Paikent

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

Paikent lies in the oasis of Bukhara at the edge of the desert, at the western end of the Zerafshan valley. It is the one Sogdian town that the Arabic sources call a city of merchants and nothing else. It belongs to Göktürk history at its two ends. It was one of the planned towns that made Sogdiana worth taking in the sixth century. It was also the town that called on the Göktürks against the Arabs in 706 and was sacked for it.

The planned town

Paikent is one of the small planned towns of the Zerafshan valley, together with Bukhara and Panjikent. They were built on plans of the Hippodamian type, with rectangular walls and a grid of streets. They date to the years from 440 to 470, under the Kidarite power, and came out of the demographic expansion that followed the great invasions.^[1] The towns put the country in a position to defend itself against the Sasanians and the Hephthalites. Their walls have been studied together.^[1] At Paikent, at the other end of the valley from Samarkand, a square outer wall of 330 metres a side enclosed a town of eleven hectares beside the old citadel. That wall is evidence for the economic and demographic dynamism of Sogdiana after the invasions, as are the five kilometres of rampart at Samarkand and the wall round twenty square kilometres of its oasis. The Göktürk conquest a century later found these towns standing, and left them so.

Paikent in the Chinese and Persian reports

The Sui Shu names a country of Bi, a hundred li and more west of An, the Chinese name of Bukhara. It had about a thousand households and no ruler of its own, and An governed it.^[2] Bi may be Paikent, from an older form *Pat-kand, “the princes’ town”. If so, Paikent was the centre of a small principality run from An.^[3]

Sebeos has Bahram Chobin cross the great river Vehrot and advance to a place called Kazbion.^[4] Kazbion has been placed near Paikent, with the claim that Bahram took Paikent in 589, when it was the old capital of Bukhara and in the hands of a western Göktürk dynasty.^[5] The Arabic account of the campaign draws on the romance of Bahram. It has the same fortress as the refuge of the Turkish king’s son Parmūdha. The article on the war carries it.^[6]

The city of merchants

In the Arabic sources Paikent is the city of merchants above all others. No sovereign is ever named there, and the merchants seem to have acted collectively.^[1] Narshakhi writes that the people of Baikand were all merchants. They traded with China and the sea and became very wealthy. A citizen of Baikand asked in Baghdad where he came from would answer Baikand and not Bukhara, since the people did not like anyone to call their city a village.^[1] It was a medium-sized town with little farmland. Its wealth, as the Arabic and Persian sources point out, was purely commercial. A stele of 673 at Luoyang commemorates a Chinese official descended from Sogdians of Paikent. His father had been Grand Sabao of all China. The gates of Paikent are the one place in Sogdiana where buildings of caravanserai plan have been excavated. The ribat there, built on virgin soil, date only to the end of the eighth century. That is part of the evidence that Sogdiana before Islam had no caravanserais at all. The Sogdian merchant on the road lodged in castles and, on the steppe road, in tents.^[1]

The sack of 706

Qutayba ibn Muslim took Paikent in 706, after the town had massacred its Arab garrison. The town was pillaged outright. A captive offered to ransom himself for five thousand pieces of raw Chinese silk. He reckoned them at a million dirhams, two hundred a piece, twice the price of a brocade garment. Qutayba had him killed. The man was one of the principal merchants of the town, a specialist in the China trade. He had organised the resistance and had made contact with the Göktürks so that they might come to its aid. His is the one text that shows the existence of very great merchants in Sogdiana, far above the small traders of the business documents.^[1] The melting of the town’s silver and gold yielded fifty thousand mithqals by one figure and a hundred and fifty thousand by another. The historian concludes that from Paikent the Muslims took booty the like of which they had never taken in Khurasan.^[1] That is no proof that Sogdian towns were richer than those of Khurasan. The large towns of Khurasan had surrendered by treaty and were not sacked.^[1] Paikent, on the route of every army, was rebuilt quickly on the revenues of its trade. Panjikent, isolated in a rich valley without commercial links, waited a generation. The contrast shows what commerce meant to the economy of Sogdiana. The Göktürks the merchant had called on were the Türgesh, then rising in the lands of the Ten Arrows. The western article carries their wars with the Arabs.

Assessment

Paikent is a small place with a large lesson. A Sogdian town could be a republic of merchants without a king. It could be rich enough that one of its citizens could offer a fourteenth of Samarkand’s whole tribute for his life. It looked for protection to the steppe. The Göktürks had held Sogdiana as landlords of that trade. When the Arabs came, its merchants still thought of the Göktürks as the power to call.

References

^ a b c d e f g h de la Vaissière 2005a
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
^ Markwart 1938, p. 152
^ Sebeos, ch. 10; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 15
^ Markwart 1938, p. 153
^ Markwart 1938, p. 141–143

Sources

Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
Sebeos, ch. 10

Literature

Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)
R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)