissière “Sogdians in China….” 2–3).

As a result of this migration, Sogdian communities were established in China.  At first, they were concentrated in Gansu (in the northwest), but then they spread to the main Chinese towns.  The Chinese referred to the Sogdians as “Kang,” and during the fifth through eighth centuries, an increased trade brought more Kang into China.  And with greater numbers came greater integration and mating with Han Chinese.  Some Sogdians even became government officials and high-ranking military leaders (Ibid, 3–5).

Then in 755, there was a rebellion led by a man named “An Lushan.”  French historian Etienne de la Vaissière (“Sogdians in China….” n.d.) described the significance of this revolt:

An Lushan was the main military governor of northeastern China….  His father was a Sogdian installed in the Turk Empire and his mother was Turk…. His rebellion in 755 nearly destroyed the Tang dynasty and put an end to one of China’s Golden Ages.  The rebellion was quelled only in 763 with the help of the [Turkic] Uighur nomads.  (p. 6)

Most Sogdians did not support this rebellion, but the Tang rulers deemed them guilty as a group and forced them to fully assimilate into Chinese society.  Consequently, the Sogdians adopted Chinese names and intermarried with Chinese (Ibid 6–7).  Thereby, like their brethren in Sogdiana, and their Tocharian kinsmen, the Sogdian Kang rendered themselves cultursally and genetically extinct as an Indo-European people.

References

Dien, Albert E.  n.d.  “The Glories of Sogdiana.”  Retrieved December 16, 2010 from http://www.silk-road.com/artl/sogdian.shtml.  Printed pp. 1–4.

“Sogdiana.”  n.d.  New World Encyclopedia.  Retrieved December 16, 2010 from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sogdiana.  Printed pp. 1–7.

Vaissière, Etienne de la.  n.d.  “Sogdians in China: A Short History and Some New Discoveries.”  Retrieved December 16, 2010 from http://www.silkroad.com/newsletter/december/new discoveries.htm.  Printed pp. 1–8.