Samarkand

Assembled from 24 blocks · 2 evidence · 25 related

1. Story
2. Principal city of Sogdiana, in the Zarafshan valley, and the home base of the Sogdian merchant networks that worked the eastern routes. Taken by Alexander in 329 BCE as Marakanda, by the Arabs under Qutayba ibn Muslim in 712, sacked by Chinggis Khan in 1220, and rebuilt by Timur from 1370 as his imperial capital. Papermaking was established here in the eighth century and passed westward from it. The pre-Mongol city stood on the Afrasiab mound just north of the present centre; the Registan, Gur-e Amir and Ulugh Beg's observatory are Timurid.
3. Knowledge
4. Samarkand
5. Bukhara
6. Pamir Mountains
7. Connections
8. Pamir Mountains
9. Bukhara
10. Sogdian merchant networks
11. Papermaking
12. Arab conquest of Transoxiana
13. Battle of Talas
14. Kashgar
15. Samarkand
16. Xuanzang
17. Xuanzang travels to India and back
18. Samarkand
19. Merv
20. Islam
21. Arab conquest of Transoxiana
22. Evidence
23. Documents continuous settlement from the seventh century BCE at Afrasiab through the Timurid rebuilding from 1370, and the city's role as a meeting point of Central Asian, Persian, Indian and Chinese cultural traditions.
24. Five substantially surviving letters of Sogdian merchants, undelivered, showing how the eastern routes actually operated: resident family colonies in a chain of cities from Sogdiana to the Hexi Corridor, goods moved between them in relays, business conducted by correspondence and credit rather than by single long journeys. Letter 2 reports the sack of Luoyang, which anchors the conventional dating to around 313 CE. The letters are written on paper, establishing that the material had reached the far western Chinese frontier by that date.