Iranians/History

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The Aryans were a semi-nomadic peoples who over various different times founded many different nations all over the Eurasian continent. Their name means 'lord of the land', and is the origin of the term "Iran", ie "Aryanna" or "Arianna" as it was later rendered in Greek and Latin.

Over time, the Aryans would migrate east and west — and in the latter, they would influence history on a global scale. Although some cultures in Warbirth could be considered as offshoots of the Aryan peoples — in particular, the Hittites and Mitanni, and even the Celts, Germans and Etruscans (and tenuously, the mysterious Zhangzhung civilisation in the Tibetan plateau during the early Iron Age) it is the nomadic equestrian cultures that emerged in the early Metal Ages who would be best remembered as having the most profound effects on the civilised world, beginning with the infiltration of the Cimmerian and Scythian peoples into eastern Europe and the northern Middle East, with the latter eventually founding various small kingdoms, from the shores of the Black Sea all the way to India. Yet, these were soon eclipsed by (eventually) more technologically and culturally advanced peoples of Aryan extraction in Asia — that is, the Medes who vanquished the Assyrians and made themselves lords of Asia Minor and the Caucasus before being supplanted later by the mighty Persian and Sogdian civilisations, the latter two having lasting influence over the generations and the entire world, well unto our present day.

This history article is meant to support several mods: Age of Chariots, Rise of the Ancients, Age of Empires and the two pre-modern chapters of the New World Empires project — Alexander, and Swords of the Prophets. As a result, this article will discuss not just the history of Iran as a nation or a people, but as a region as well, comprising not just the Persian core (today the contemporary Islamic Republic) but also other lands to the north and east of modern Iran — most notably, Bactria and Sogdiana, all the way to the end of the early Middle Ages. It will try to shed light on how the Iranian peoples — Medes, Achaemenids, Parthians, Sasanians and Sogdians — influenced global affairs and their neighbours, even as they gradually fell under the sway of the Islamic imperium over the two hundred years covered by Swords of the Prophets.

Wayfarers All: Central Asia in Brief

Dominated in the main by five regions — Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia is a region in the Asian continent that extends from the mountains of western China to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Pakistan and Iran create the southern border of the region, and Russia’s vast expanse is to the north. This is a vast land with an extremely varied geography, including high mountain passes through vast mountain ranges, such as the Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, and the Pamirs. The region is also home to the vast Kara Kum and Kyzyl Kum deserts, which dominate the interior with extensive spans of sand and desolation. The expansive treeless, grassy steppes surrounding the desert regions are considered an extension of Eastern Europe’s steppes, and for many thousands of years ago have had been the home of various nomadic tribes based on the practice of animal herding and horses — an animal that would soon make the Aryan peoples highly influential across the Old World, while the mountains and hills of this land belie valleys that favoured a more sedentary lifestyle based on farming and/or trade, as evidenced by settlements excavated at Sarazm; Tajikistan (4th-3rd millennia BCE) and Kök Tepe; Uzbekistan (dated to the Bronze and Iron Ages).

South of the western reaches of Central Asia lie the lands that would one day be known as Persia — generally correspondent with the territory of the current Islamic Republic of Iran. Sitting astride a plateau south of the Caspian Sea, Persia dominates and controls overland access from the Mediterranean to India and China, and her position meant that it covered a geostrategic location between east and west, linked by the so-called Central Asian Silk Road. Several empires — most notably the Sasanian and Safavid dynasties — leveraged this position of Persia to extend their influence south over the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, even all the way to east Africa.

Central Asia formerly served as a conduit for early humans to migrate overland from Africa and settle Asia in several waves as early as 50,000 years ago, yet in the space of 10,000 years or more thereafter that trend had begun to reverse with humans now migrated westward into Europe from Asia and the Caucasus. In the centuries before Genghis Khan's conquests, various Turkic and Mongol-Tungusic tribes inhabited the steppes of Mongolia. These various ethnic groups alternatively ruled each other during this time, one group would gain power and subdue the others until another group formed to topple the previously superior power. Others, for this reason or the other, would sometimes migrate out from Central Asia and west toward Europe and the Middle East. Control of the Persian highlands gave a potential conqueror the ability to strike east or west, as was so decisively demonstrated by Hulagu Khan of the Mongols and Timurlane of the Tatars.

Yet human conflict and migrations weren't the only things enabled by the location of Central Asia and Iran in the wider Eurasian megacontinent: as early as the early Classical Western period, trade routes from Alexandria in Egypt and Aleppo in Syria all ran through Persia. The northerly routes connected Tabriz in northwestern Persia to the Central Asian cities of Samarqand and Bukhara, thence through the ancient Silk Road through Turkestan to China. The southern trade routes ran through Isfahan to Kabul in Afghanistan and from there through the passes of the Hindu Kush to the vast Indo-Gangetic plains. Large caravans plied these caravan routes carrying with them not only the goods produced by the principal trading centers of the ancient world but also scholars and adventurers. Persia became a crucible of ideas, melding its own ideas with the ancient wisdom of China, India and the Mediterranean.

Primordial Beginnings: the First Iranians

Much of the origins of the Aryan race remains shrouded in mystery even to this day, and to a certain extent (owing to the Aryan roots of so many different nations in our time) it too has been politicised by various parties. The most commonly accepted thesis so far is that the Aryans - and their Iranian descendents - were originally nomadic peoples who had managed to domesticate the horse by around 3000BCE. These peoples migrated out of the Central Asian steppes across the world, with those eventually forming the storied nations of the Medes and Persians arriving in present-day Iran sometime after 1000BCE. More esoteric and less accepted views however pinpoints the origins of the Aryan race either within the borders of the modern republics of Iran and/or India, with migrations out northwards, westwards and southwards, having domesticated the horse almost 5 millenia before the most commonly accepted date — yet these claims were never been truly verified.

The earliest culture that can be traced as uniquely Indo-Iranian (as opposed to Indo-European) is probably the Sintashta culture of Central Asia located just above the Caspian (present day Kazakhstan, with bits in the sounthern reaches of the present day Russian Federation) at around 2100BCE. The Sintasha culture, first identified by Soviet archaeologists beginning in the 1970s CE, is famous not just for having constructed the earliest known horse-drawn chariots, but also for creating what Russian archaeologists have called Strana gorodov or the "Country of Towns" — a vast collection of constructed complexes, all dating back to as early as the 21st century BCE. Of these, the most well known example are the fortified settlements discovered at Sintasha and Arkaim, close to the present-day city of Chelyabinsk. These were vast fortified cities built entirely of wood and surrounded by fortifications and burial mounds — one such mound yielded up the remnants of a chariot, yielding the widely-accepted theory that the Indo-Iranians were the first people to have designed and used chariots.

The Sintashta culture was eventually succeeded by the Andronovo culture, around 2000BCE, occupying large tracts of modern-day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and neighboring areas. Andronovo officially marks the end of the Proto-Indo-Iranians since it is here that the Indo-Iranians split into two (or more) sub-groups, most notably, the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians. Once more, these groups soon ventured southward and eastward into India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and even as far east as Tajikistan and western China. Our earliest undeniable record of Indo-Iranians (Indo-Aryans, to be precise) comes from Syria in the Mittani kingdom. But soon afterward, we come across records in Indo-Pakistan and Iran, while those who remained back in the steppe would be mentioned in the works of the Chinese and the Greeks (Scythians — Iranians who migrated back westward along the Steppes), as well as their cousins in Persia and India. In each of these places that Aryans went, they mixed with local populations both absorbing and influencing their cultures to the extent that they became extremely diverse, both culturally and geneticaly.

The Aryan peoples spoke the Proto-Indo-Iranian language — a collection of related dialects that split off from Proto-Indo-European. We do not know whether they identified as a single ethnic entity, but we do know that they used the term Ārya to refer to themselves. For this reason, some academics, including Asko Parpola, Josef Wiesehöfer, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, use the derived word Aryan to refer to them. In truth, we have no direct records of them or their language, but educated guesses can be made about them and their lives by comparative linguistics and sociology on their ethno-linguistic descendants, namely, the modern Indo-Iranian people. At their height, Indo-Iranian languages were spread from western China in the east to Ukraine in the West but over time, they would be supplanted by new migrants from Asia. The Indo-Aryans of Syria were already extinct by the time of our records of fragments of their language in the Mittani kingdom. In the west, Steppe Iranians were absorbed into the expanding Slavic (and some Germanic) tribes, coupled with frequent invasions from the East, such as the Huns and the Mongols. In the east, it was Turks, as well as other powerful Iranian groups, like the Persians.

Today, only a few isolated remnants of Steppe Iranians survive, such as the Ossetians in the Caucasus, the Yaghnobi in Northern Tajikistan, and the Pamiris in Tajikistan and Afghanistan and parts of western China. Most of the rest of the Central Asian Iranic population (in parts of Uzbekistan and most of Tajikistan) comprises Tajiks — a Persian-speaking ethnic group.

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The Settlers: Cimmerians, Scythians and Medes

While archaeology has identified several westward migrations of Indo-Aryan peoples into Europe and the Middle East, the first historically recorded group of migrants were the Cimmerians (or, the Gamiri, or Gimara as the Assyrians called them in Akkadian). It is generally accepted that they were possibly an Iranian people, given the descriptions provided by interpretation of Assyrian records (there too are other theories of pseudohistorical value on the origins of the Cimmerians but they shall not be covered by this article). In the Assyrian language, gimara meant something like "people traveling back and forth" and seems to be the less adequate of the two renderings of the Cimmerians' Indo-European name, but it describes their way of life excellently, because they were nomads. The Cimmerians were closely related and are archaeologically almost identical to the Scythians, who may have expelled them from their home country. There is no scholarly consensus on their origins. Some opinions place the origin of the Cimmerians on the Crimean peninsula (compare the word gamiri with the Russian name for Crimea, "krim" / "cream"). Archaeologists have identified them with the 10th century BCE Novocerkassk culture on the grass plains between the river Prut and the Lower Don, who practised bovine pastoralism and interred menfolk with weapons. Allegedly, remnants of Novocerkassk culture provenance have also been found in Bulgaria, raising questions again on the true origins and extent of the Cimmerian peoples. Yet others argue that the origin of the Cimmmerians lie further east, beyond Ukraine, in Central Asia.

Whatever their origins, the Cimmerians made their historic debut when they ravaged Asia Minor, and were sufficiently powerful so as to challenge Assyria, that the Assyrians — despite being the Middle East's dominant military power — had to seek help from several other Indo-European peoples — namely, the Scythians, the Medes and finally the Persians. For reasons that are still unknown, the Cimmerians began moving southward toward the Caucasus, threatening the kingdom of Urartu, who was then a powerful rival of Assyria. The Urartian king Rusa attempted to fend them off, but failed — caught between the Cimmerian hordes to the north and the Assyrians to the south, Urartu was subsequently ravaged, forcing Rusa to take his life in shame and leaving Urartu a client state of the Assyrians. After Urartu, the kingdom of Phrygia was next. In a panic, the Phrygians (under their king Mittaa or Midas) asked for help from the Assyrian king Sargon II. However help came too late — the kingdom collapsed and Midas committed suicide, leaving the Cimmerians to take his lands — excavations at Gordium, the old Phrygian capital (now near Ankara, the capital of the present-day Republic of Türkiye, viz Turkey) revealed that the city was destroyed around 675BCE. After this, Assyrian sources stated that the Cimmerians split into several groups and ravaged the lands of Asia Minor, with one group led by a chieftain named Lygdamis (or Dugdamme by the Assyrians) repeatedly ravaging the fledgling kingdom of Lydia, while another horde penetrated into the highlands of eastern Anatolia, reaching as far as the lands of Elam (western Iran). However, the Cimmerians would soon be defeated by the Assyrians and the Lydians, during the reign of the Lydian king Alyattes (c early 6th century BCE).

In the wake of the Cimmerians, came two other groups of Indo-Aryan nomads — the Scythians and the Medes (also known as the Medians or Maedians), to whom the early Persians were a client tribe. The devastation the Cimmerians wreaked upon Asia Minor and Assyria's subjugation of the Elamites in the 640s BCE soon created a power vacuum which was quickly and quietly filled in by the Median peoples, who settled in eastern Asia Minor and Elam with Assyrian connivance — the king of the Assyrians, Ashurbanipal, wanted to see Elam fully subjugated and assimilated into the Assyrian empire as soon as possible.

Upon assimilating the last of the Elamites, the Medes formed a new kingdom, centred around the city of Ecbatana (today Hamadan; Iran). When an attempted coup broke out in Assyria in the year 626BCE, the Medes went along with a Chaldean-led coalition that included the Scythians to take advantage of Assyrian weakness: the Assyrians were destroyed, and then the Medes settled Northern Mesopotamia along with their Chaldean Babylonian allies in the 7th century BCE. The Kurdish peoples of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran today claim descent from the Medes. While the Medes would eventually assimilate the ways and culture of their more sedentary subjects (most notably the Elamites) and provide a developed cultural base for the future Achaemenid dynasts to improvise upon, the Scythians however continued to live the same way as their Central Asian forbears — a life of pastoral nomadism, leavened by raiding and slave trading.

As with the Cimmerians, not much is known of the true origins of the Scythians — one school of thought insists on an east European origin in southwestern Russia or Ukraine, while another postulates an origin further east in Siberia. Whatever the case, the Scythians were famous for their skills with archery, both on foot and on horseback, and were highly sought after as mercenaries, first by the Assyrians, and then by the Babylonians, Medes, Persians and Greeks. It is also thought that the Scythians too were present in Turkestan, and were in contact with the Zhou Chinese too, who described them as being "blue-eyed redheads".

Over time, the Scythians through contacts with the Greeks would become sedentary and found themselves new colonies throughout the Black Sea coasts — Greek-produced gold jewellery recovered in excavations by Russian and Ukrainian archaeologists of Scythian burial mounds belie the power and influence of these Scythian kingdoms. But whereas these kingdoms would eventually fade from living memory, the one founded by the Medes would survive the test of time: in 553BCE, a petty king of Persian and Median ancestry, named Kurush, who ruled the city of Anshan in former Elamite territory, would stage a rebellion against his Maedian masters, and eventually seize control of Ecbatana in 550BCE, founding the Achaemenid dynasty.

History — especially in the West would remember him as Cyrus the Great of Persia.

Roundel media.png Persia (Arsacid, Sasanian)

Rise of the Heartland: Persia and Sogdia

The role which the Persians and the Sogdians played on the world stage is simply one that cannot be overlooked by any serious student of history, for the Persians left one of the greatest footprints of any people in history, managing to create several empires that would influence the development of both Eastern and Western civilizations, whereas the Sogdians became significant cultural and commercial middlemen, helping in the development of many East Asian civilisations — most notably, the Turkic and Chinese ones. Shrewd rulership as well as flexibility in politics, honed by the experiences of the Persians' Indo-Aryan nomad ancestors, would lend the Achaemenid imperial system immense longevity, even allowing it to survive by attracting the favour of Alexander the Great following his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire.

In turn Alexander's Seleucid successors retained and perpetuated it before being supplanted by the Arsacids and then the Sasanids. Yet this system, which came close to a federalist system as opposed to the more despotic top-down system as favoured by other rulers, such as the Chinese, Egyptians and Babylonians, had its own faults — while it granted autonomy to its subjects, it was susceptible to corruption and abuse by the local governors or satraps — in the later decades of the Achaemenid dynasty, this would lead to rebellions and eventually war with the Greeks — a problem that would soon haunt the future Greek, Parthian and Sasanian rulers of Persia. Still, notwithstanding war and domination by the Greeks and much later the Huns, later on, this Old Persian civilization of Cyrus the Great would endure through art, architecture, philosophy, science, history, sporting and military matters, up to the present day.

The Persians

The scion of the Achaemenid empire, Cyrus, was himself descended from the third king of Media, Cyaxares. Beginning with independence from the Median empire by 550BCE, Persia under the heirs of Cyrus was to become the largest in all of Antiquity. After Media would come most of the known world, and the Achaemenid Empire was to become the largest in all of Antiquity; the period of this "First Persian Empire" the most regarded in traditional history and popular culture, as Rise of Nations demonstrates: in the space of just two generations or so after Cyrus, the Persians would rule an empire that was well over twice the size of that of the fearsome Assyrians only two centuries ago, with the additions of Thrace, northern Greece, Anatolia, and all land between the Zagros in the west and the Karakoram mountains to the east.

Land and empires weren't the only thing the Persians would be famous for: one of the oldest religions, based on the teachings of the prophet Zarathustra (who alleged lived and preached in Central Asia around 1500BCE) would be embraced in full by the Persians during the Achaemenid era. The faith Zarathustra preached, of an epic battle between a powerful deity (Ahura Mazda or Ormuzd) and an evil spirit (Ahriman) in which his followers should do everything in thoughts, words and deeds to aid the side of light, was passed down orally for centuries before it was committed to parchment. It is speculated that this idea of an eschatological clash between the forces of good and evil would eventually cross southward into the Middle East where it would inspire the cult of Mithras, and through a process of syncretic cross-pollination, in turn inspire a new group of religious thought: the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Zoroastrians built temples throughout Iran proper to house their sacred fires, which were tended to by priests and could never be extinguished. The dead were not cremated or buried out of fear of polluting the environment but were instead exposed to the elements and left to rot. By the Sasanian era, Zoroastrian became the dominant religion of Persia and would remain so until the advent of Islam in the seventh century.

By 330BCE, after a long period of turmoil, corruption and instability, the Achaemenid empire was dismantled by the Greeks under Alexander III of Macedon, "the Great" (or rather Gizistag Segunder "The Accursed Alexander" by the Persians themselves), and so the first period of direct foreign rule followed. It is most noteworthy that prior to Alexander the Great's campaigns, Macedon was one of the many Greek states under Persian influence, and upon seizing the Persian empire for himself, Alexander chose to retain the old Achaemenid administrative system (notwithstanding the fact that he had the Persian capital of Parsa razed, after having in turn put many of its citizens to the sword). Still, after Alexander died, his empire fractured apart. The Diadochi, rival generals and friends of Alexander, formed several states and empires throughout the conquered territory. Seleucus, a Macedonian general, came to control most of the former Achaemenid domain: the Iranian heartland, Mesopotamia, Syria, the Levant, and Southern Asia Minor, creating the Seleucid Empire. As the Seleucid kingdom buckled and fractured, so would it fall prey to two new powers: a resurgent Iranian empire under the Arsacid dynasty, which annexed the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia, and the nascent Roman civilisation which dismantled the rest following the Battle of Magnesia in 190BCE. The Greeks and Romans weren't the only ones to challenge the Persians — in the east, the Tocharians and the Scythians would also nibble away at Persian influence — the former would eventually overrun northwestern India and southern central Asia, founding the Kushan Empire in 30 CE.

Nevertheless, the Parthian Arsacids would prevail: stripping the Hellenic colonists of their conquests, the formed forming an Empire on the roots of both their Greek and Persian predecessors, although the Iranian character of the empire would flourish later on, paving the way for future dynasties. On April 28, 224CE, Ardashir I, rebel king of Pārs, brought Western Asia under Persian rule once again by successfully rebelling against, and decisively defeating the Parthian Arsacids, and the Sasanian, or Second Persian Empire, was born; this was the last period of Persian rule before the advent of Islam from Arabia in the form of the Rashidun Caliphate.

In spite of all these upheavals, Persia would continue to exert dominance over Central Asia, be it in the name of the shahs, or for the Greek Seleucids. Of the many lands in Central Asia over which the Persians would extend their influence, perhaps the most significant of these was Sogdiana ("now occupied by modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). This was an area stretching from the rivers Āmu Daryā in the south to the Syr Daryā in the north, with its heart in the valleys of the Zarafšān and the Kaška Daryā. While land-locked, Sogdiana was the point where East, West, and South Asia collided. Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana in about 540BCE. He advanced as far as the Syr Darya, where he established the town of Kyrèschata (Cyropolis), the farthest extent of the Persian empire to the northeast, identified with the site of Kurkath, present day Tajikistan. The palace his grandson Darius built at Persepolis would feature images of Sogdian emissaries in its audience hall or apadana. In later generations, the Aramaic script, used by the Persians for administration, would inspire the Sogdians to invent their own script: one which would eventually be used for transcribing Asian languages, most notably Mongol and Manchurian.

The Sogdians

Occupying a major crossroads region in the overland trade routes situated between the two extremes of the Silk Route, Sogdians became successful both as traders and as suppliers for caravans. In the heyday of the Achaemenid Empire, they were a chief contributor of exotic goods and military labour — various goods, most notably Chinese silk and gemstones, were yielded to the Persian court as tribute.

Yet while human memory has been exceedingly kind to the Persians, the Sogdians have fared less than well: perhaps this is the fate of those civilisations too politically disunited and too disinterested in aggressive expansion. Like the Etruscans who would be eclipsed by the Romans, the Sogdians left almost no written history of their own despite being literate, and exist only in the records of the people who contacted them — and, in some cases, colonised them. We know how skilled the Sogdians were in arts and crafts and how they blended motifs from east and west (as evidenced by the golden hoard of Tilya Tepe unearthed in Afghanistan), yet we know very little about their culture (although the Chinese and Arabs have furnished us with troves of anecdotes on these subjects). Similarly, the Sogdians, in imitation of the Greeks who colonised Bactria and brought Sogdiana into the Graeco-Bactrian fold, struck their own coins, yet again, we know very little of the people who led them. And while the Sogdians, as all great traders, would become transmitters of major world religions — Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity — we thus far know almost nothing of indigenous religious beliefs and systems.

Early Sogdiana constituted the northern frontier of the sedentary world and was in constant contact with the nomads of the steppe and its cities grew around water supplies, and the markets of these oasis towns and cities were often stocked with luxury items from both the Mediterranean and from China, and all points between. Much later, Sogdian merchants plied their trade on all legs of the Silk Route, their written and spoken language developed into a common tongue among traders of many ethnicities. Sogdian artisans too were admired for their excellent craftsmanship, and their interesting blend of western and eastern motifs and imagery is particularly recognizable in art surviving from many of the Buddhist monastic caves and other religious centers scattered throughout the Tarim Basin. At Panjikant, a very large number of wall paintings have been found, which are supplemented by discoveries at Varaḵša, Samarqand, and Šahrestān. Many of these depict the hero Rostam (whose deeds we are aware of thanks to the Islamic era poet Ferdowsi's Shahnameh) but also other heroes of whom all knowledge is lost; and lastly fables, with images from the Panchatantra. Military goods also appeared to be something the Sogdians were proficient at manufacturing too: the wealth of Sogdiana and its proximity to the equestrian nomads of the steppes meant that Sogdiana could afford to equip warriors with horses and armour — Sogdians appear to have provided service to the Achaemenids primarily as armoured cavalry and would do so for many centuries to come for whichever power dominated the steppes.

As for religion, Sogdiana, located beyond the sphere of influence of the Zoroastrian church of Iran, was dominated by an unreformed version of Zoroastrianism which rejected the monotheism of Persian orthodoxy: Ahuramazda was not an ovearching, all-omnipotent figure; rather he had to compete with a host of other deities whose very elaborate representations borrowed many features from the Indian iconographic (tradition; heroic, with cycles of epic combat). Visually, Sogdian religion, lacking the fire altars and unadorned temples of Iran, seemed so different from Zoroastrianism to contemporary Chinese eyes that they considered them two different religions. Other traditions that have been unearthed so far suggest the chief god was not named Ahura Mazda, but instead bore the name Nana, inherited from Babylon (implying that early Sogdian religion was a selenolatry cult since Nanna was a Babylonian lunar deity). At Panjikant, there are also traces of Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism. While there were Sogdian Buddhist missionaries beginning in the 3rd century CE in the emigré Sogdian communities, it appears that it was not until later (c 6th century CE) that Buddhism was established in Sogdiana. Manicheism was spread in China beginning in the sixth century by Sogdians who brought the religion with them and settled there.

For all these reasons, Sogdiana eventually became a powerful trading and cultural force to reckon with, from the Hellenistic Era until the end of the early Middle Ages. Politics wise, however, it was another story for Sogdiana. As mentioned before almost nothing of early local political development is still unknown and it is to Chinese sources from the 5th to 8th centuries CE, as well as Umayyad Arab records, that we find the most elaborate descriptions of Sogdiana in the latter centuries of her existence. Nevertheless, native documentation on the subject of law and order in mediaeval Sogdiana do exist: in addition to indigenous coinage, Sogdian documents — the archives of the king of Panjikant, hidden in 722CE — were retrieved from Mount Mugh by Soviet archaeologists in the early 1930s.

While Samarqand was certainly the largest town and its princes claimed kingship beginning in the second half of the seventh century, it was surrounded by many independent principalities that sent ambassadors of their own to the Chinese court (eg Panjikant, Kabuḏān, Bukhara, Keš, Eštiḵan). These luminaries at times also bore the title of prince. The mediaeval principalities of Sogdiana grouped themselves under many lords (xuf). Amongst these princes, the king in Samarqand was no more than primus inter pares, and the dynastic successions are still unclear. The urban population seems to have exercised real political power, as at Paykent, city of merchants, where no aristocracy has come to light, and at Panjikant or Čāč as well. It is in the name of the community (nāf) that the bridge at Panjikant was leased, and it was in the name of the nāf that some coins were struck at Čāč. The fields, on the other hand, in contrast to all of mercantile and commercial life, appeared to be under the absolute control of the xuf. The xuf sent their rents home to town where they had establishments of their own and supported a significant population of craftsmen and merchants. The decentralised nature of local politics appears to have left the Sogdians weak and susceptible to outside pressure — which would eventually lead to their downfall as accounted by Muslim authorities, most notably the Abbasid Persian chronicler Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari.

Sogdians

The Coming of Dohag and Turan: Foreign Domination of Iran

Sasanian rule was characterised by considerable centralisation, ambitious urban planning, agricultural development, and technological improvements. Historians believe that society was divided into four classes: the priests, warriors, secretaries, and commoners. The royal princes, petty rulers, great landlords, and priests together constituted a privileged stratum, and the social hierarchy appears to have been fairly rigid. The Zoroastrian priesthood became immensely powerful, its head, the mobadan mobad ("priest of priests") along with the military commander, the eran spahbod and the head of the bureaucracy, being among the great men of the state. Warfare was a vital concern, as in previous dynasties, for Sasanian Persia faced almost constant conflict. It was the Sasanian empire who, after almost 700 years, would regain control of Sogdiana for the Persians. Following Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia and the introduction of Greek rule, Sogdiana would be lost to the Persians for a while, and in that time period, control of Sogdiana would pass, following several rebellions and destructive civil wars, from the Greeks to a host of Scythians who later on conquered northern India, before being in turn overthrown by the Kushans, who were riding westward following the loss of their homeland to the Huns.

By the beginning of the reign of Shapor I (240CE), Persia was now sufficiently rejuvenated enough to assert itself by military means: Shapor began his reign with a 10-year campaign in Central Asia, which culminated in the subjugation of Sogdiana in 250CE. He would turn back west to fight the Romans, and although he would be defeated by the Roman client-king Odaenathus of Palmyra and his queen Zenobia before dying in 270CE, control of the east — and Sogdiana — would well carry on long after Shapor's passing. Yet, Persian control of Sogdiana would not last.

As mentioned before, for all the political centralisation conducted under Sasanian rule, the Persians still continued to rule using local proxies. This often created much friction and instability in the empire, especially in its western provinces bordering Rome (and would cost them dearly in the east). Additionally, corruption, court intrigue and outright civil war — either as part of a side effect of foreign invasion, or provoked by the threat of it, would also sap the vitality of the Sasanians. Shapor I attempted to consolidate his rule and influence by strengthening the institution of Zoroastrian priesthood to instill some sense of national identity in the empire and its subject regions. However this backfired in the years after his death — the priesthood became so powerful that they could influence the decisions of his successors: when Shapor's son Hormizd attempted to limit their influence, he was assassinated and replaced with his brother Bahram I who was more pliable and willing to engage in persecution of religious minorities — an unwise decision, for it heightened religious tensions in Armenia, which was falling under the sway of Christianity. Only during the reign of Shapor's great-grandson (also named Shapor II) did the crown regain some semblance of control — but the damage was done: for most of the Sasanian period, Armenia would change hands many, many times throughout the Sasanian dynasty's 4-odd centuries of rule, becoming a geopolitical and religious ulcer that would drain the shahs of much treasure and blood.

Children of Tur: The Huns

The Sasanians did not just have to vie with Rome (and her African ally, Abyssinia) for power in the Middle East, but also had to cope with two major barbarian threats — the White Huns, and then the Turks. After Shapor II's death in 379CE, the Huns first struck in 388CE, seizing control of the strategic city of Kabul from the empire. Next, they invaded Persia in 395CE, taking advantage of a weakened Roman garrison in Anatolia to ride down into the northern Middle East to attack Ctestiphon (then the capital of the Sasanians). Although this invasion was repulsed, it caused much damage — Roman sources writing decades after stated the main reason the Huns invaded Persia was due to a famine; they were seeking plunder in order to survive.

But while the Sasanians could rebuff this attack against their core heartlands, they were not so lucky during their next encounter: this time, the Huns attacked from the northeast. At first, the Sasanians could resist them, but following the death of Yazdegerd II in 457CE, the Sasanians were now on the brink of civil war. A son of the late emperor, named Peroz, called to the Huns for help in his struggle against his brother Hormizd, who had inherited the throne. Although Peroz prevailed, he left Persia open to the Huns. Persia was sacked in 474CE and Peroz himself was captured by the Hephtalite Huns. Peroz's daughter Perodokht was taken as a hostage and royal concubine, while the empire itself went into vassalage for almost 80 years. During this time, the Hephtalites repeatedly sacked the eastern reaches of the empire, and bled it dry — in the process, Bactria and Sogdiana would be lost to the Sasanians forever.

Nevertheless, the Persians tenaciously held out and in 531CE, they got their chance. Another group of horse-riding nomads, the Turks, had overthrown their masters, the Avars, and were now pursuing their former overlords across Central Asia, where they encountered the Hephtalites and the Sasanians. Sensing opportunity, the Persian king-emperor Khosrau reached out to the Turks and together they went after the Hephtalites: by 557CE, the Hephtalite empire ceased to exist, and this time the Huns were themselves forced to pay tribute to the Sasanians. However, this was not the end of Sasanian difficulties. Shortly after the death of Khosrau, the Turks, emboldened this time by the Byzazntine Romans, now attacked the Persians, sparking off a new wave of wars in the east. The Huns, having survived Khosrau's destruction of their empire, also joined in and once more, the eastern reaches of the Persian empire were ablaze, and would remain as such for the next century or so, until a new invader arrived: the Arabs.

Dohag's Progeny: The Arabs and Islam

For centuries, the Arabs had been the victims of more powerful and better organised neighbours. Although they had once known some sense of greatness and pride from being the founders of ancient kingdoms such as Dilmun, Nabataea, Palmyra and Himyar, by the 5th and 6th centuries, these kingdoms were now little more than fables passed by word of mouth by elders seated around Bedouin camp fires. Now, the Arabs were seen as little more than expendable pawns in the great games played by the great empires of the day — Rome and Persia. Owing to the fractious nature of their society, Arabs were oft looked at askance by Christian Romans and the Zoroastrian Sasanians. Yet, all this was soon to change.

Islam first emerged during the late sixth century CE in the Arabian peninsula, and began to provide an impetus toward the gradual unification of the many Arab tribes into a single cohesive whole — the Rashidun caliphate. By then, Persia and Rome alike had been involved in countless wars for over a few centuries, which combined with the effects of climate change and pandemics (as well as the predation of barbarians such as the Huns) sapped all semblance of stability throughout the Levant. War exhaustion and political instability had eroded the ability of the Sasanian court to effectively impose its will. The growth of Muslims thus overlapped with an important political, societal, economic and martial weakness in Persia so once the first warriors of the Rashidun caliphate arrived, the Sasanian empire simply disintegrated in the face the Muslim invaders following a string of defeats culminating in the Battle of Nahavand in 642 CE. 

Shah Mat: Fall of the Old Ways

“From Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, to the great Kisra of Iran. Peace be upon him, who seeks truth and expresses belief in Allah and in His Prophet and testifies that there is no god but Allah and that He has no partner, and who believes that Muhammad is His Worshipper and Prophet. Under the Command of Allah, I invite you to Him. He has sent me for the guidance of all people so that I may warn them all of His wrath and may present the unbelievers with an ultimatum. Embrace Islam so that you may remain safe. And if you refuse to accept Islam, you will be responsible for the sins of the Magi.” —Letter of the Prophet Muhammad to Emperor Khosrau II

The seventh and eighth centuries CE saw great change to the status and cultural influence of Iran, both as a regional power as well as a cultural centre, as native Zoroastrian rule was supplanted and eventually evaporated with the emergence of Arab domination of the Persian nation and her sphere of influence, most particularly Sogdiana to her northeast. The events that would transpire after the battle of Nahavand (642CE) would influence not just Persia, but the trajectory of Muslim Arab civilisation itself, too — and would continue to shape the world we live in even unto this very day.

Muslim conquest of Iran and Transoxiana

Arab Muslims first attacked Sasanian territory in 633CE, when the legendary general Khalid ibn Walid conquered Mesopotamia, which was the political and economic centre of the Sasanian state. After the transfer of ibn Walid to the Byzantine front in the Levant, the Muslims however lost their assets and belongings to Sasanian counterattacks. It then fell to another general, Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas, who would consummate the great work started by the formidable ibn Walid. Ibn Abi Waqqas soon struck back against the Sasanians, wherein a significant triumph at the Battle of Qadisiyyah led to the permanent decline of Sasanian control west of Iran. The Zagros Mountains turned out to be a natural wall and border between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Sasanian Empire. Still, as a consequence of regular raids by Persians into the area, Caliph Umar ordered a full attack on the Sasanian empire in late 641CE; this resulted in a crushing defeat for the Persians at Nahavand where the Muslims triumphed in spite of the superior numbers of the Sasanians.

Thus by 651CE, most of the urban areas in Iranian lands, with the noteworthy exemption of the Caspian provinces (Tabaristan) and Transoxiana, had come under the power and control of the Arab armies. Those who could fled the Muslim invaders and went into exile in Central Asia and China (such as Peroz, the son of the last Sasanian shah Yazdegerd III), many localities still continued armed resistance; ultimately, none were successful. Yet there were many others, particularly members of the Persian highborn clans, who had long been disgruntled with the Sasanians, had already been contemplating defection or had done so and secured their position, albeit now as servants of a Muslim Arab empire in place of a native Zoroastrian one. At first, the new Muslim occupiers ruled Iran with a fairly lenient hand but with the change in the caliphal dynasty, from the Umayyads to the Abbasids, in 750CE, came large scale conversions to Islam, either through the offering of enticements (ie lower financial burdens) or through coercion. So despite some resistance from elements of the Zoroastrian clergy and other ancient religions, the vast majority of Iranians became and have remained Muslims, thanks to those Persian nobles who converted to the beliefs of their new overlords, eventually becoming the scions of the new Muslim dynasties that were to rule Iran in the name of the Umayyad caliphs who supplanted the Rashideen. But while the fall of the Sasanians was an astonishingly fast process, the Muslim conquest of the Sogdians was a different story, as were the fates of the Persians and the Sogdians alike.

While Zoroastrianism and the Persian language would stand the test of time, the indigenous beliefs of the Sogdian peoples and yea, their language, would not, despite the fall of indigenous Sogdian civilisation being a slow and protracted affair which took decades, if not centuries. Although the fall of Iran would begin the process of Islamisation in Sogdiana in earnest, it wasn't until after the seizure of Samarqand by Umayyad commander, Qutayba ibn Muslim (cy 712CE) that Islam could spread its influence into Sogdiana. And even so, the Turgesh Turks, to whom the Sogdians were tributaries, did not take the Arab encroachment well. When ibn Muslim was slain in a mutiny after 715CE, the Turgesh wasted no time in retaking the region, instigating rebellions against the Arabs. Only the death of the Turgesh warlord Suluk and a Turgesh succession crisis allowed the Muslims — this time under the Abbasids — back into the region where they would stay and consolidate their influence — a process that would be intensified after their defeat of Chinese Tang forces at Talas in 751CE, leading to Muslim hegemony over Central Asia for more than a thousand years.

Under the Abbasids, and later their more powerful vassals — the Samanids, the Kara Khans and later the mighty Khwarezmians and Selcuks — any sense of Sogdiana being an independent nation or culture would vanish: while the major cities of Sogdiana — Samarqand, Bukhara and Tashkent — would continue to be hubs of commerce and high culture in Muslim Central Asia for centuries, their inhabitants were now part of the Persian sphere and in the main spoke Turkic and Dari (a variant of Persian). Today, the indigenous language of their ancestors, known as Yaghnobi, is now limited to a small enclave in the republic of Tajikistan, while all semblance of indigenous Sogdian religion has all but disappeared. Still the subjugation of Sogdiana was not the end of the Sogdian people.

The Last Sogdians of China

After the loss of their native states in Transoxiana, the Sogdians continued to exist as a significant ethnic minority in China, where they had been present for many centuries — that is, until An Lushan's rebellion.

In 737CE, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang lost his favourite concubine, and sought to replace her. Upon seeing his son's new wife, the daughter of a bureaucrat named Yang Yuhuan, Xuanzong decided that she would become his next favourite concubine and so convinced his son to let him add his former daughter-in-law to his own harem in 745CE as guifei Yang — a name that would one day be associated by the Chinese race with infamy.

Yang Guifei — as she would be known by later generations — wasted no time in interfering in court politics, and managed to get her second cousin, Yang Guozhong, into the imperial civil service where he soon became Imperial chancellor. This was not enough, however: Yang Guifei attempted to have Xuanzong's field marshal, an ethnic Sogdian by the name of An Lushan, replaced by her own cousin. Fearful for his life as his position was undermined by Yang, An rebelled in 755CE, plunging China into one of the worst civil wars of all time. And while An would be killed in a mutiny and the ruling Li royal family eventually prevailed in 763CE, China would never be the same again: after the civil war, the Tang state began to decline and weaken.

The loss of Tang authority resulted in anti-Middle Easterner pogroms that would sweep across China in the decades thereafter, decimating the local Sogdian community of China. Within two centuries of An Lushan's death, the largest and most vibrant Sogdian enclaves outside of old Sogdiana would be extinguished, guaranteeing the decline and extinction of Sogdian culture in centuries to come.

Fallen Embers: The Principalities of Gilan and Armenia

Contrary to popular(ly misguided) preconceptions in contemporary culture, the process of Islamisation of Iran was not an overnight process, nor did it involve mass slaughter as some of Islam's biggest detractors (or even, proponents) might argue.

Rather, Islamisation was a process that took at least several centuries, and while it certainly meant the end of Iran's indigenous religious identity, it did not spell the end of Iranian culture or even the end of Zoroastrianism itself. While Zoroastrians fled Iran for lands as varied as China, India, and the Balkans, many nevertheless stayed behind. Under the Rashidun rule, the Persians were (wisely) allowed to speak and use Persian, as was the case with Syria and Egypt where Greek and Coptic remained the de facto languages, but under the rule of the second caliphate — the Ummayads, Arabic was imposed as the primary language. And while the fall of the Sasanian dynasty saw the end of Zoroastrianism as the state religion, heralding the persecutions of Zoroastrians and attempts at suppressing Persian cultural identity, it did not end the existence of Zoroastrianism, either.

Of the many reasons why Zoroastrianism or Persian cultural identity could survive was because of the policies of brilliant past Sasanian leaders like Shapor I or Khosrau I, ensuring Persian culture and language had some long standing influence in the Middle East, which made it difficult to eradicate through outright socioeconomic oppression or massacre. The second next major reason was because of Arab weakness — although the Arabs had apparently seized control of the towns and cities, and now controlled the most arable lands, in truth their control could extend only to where it was most accessible for their communication lines to go. The more remote and inaccessible an area was, the more likely it could mount resistance, especially moreso if there was nothing of interest for the occupiers there.

The most striking case of persistence was the principality of Daylam (known also as Gilan). The home of two tribes — the Daylamites and the Gilaks, with the former providing the Sasanians with some of their finest soldiers, Gilan was located in the mountainous southern coast of the Caspian Sea, and cut in two by the Amardus river, while the Zagros and the Elburz mountains covered its western and southern borders. Because of the rugged terrain of their home in the highlands of the Elburz range and the apparent poverty thereof, the Daylamites grew to become a rugged and fierce people who managed to repulse many invaders of their lands. The courage and fierce warrior spirit of the Dailamid tribesmen is attested by the fact that the majority of the locals managed to continue practising Zoroastrian beliefs well into the 11th century, as the Muslim authorities could not effectively ensconce their rule there, especially where the Dailamids held sway. Only when the ruling chieftains of Gilan embraced Islam could mass conversions to Islam take place in the 9th and 10th centuries CE — and even so, the local Zoroastrian community would hold out well until the 15th century CE. And while the principality's independence would cease, the ancient faith of its inhabitants did not — Zoroastrianism still continues to be practised in the contemporary Islamic republic albeit as a minority, centred mainly around the holy city of Yazd, while the religion itself has spread across the world, through Persian diaspora communities in India and the west. Circumstantial evidence in past years too indicated that ethnic Persians, both within the Islamic republic and without, have also begun re-discovering and returning back (albeit covertly in Iran itself) to this ancient faith. If so, Zoroastrianism may well emerge once more as a prominent religion in the world by the end of the 21st century CE.

Another region in the empire where the struggle against Muslim rule was strongest was Armenia. Like Gilan, Armenia is a mountainous region that favours local defenders against outside aggression (which explains why the Romans and Persians alike had troubles keeping hold of it). Notwithstanding anti-Sasanian sentiment in Armenia, the 642-651CE Rashidin campaign in Persia faced difficulties: the Muslims managed to sack Armenia several times, but never could conquer the territory; only after 653CE did Armenia become a part of the Umayyad imperium after favourable terms granting local autonomy in exchange for tribute obligations to the Muslims were accepted by the Armenians. But by the beginning of the 8th century, the region would be locked in a vicious cycle of rebellions, resulting in greater and more violent repression — which in turn would spark rebellions once more, whenever the Muslim occupiers showed apparent weakness. By the 880s CE, the Bagratid noble family under its lord Ashot eventually took the opportunity to overthrow Arab rule and after a short war, began consolidating the other noble families in Armenia under Bagratid rule. Armenia would remain free for two centuries, depending greatly on the skill of Ashot and his successors in playing off the Saracens and Byzantines against one another. The awesome ruins of Ani (near present-day Kars in modern Turkey), the capital of this state from the onset of the 10th century, attest to a period of peace and prosperity for Armenia during the rule of the Bagratids.

Persians (post-Sasanian)

Ghilman: The Abbasid Revolution and the Iranians

“If learning were suspended in the highest parts of the heavens, the Persians would attain it.” —The Prophet Muhammad (attr)

Despite resistance, Islam nevertheless became the leading religion of the mediaeval Persian world as adoption was spurred by many causes, including by threat and extortion, for political and economic reasons, and/or by persuasion. Yet as spectacular as the Arab conquests in Asia appeared, the end was nigh for Arab hegemony and very soon, the Persians would find themselves thrust back as overlords of the new Islamic world that had for a century eclipsed them. In fact, the new Islamic faith, like Christianity in Europe, would not just help preserve a great deal of Persian culture, but also propagate it farther beyond the ambit of the Achaemenid and Sasanian spheres in centuries to come.

In the meantime, Arab control of Iran would prove tenuous, and was not aided by the discriminatory policies pursued by Umayyad authorities, which favoured ethnic Arabs of any confession over non-Arab Muslims — in other words, new Persian converts. Insurrections eventually doomed the Umayyad empire (although Umayyad rule of Spain would continue until the close of the 10th century), and soon a new leader, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, a relative of the Prophet, was appointed as caliph. Abbas' rule now covered the eastern half of the original Umayyad empire but even his realm was to soon fall apart. Racked with internal unrest, racial tensions between Arab Muslims, non-Arab Muslims and non-Muslims, this empire broke apart into several ruling houses within the space of a few generations: the Idrisids and Aghlabids arose in Africa, while the Turkic Tulunids took Egypt; and the Buyids; Uqaylids; Samanids and Hamdanids took over and fought each other in Iran.

It was the Samanids who began the process of reasserting native Persian identity. Although they stylised themselves as "Emirs" (military commanders) and were eager proselytisers and zealous propagators of Islam, Samanid rule also witnessed the comeback and resurgence of native Persian culture - their ancestors were after all numbered amongst the nobles of the late Sasanian era. Under Samanid auspices the Qur'an was translated into native Persian, while culture, arts and industries flourished throughout the Samanid kingdom, for it was during this period that some of the giants of the Islamic "Golden Age" such as Avicenna and Ferdowsi came to prominence.

Still, Samanid rule too only lasted for a single century when it, like so many previous dynasties before it, succumbed to corruption, inertia and infighting. The Buyid emirs who succeeded them managed to hold on to Iran proper as well as many other areas (most notably present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan) but themselves collapsed by the 12th century CE. The Arabs may have ceased being the dominant power of western Asia by then, but their fall left Iran open to be ruled by another group of foreigners: the Turkic dynasties of Islam.

Roundel scythoi.png Roundel media.png Persia (Arsacid, Sasanian) Persians (post-Sasanian) Sogdians

References

Aryans:

Maedians & Persians:

Sogdians: