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city
Close ✕Samarkand
Principal city of Sogdiana, in the Zarafshan valley, and the home base of the Sogdian merchant networks that worked the eastern routes.
39.7, 67.0 · exact · c. 7th century BCE - present
On the world
- A place in: Silk Road · 9 places
- Joined to: Samarkand — Bukhara · 2 places
Lines mark links and orders the records assert; no path between any two places is recorded, and none is drawn.
Connections · 3 of 4
- connects to Bukhara — Both sit in the Zarafshan valley, roughly 230 km apart, and formed a single commercial and cultural region — the Sogdian heartland, later the Samanid core.
- is barrier before of Pamir Mountains — The Pamir is the constriction between the Tarim Basin and Sogdiana. A handful of high passes, closed by snow for much of the year, control all traffic reaching Samarkand from the east.
- is based in of Sogdian merchant networks — Samarkand and the Zarafshan valley were the Sogdian homeland and the origin point of the colony chain that ran east to Chang'an.
1145 objects · 280 located (1 withheld pending verification) · 865 unlocated · Basemap: Natural Earth (public domain) · marks drawn only from sourced coordinates