Sogdian merchant networks

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Iranian-speaking people of the Zarafshan valley, centred on Samarkand, Bukhara and Panjikent, who dominated the overland trade of the eastern routes from roughly the fourth to the eighth centuries. They are the answer to how goods crossed a distance almost nobody travelled: rather than single long journeys, Sogdians established resident family colonies in a chain of cities from Sogdiana through the Tarim oases to the Hexi Corridor and Chang'an, and moved goods between them in relays on credit and correspondence. Sogdian became a lingua franca of the eastern routes. They also carried Buddhism, Manichaeism and Christianity as a by-product of that network. An ethnolinguistic community, not a place.

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