Central Asian historical region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers
Watershed of theOxus River in the 8th century, showing Transoxiana and its principal localities to the northeast.Transoxiana and the neighbouring regions ofGreater Khorasan andKhwarazm in Central Asia
Historically known in Persian asFarā-rūd (Persian:فرارود,[fæɾɒːˈɾuːd̪] – 'beyond the [Amu] river'),Faro-rɵd (Tajik:Фарорӯд), andVaraz-rüd (Tajik:Варазрӯд), the area had been known to the ancientIranians asTuran, a term used in the Persian national epicShahnameh.[8] The corresponding Chinese term for the region isHezhong (Chinese:河中地区;Chinese:land between rivers). The Arabic termMā Warāʾ an-Nahr (Arabic:ما وراء النهر,[ˈmaːwaˈraːʔanˈnahr], which means "what is beyond the [Jayhūn] river") passed intoPersian literary usage and stayed on until post-Mongol times.[9]
The nameTransoxiana stuck in Western consciousness because of the exploits ofAlexander the Great, who extended Greek culture into the region with his invasion in the 4th century BCE. Alexander's successors would go on to found theGreco-Bactrian Kingdom, ushering in a distinct Greek cultural presence within Transoxiana that existed for over two hundred years. The city ofAi-Khanoum on theOxus in northern Afghanistan remains the only Graeco-Bactrian city found and extensively excavated.[10]
The Chinese explorerZhang Qian, who visited the neighbouring countries ofBactria andParthia along with Transoxiana in 126 BCE, made the first known Chinese report on this region. Zhang Qian identifies Parthia as an advanced urban civilisation that farmed grain and grapes and made silver coins and leather goods.[11] It was ruled successively bySeleucids, theGreco-Bactrian Kingdom, theParthian Empire and theKushan Empire before Sassanid rule.[citation needed]
In Sasanian times, the region became a major cultural center due to the wealth of theNorthern Silk Road. Sassanid rule was interrupted by theHephthalite invasion at the end of the 5th century and didn't return to the Sassanids until 565.[citation needed]
Many Persian nobles and landlords escaped to this region after theMuslim conquest of Persia. It was also ruled byGöktürks until theArab conquest between 705 and 715. The area became known by the Arabic phraseMā warāʼ al-Nahr "what is beyond the river," sometimes rendered as "Mavarannahr".[citation needed]
Transoxiana's major cities and cultural centers areSamarkand andBukhara. Both are in the southern portion of Transoxiana (though still to the north of the Amu Darya itself, on theZarafshon) and Uzbekistan. The majority of the region was dry but fertile plains. Both cities remained centres ofPersian culture and civilisation after the Muslim conquest. They played a crucial role in the revival of Persian culture by establishing theSamanid Empire.[citation needed]
In the early Islamic period, the people of Transoxania spokeSogdian (anIranian language) and were divided amongseveral principalities.[12] The Arab conquest resulted in the spread of Arabic elite culture, and, more paradoxically, ofNew Persian "as a spoken and eventually written language" in the region.[12] The Arab conquest also resulted in contacts with Tang China, where fragments of the Sasanian ruling elite, includingPeroz III, had taken shelter after Iran's conquest by the Arabs.[12] However, it did not result in Transoxania having significant interactions with Chinese culture.[12]
Muslims had conquered Transoxiana by the 7-8th century. Multiple figures in the Muslim world had conquered these lands. Some include the Umayyad and Abbasid Arabs, who took over lands that are nowUzbekistan,Tajikistan,Kazakhstan, andKyrgyzstan.
Apart from a presence inKushan Bactria, theMīmāṃsā school of Hinduism, unlike Buddhism, seems to have made little inroads into Central Asia north of Bactria. Even whenBrahmins are depicted in the art of Central Asia, this is within the setting of Buddhist art, where we can even observe a tendency to present such figures as caricatures, quite in line with thecriticism of them in the Buddhist scriptures.[14]
Transoxania was a great center of Muslim civilization; it was the centre of theTimurid Empire and saw influential Muslim leaders likeOghuz Khan.
An excerpt from a dynastic history commissioned by Eltüzer Khan of Khwarazm: "Oghuz Khan, who could speak at the age of one and whose first word was "Allah." He rebelled against his father, eventually slaying him, before embarking on a series of conquests that brought Islam to all of "Transoxiana and Turkestan".[15][16]
^"Khorāsān".Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved14 November 2018.
^C. Edmund Bosworth, (2002),'CENTRAL ASIA iv. In the Islamic Period up to the Mongols'Encyclopaedia Iranica "In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in theŠāh-nāma of Ferdowsī is regarded as the land allotted to Ferēdūn's son Tūr... At the outset, however, those nearby parts of Central Asia with which the Arabs were familiar were often subsumed into the vast and ill-defined province of Khorasan, embracing all lands to the east ofRay,Jebāl, andFārs". (online)
^Sabloff, Paula L.W. (2011).Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Time to the Present. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. p. 62.ISBN978-1934536186.OCLC794700604.
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