It is no easy task to revive the past, particularly when millennia stand between it and the present day. The task is even more formidable when the imagination has little to go on and we rely on plain facts. When ancient historians fail us we have to wrest information from the crumbling walls, ruts in the roads, potsherds, caked dust and cobbles.
The winds whip up the dust over the hills of Afrasiab, the site of an ancient city that breathed its last seven centuries ago. Through the dusty mist let us try to discern the craftsman whose fingers have left their imprint on the clay jug. Let us also try to hear the rustle of apricot trees and pick up the pungent fragrance of the walnut  their leaves have also left an imprint on a piece of clay unearthed during excavations. The cool fragrance of water on a hot day is almost tangible  the flow of the water is also imprinted on the clay banks of irrigation ditches and ponds. The city is a melting pot of people, it is filled with light, colours and sounds. A living city . . .the kilns are aflame in the quarters of the potters, there is a staccato of hammers in the rows of metal embossers. The noisy market is a pivotal centre of everyday life in this big city which knows no cars, no factories with their noisy machine tools and blinding electric lights.
We wish to study a land
That is vast and full of mystery,
Where flowering secrets are open to those

Who wish to learn them . . .
Be condescending to us, ours
Is a constant battle
On the frontiers of future and eternity.
(A. Guyomme)

A substantial portion of Central Asia was within the Achaemenide empire. Soghdiana, along with Khorezm and Parthia, made up one administrative unit, although it is not known when the region fell under the rule of the Achaemenides. A Greek historian of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. mentioned the appointment by King Cyrus II of a ruler of the eastern regions of the Achaemenide kingdom which were populated by Bactrians and Khorezmians among other peoples. King Cyrus conducted extensive military campaigns along the eastern frontiers of his realm. He was killed in 530 B.C. in Central Asia in a battle with the Massagets led by queen Tomiris.
The Behistun inscriptions of Darius I (522486 B.C.) mention Soghdiana among the countries ruled by the Achaemenides, and possibly inherited by Darius I, by the mercy of the god Ahura Mazdah.

The Lalazar district had ample water resources and this attracted settlers. Many people, mostly artisans, settled on the banks of the canals later to be discovered by archaeologists.
The residents engaged in land tillage and ground grain into flour with the help of rock millstones. One day, the local smithy threw away a discarded anvil and lumps of iron . . . Other finds include bronze needles which could have been used by a harness-maker or a shoemaker. River stone of various sizes was used as graters, hammers and anvils.
Archaeologists have also discovered some jewellery  a child's bracelet, an earring, bronze and turquoise beads, hair-pins made of bone.

Pottery was another occupation which was well developed in Lalazar and which was essential for the life of any residential centre. Pottery activity is seen everywhere: the cultural layers are filled with the waste of pottery production, there are numerous fragments of ceramics and kilns.

Soghdian settlements had a life of their own and the course of history prepared their transition to a higher level of socio-economic relations. Demand-oriented production grew, there was a social differentiation of the population and a ruling elite was being established. Apart from the purely internal prerequisites which paved the way to the development of the city, there were also external factors  the threat of attack. Unification of the settlements was in the offing and it was further stimulated by the economic gains to be made.

The site for the new city where the population of several settlements was to find a home was chosen with great care. A compact group of steep hills surrounded by natural water courses could be made to serve as a stylobate for impregnable city walls.

Until recently, it was believed that the city which originated in the Afrasiab area towards the middle of the first millennium B.C. developed gradually as a result of the overgrowth or merging of several settlements. However, archaeological excavations at Afrasiab provided data proving that the settling of its hills coincided in time with the construction of the first fortifications. This means that the people came there to erect not merely a city, but the administrative and economic centre of Soghdiana.

The Afrasiab site is located on a hilly plateau fringed in the east and north by the Siab River, in the south-east by the Obi-Mashad River, and in the west by the dry course of the At-Chapar River.
Afrasiab has been named after one of the Turanian kings and the site was first mentioned thus in the 18th century.
The prominent Soviet researcher in Soghdianian history V.A. Lievschitz believes that Afrasiab is the distorted ancient Soghdian expression apar shavab (over the black river). The ruins of Afrasiab indeed stand over the Siab (Siyoh-ab) river which means "black river". The ancient Greeks called the city Maracanda, which is very close to the present name of Samarkand. "This is a beautiful city and well defended"; "Maracanda is the capital of Soghdiana"; "Its walls run 70 stadia, and the citadel is surrounded by another wall". These are descriptions of Samarkand given by the ancient writers of the first and second century Flavius Arrianus and Ouintus Curtius Rufus.
Archaeological finds on the site included remains of structures and other material reliably dated to the middle of the first millennium B.C., not earlier. Such finds cover the entire territory of Afrasiab and this fact alone testifies that the city was well populated.

The strain of struggle against Alexander the Great bore heavily on the country and its cities. However, assumptions concerning the alleged decline of Samarkand at that time are not substantiated by archaeological finds. The city, which had accumulated considerable economic potential prior to the Macedonian invasion, rapidly recovered and soon returned to its former grandeur. Towards the turn of the third century B.C., the city displayed new fortifications. At the same time, the beneficial effects begain to be felt of close contacts between Samarkand and its immediate neighbours and also with the more remote countries of the Hellenistic world. This immediately found its manifestation in all aspects of urban life.
Thin-walled red-ware becomes widespread in pottery and there appear jugs, bowls of various shapes, and goblets on long stems which the people of ancient Samarkand used instead of plates.
There were innovations in civil engineering too and although adobe clay was used widely as before, new architectural features made their way into Samarkand.
A city is a complex organism and requires special management. We do not know who ruled Samarkand or how at that time because written sources are very scanty and carry no information of this kind. And still, there are no grounds to doubt the existence of a well-planned organization which stood at the helm of the city. One of the top priorities of this organization was to maintain the defence potentials of the city.

Fire-worship, which is one of the most ancient religions, was also widespread in Soghdiana. Fire-worshipping temples and altars have yet to be discovered, provided they have survived, but in one of dwellings of Afrasiab dating back to the 1st-3rd centuries A.D. a prayer room has been unearthed with an altar erected on a small elevation. In the lower plate is a rectangular depression for the sacrificial fire. The altars are located at the western wall so that the flame faces east. i.e. in the direction of the rising sun. Fire-worship has been traced in Lalazar of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. This reveals a continuity of religious worship over half a millennium.
In the 5th-7th centuries A.D., it was general practice in Central Asia, Soghdiana among other places, to bury not the corpses of the dead, but their bones. This has connection with the worship of fire, water and earth, i.e. with Zoroastrianism. The picked bones were placed in ceramic ossuariesboxes about 70 cm long which were installed in special mausoleums outside the city walls. From time to time, jugs with water and pots of food were placed in the mausoleums and purifying fires were burned.

 

This a book excerpt from book title: Samarkhand, a museum in the open. Written by V. Bulatova and G. Shishkina, the book has many insights of Samarkhand and its great notable monuments.

Samarkhand, a museum in the open, can be purchased at Discovery Bookshops and online
(www.discovery-bookshop.com).

Photos  by: Eldar Karimov