Sogdiana

Sogdia (/ˈsɒɡdiə/) or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization in present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan, located in Central Asia.

Sogdia Sogdian: soɣd
6th century BC to 11th century AD
Sogdiana, c. 300 BC, then under the Seleucid Empire, one of the successor states to the empire created by Alexander the Great
Capital	Samarkand, Bukhara, Kesh and Khujand
Languages	Sogdian language
Religion	Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Islam, Nestorian Christianity[1]
Currency	Imitations of Sassanid coins, Chinese coins as well as a hybrid of both.[2][3]

9th century fresco from the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves near Turfan, Xinjiang, China.

Details of a copy of mural called The Ambassordors' Painting, found in the hall of the ruin of an aristocratic house in Afrasiab, commissioned by the king of Samarkand, Varkhuman (ca. 650 AD).

Manichaean miniature image depicting two female musicians, from a Sogdian-language text (Turfan, China).

Sogdian Deities: Daēnā and Nanā, a line drawing sketch from Tunhwang preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Related pages

• Kipchaks
• Tocharians
• Tang Dynasty
• Achaemenid Empire
• Indo-Iranian peoples
• Indo-Iranian languages

Further reading

• "The Sogdian Descendants in Mongol and post-Mongol Central Asia: The Tajiks and Sarts" (PDF). Joo Yup Lee. ACTA VIA SERICA Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2020: 187–198doi: 10.22679/avs.2020.5.1.007.

Other websites

• Sogdian on Interlinguae
• Xerxes II and Sogdianus Archived 21 September 2013 at the Wayback Machine
• The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads (Online exhibition)