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

After Alexander: Central Asia Before Islam

Military architecture in Chorasmia after Marakanda 329/8BC

Svend Helms

What effect did Alexander’s Sogdian campaign have on military architecture in Central Asia and in Chorasmia in particular?

Ancient Chorasmia became part of the Achaemenid empire, most likely under Darius I (522-486 B.C.), as the 16th satrapy which included the Parthians, Sogdians and Arians. This is clear in the archaeological record which shows an abrupt change from an Inner Asian semi-nomadic culture to an apparently urban one whose economy was based on large-scale irrigation. By the time of Artaxerxes I (465-423 B.C.) Chorasmians disappear from Persian imperial records and, but for a brief passage in Arian (and Curtius), Chorasmia seems to have remained outside the Indo-Iranian ambit until the first century A.D. when commercial relations were established with the emerging Kushan empire.

‘About the same time [329/8 B.C.] the King of the Chorasmians, Pharasmanes, arrived at the Court [at Marakanda = modern Samarkand-Afrasiab] with 1,500 mounted troops. He told Alexander that his territory had common frontiers with the Colchians and the Amazon women…’ (Arrian, Anab. iv.16). This meeting is significant because it means that Pharasmanes, like many other regional rulers, must have seen the Macedonian war machine.

Remote and long removed from the ‘civilized’ world and ultimately devastated by the Mongols and later Timur, Chorasmia nonetheless has the best preserved pre-Islamic military architecture in all of Central Asia. This architecture has been recorded by Soviet archaeologists since the 1930s; the Karakalpak-Australian expedition to ancient Chorasmia has continued this work since 1994. The apparent sophistication of the fortifications present a conundrum. Why would such monumental works be built to defend against nomad cavalry? And why did the Chorasmians build defences which appear to be very similar to those of the Hellenistic west?

This paper addresses one aspect of Chorasmian fortifications, outworks or proteichismata, which appear as early as the 5th century B.C. according to Soviet archaeologists. The question is a matter of direction of influence, absolute chronology and function. The fact that Pharasmanes met Alexander and saw his siege train may be significant. It is also interesting that ‘Greek’ fortifications in Central Asia (specifically Ai Khanoum) do not have proteichisma.