Persian Empire
From about 500 BC, most of Central Asia
was under Persian control or influence. Bactria (today
thought to be Balkh in Northern Afghanistan) on the banks
of the Oxus (now known as the AMU Darya) was the center
of Persian civilization in Eastern Iran. The Persians
displaced the Scythian and Cimmerian nomadic TRIBES in
the region. Afrosiab (now Samarkand) was the center of
the region known as Sogdiana that covered what is today
Southern Uzbekistan and much of Tajikistan. The cities
of Samarkand and Boukhara, although today in the territory
of Uzbekistan, are centers of Tajik/Persian culture.
Alexander the Great
Alexander of Macedonia defeated the armies
of the Persian Emperor Darius II between 336-323 BC and
brought about the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. Alexander
subjugated Sogdiana but, in order to promote the pacification
of the conquered peoples, married Roxane, daughter of
a local chieftain. When Alexander died in 323 BC, the
Macedonian Empire broke up. After a long period during
which Bactria was ruled by Greko-Macedonian satraps and
subjected to frequent invasions by nomadic Turkic hordes,
the area fell under the control of the Yuchi from what
is now the Gansu region in Western China (Kushan Empire)
from the second century BC to the third century AD.
The Persian Sasanids (224-642 AD) destroyed
the Kushan Empire and the region reverted to Persian control.
White Huns
In AD 400 a new wave of Central Asian nomads
under the Hephthalites took control of the region. According
to Procopius' History of the Wars, written in the mid
6th century, the Hephthalites or “White Huns”, “are of
the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name: however
they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us. They
are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies....”If
Procopius’ description is correct (and this is disputed
by the accounts of other travellers), the relatively large
number of inhabitants of Gorno-Badakhshan with blond hair
and blue eyes may be related to this ethnic ancestry,
although other theories link these features with Macedonian,
Russian and even nomadic Saxon ethnic stock.
The Hephthalites were defeated in AD 565
by a coalition of Sasanids and Western Turks. The Sasanids
took Bactria and the Western Turks ruled over Sogdiana.
Arab invasions
Soon after the death of the prophet Mohammed,
Central Asia was invaded successively by the Arabs of
the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. The Arab conquests
saw a flowering of Islamic thought, philosophy and mysticism
and stemmed Chinese expansion in Central Asia. However,
Persian influence remained strong in the region, and new
Islamic Persian dynasties sprang up, of which the most
important was that of the Samanids (875 to 999). The Samanid
period, through the scientific work of al-Khwarazmi, Ibn-i
Sina (Avicenna), al-Biruni and al-Razi (Razes) and the
poetry of Firdausi and Rudaki, made a major contribution
to the development of Persian language and culture in
the region.
The defeat of the Samanids by the Turkic
Ghaznavid dynasty in 999 marked the beginning of the decline
in Persian influence in Central Asia. From the end of
the first century AD, there had been sporadic westward
movements of nomadic Turkic peoples from the area of what
is now Mongolia: the massive military invasions under
the leadership of Genghis Khan (Temujin - 1167?-1227)
and Tamerlane (Timur-Lang - 1336?-1405) ended Persian
dominance in the region. Largely due to the protection
provided by the mountainous terrain, the peoples of what
is now Tajikistan were better able to preserve their society
and Persian culture. While the languages of Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan all have Turkic
roots, Tajikistan is the only former Soviet Republic with
an Iranian language; music, dance and poetry in the Persian
tradition play a major role in Tajik society.
Until the Soviet period, the region was part of the Emirate
of Boukhara.