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

After Alexander: Central Asia Before Islam

Nomads and the shaping of Central Asia

Claude Rapin

Because Central Asia is situated on the border between the steppe belt and the fertile basins of Middle and Southern Asia, its history has been characterised by permanent exchanges between sedentary and nomadic civilisations.

In this article, we will review the well-known problem of the nomadic presence in Ancient Bactria and Sogdiana, in the light of recent archaeological research undertaken in Uzbekistan and in the other Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as in Chinese Turkestan. As we will see, a number of new hypotheses can now be proposed, thanks, in particular, to the excavations of the Franco-Uzbek Archaeological Mission (MAFOuz) at Samarkand/Afrasiab, at Koktepe (30 km north of Samarkand) and on the frontier-wall of the Iron Gates near Derbent (in the Hissar Range about 130 km north of Termez).
Although the fall of the Graeco-Bactrian power in the 2nd Century B.C. is one of the most famous events of this period, it should be viewed as part of a much larger phenomenon, whose origins can already be perceived in the protohistoric period.

At Koktepe, in particular, phases characterised by architectural buildings of the early and middle Iron Age alternate with levels of light wooden constructions, which mark periods during which the sedentary cultures were less clearly established. The huge fortifications of Koktepe and Samarkand may, according to some hypotheses, be dated to the end of the sixth Century. If this is the case then they could be associated with the reorganisation of Achaemenid power after the expedition of Darius I against the Scythians. The threat of these neighbours did not cease for centuries, as the narrative of Alexander’s expedition testifies. When a few decades later, in the course of the IIIrd Century B.C., the Greeks abandoned Samarkand and the territories north of the Hissar Range for the first time, the pressure of the Scythians was so insistent that the Graeco-Bactrian kings were obliged to build the frontier-wall of Derbent. Since then, this huge monument has permanently reflected the nature of the civilisations developing on either side, and today it allows us to propose a sequence of events for a region in which the textual and chronological data is particularly poor.

In the 2nd Century B.C., Eucratides extended his power northwards, as far as the Zerafshan, where he took control of Samarkand and rebuilt its fortifications. Between Bactra and Samarkand, the wall of Derbent, henceforth useless, fell into ruin. But from 145 B.C., new nomadic people stated invading the Graeco-Bactrian territories. This event is recorded simultaneously at Samarkand and at Ai Khanum (known in Antiquity under the name of Eucratidia). The last city seems to have been plundered whilst Eucratides was warring in India against the Indo-Greek king Menander. The nomads whose names have been transmitted by the Graeco-Roman and Chinese sources can be identified: in the East, the Tokhari reach Ai Khanum directly from Chinese Turkestan through the Karategin Valley, soon followed by the Asiani, who, according to us, should be identified with the Yueh-chi, ancestors of the Kushans. In the West, ‘Scythian’ nomads, probably the Sacaraucae, conquer Samarkand via a northern itinerary.

The next chronological reference comes once again from Koktepe, where the monumental tomb of a princess or priestess dated to the first decades of the first Century A.D. was excavated in 2000. This period is marked by a transformation of the geo-political situation in Central Asia. In the East and in the South, the Yueh-chi-Asiani move south of the Hissar Range and found the Kushan Empire. Meanwhile, in the West, the Sacaraucae are eliminated by the Yueh-chi or integrated into the Kangju Confederation, also of Scythian-Saka origin, which from the region of Tashkent extended southwards, through the Zerafshan Valley as far as Derbent. Saka tribes related to the Sacaraucae had already started expanding towards India in the first Century B.C. and some groups of the next period were still present in the first decades of the first Century A.D. in western Afghanistan, where, at Tilla Tepe, one of their kings was buried together with six women, with funerary objects similar to the ones from the kurgan of Koktepe.

The first century of our era is marked by a new balance of power, once again centred on the frontier-wall of Derbent. As in the Hellenistic period, both sides are characterised by two radically different ways of life: on the one hand the Kushan empire, recently sedentarised and integrated into Graeco-Bactrian culture; on the other hand, the Kangju who conserved their nomadic structures. The wall rebuilt by the Kushans materialises a conflictual situation also testified by the function of the Kushan palace of Khalchajan whose decoration seems to illustrate a decisive victory over the Sakas (by Soter Megas-Vima Taktu?). Derbent was not only a frontier of civilisation, but also the northern religious limit of Buddhism: whereas the Kushan directed their influence towards India and the East, the Kangju were mostly oriented northwards and westwards, with special links with the Sarmato- then Alano-Scythian world along the northern Caspian and Black Sea coasts.

Even if the chronology presented in this paper is not definitive, the author insists on the importance of the sites of Ai Khanum, Afrasiab, Koktepe and Derbent. These sites furnish a coherent dataset, which contributes to build an outline of Central Asian history in Antiquity. These hypotheses about the evolution in space and in time of people practically unknown of the ancient historians are not independent of the economic and administrative history and prepare nevertheless to further cultural study of their civilisations.