British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

After Alexander: Central Asia Before Islam

Money as a Marker of Continuity and Cultural Change in Central Asia

Joe Cribb

From the invasion of Alexander the Great until the rise of Islam a millennium of coinage provides a unified indicator of political and cultural change in Central Asia. Since the 1820s British, French, German and Russian scholars have used coin evidence to construct a framework for understanding the history of the region and its scarce and disparate sources.

Only a small number of coins from the reign of Alexander have been found in Central Asia, but for the next three centuries his coinage and his memory shaped the development of its currency systems. The Greek kingdoms of Bactria and India, like the other post-Alexander kingdoms of the Hellenistic world, maintained a currency derived from the Greek system introduced by Alexander’s conquests into the early first century AD. The imagery on the coins kept Alexander’s memory alive until the replacement of Greek rule by non-Greek peoples, the Sogdians, Scythians, Iranians and Kushans, who each produced their own modified versions of the Greek system during the first century BC to fourth AD. The coinages of these non-Greek peoples introduced new elements into the Greek design tradition, drawn from Iranian and Roman adaptations of the same tradition.

From the third century AD Sasanian conquest brought Sasanian coinage and artistic traditions into the region, and new currencies emerged drawing from both their designs and denomination system. The Sasanian coinage had its own origins in the Iranian adaptation of the Hellenistic coinages, but made visual reference back to the Achaemenids. Kushan coinage might also have been similarly inspired in its rejection of Hellenism. Apart from issues made by local Sasanian rulers, Sasanian style coinage was also adopted and adapted by the Hunnic invaders who overthrew Sasanian and Kushan rule in many areas during the fourth century AD. Sogdian coinage also drew inspiration from Sasanian designs, although some Hellenistic elements survived in a modified form. From the seventh century Sogdia’s close trading links with Chinese settlements in eastern Central Asia also drew Chinese coin denominations and designs into the region. From the eighth century the penetration of both political and cultural influence from the Islamic world gradually eliminated the main locally developed elements of the coinage, replacing it with the aniconic designs of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. In a few cities of the region some aspects of local coinage survived through into the coinages of the emerging Islamic states.