Official web site of Pamir-Travel company

Adventure on the Great Pamir in Tajikistan

Great Pamir

About Great Pamir

History of Gorno-Badakhshan

The Great silk road

Vakhan and Shugnan

Trip to Pamir Mountains

City & Silk road tours

Central Asian Countries

Photogallery

Visa getting

History of Gorno-Badakhshan

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 Samarcand) was the centre of the region known as Sogdiana that covered what is today Southern Uzbekistan and much of Tajikistan. The cities of Samarcand and Boukhara, although today in the territory of Uzbekistan, are centres 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 Graeco-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.