Sart

For other uses, see Sart (disambiguation).

Sart was a term used in the history and ethnography of Iran and Central Asia.^[1] The term was commonly applied to sedentary Turks and Tajiks in Central Asia.^[2] Usually bilingual in Turkic and Persian,^[3] they belonged to the same cultural tradition and occupied the same economic role.^[4]

Two Sart men and two Sart boys in the early 20th century

The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Turkmen, being proudly devoted to their rural, nomadic ways of life and values, strongly disliked the highly Persianized speech of Turkic by the Sarts. This instance is comparable to the prejudice the 11th century Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari had displayed toward Sogdianized urban Turks. Meanwhile, the Persian Tajik dialect had been adopting Turkic vocabulary and syntax, which caused it to shift away from standard Persian.^[3]

Origin

There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit sārthavāha (सार्थवाह), meaning "merchant, trader, caravan leader", a term supposedly used by nomads to describe town-dwellers, according to Vasily Bartold, Gerard Clauson, and most recently Richard Foltz.^[5][6]

Rashid al-Din Hamadani in the Jami' al-tawarikh writes that Genghis Khan commanded for Arslan Khan, prince of the Karluks, to be given the title "Sartaqtai", which referred to Uyghurs and Uzbeks.^[7]