Russian conquest of Central Asia
The Russian conquest of Central Asia took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. The land that became Russian Turkestan and Soviet Central Asia is now divided between Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan across the center, Kyrgyzstan in the east, Tajikistan in the southeast and Turkmenistan in the southwest; the area was called Turkestan because most of its inhabitants spoke Turkic languages with the exception of Tajikistan, which speaks an Iranian language. In the eighteenth century Russia gained increasing control over the Kazakh steppe. In 1839 they failed to conquer the Khanate of Khiva south of the Aral Sea. In 1847–53 they built a line of forts from the north side of the Aral Sea eastward up the Syr Darya river. In 1847–64 they crossed the eastern Kazakh steppe and built a line of forts along the northern border of Kyrgyzstan. 1864–68 they moved south from Kyrgyzstan, captured Tashkent and Samarkand and dominated the Khanates of Kokand and Bokhara. They now held a triangle whose southern point was 1000 miles south of Siberia and 1200 miles southeast of their supply bases on the Volga.
The next step was to turn this triangle into a rectangle by crossing the Caspian Sea. In 1873 they conquered Khiva. In 1881 they took western Turkmenistan. In 1884 the Merv oasis and eastern Turkmenistan were taken. In 1885 expansion south toward Afghanistan was blocked by the British. In 1893–95 they occupied the high Pamirs in the southeast; the area was bounded on the west by the Caspian Sea, on the north by the Siberian forests and on the east by the mountains along the former Sino-Soviet border. The southern border was political rather than natural, it was about 1300 miles from north to south, 1500 miles wide in the north and 900 miles wide in the south. Because the southeast corner is mountainous the flat desert-steppe country is only about 700 miles wide in the south. Using modern borders, the area was 1,545,730 square miles, about half the size of the United States without Alaska. On the east side two mountain ranges project into the desert. Between them is the well-populated Ferghana Valley, the'notch' on the west side of Kyrgyzstan.
North of this projection the mountain-steppe boundary extends along the north border of Kyrgyzstan about 400 miles before the mountains turn north again. Rainfall decreases from north to south. Dense population, therefore cities and organized states, requires irrigation. Streams coming down from the eastern mountains support a dense population in the Ferghana Valley. There is a line of oases along the Persian border; the interior is watered by three great rivers. The Oxus or Amu Darya rises on the Afghan border and flows northwest into the Aral Sea, forming a large delta, ruled by the Khanate of Khiva and has a long history under the name of Khwarezm; the Jaxartes or Syr Darya rises in the Ferghana Valley and flows northwest and west to meet the northeast corner of the Aral Sea. Between them is the less-famous Zarafshan River which dries up before reaching the Oxus, it waters Tamerlane's old capital of Samarkand. The deserts in the south have enough grass to support a thin nomadic population; the Kyzylkum Desert is between the Jaxartes.
The Karakum Desert is southwest of the Oxus in Turkmenistan. Between the Aral and Caspian Seas is the thinly-populated Ustyurt Plateau; when the Russians arrived the organized states were the Khanate of Khiva in the Oxus delta south of the Aral Sea, the Khanate of Bukhara along the Oxus and Zarafshan and the Khanate of Kokand based in the Ferghana Valley. Bokhara had borders with the other two and all three were surrounded by nomads which the Khanates tried to control and tax. Siberia: Russians first came into contact with central Asia when, in 1582–1639 Cossack adventurers made themselves masters of the Siberian forests, they did not expand south because they were seeking furs, because the Siberian Cossacks were skilled in forest travel and knew little of the steppe and because the forest tribes were few and weak while the steppe nomads were numerous and warlike. See Siberian River Routes and linked articles. Up the Irtysh River: The Irtysh River rises in what is now China and flows northwest to the Russian base at Tobolsk.
It was thought possible to reach the riches of China and India. In 1654 Fyodor Baykov used this route to reach Peking; the main advance was made under Peter the Great. Some time before 1714 Colonel Bukhholts and 1500 men returned. In 1715 Bukhholts with 3000 men and 1500 soldiers went to Lake Yamysh again and started to build a fort. Since this was on the fringe of the Dzungar Khanate the Dzungars drove them off, they founded Omsk. In 1720 Ivan Likharev founded Ust-Kamenogorsk; the Dzungars, having just been weakened by the Chinese, left them alone. Several other places were built on the Irtysh at about this time; the Kazakh steppe: Since the Kazakhs were nomads they could not be conquered in the normal sense. Instead Russian power increased. See History of Kazakhstan. Around the southern Urals: In 1556 Russia conquered the Astrakhan Khanate on the north shore of the Caspian Sea; the surrounding area was held by the Nogai Horde. To the east of the Nogais were the Kazakhs and to the north, between the Volga and Urals, were the Bashkirs.
Around this time some free Cossacks had established themselves on the Ural River. In 1602 they captured Konye-Urgench in Khivan territory. Returning laden with loot they were slaughtered. A second expedition lost its way in the snow and the few survivors were enslaved by the Khivans. There seems to have been a third expedition, ill-documented. At the time
Fergana Valley
The Fergana Valley is a valley in Central Asia spread across eastern Uzbekistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. Divided into three republics of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse and in the early 21st century was the scene of ethnic conflict. A large triangular valley in what is an dry part of Central Asia, the Fergana owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which run from the east, joining near Namangan, forming the Syr Darya river; the valley's history stretches back over 2,300 years, when its population was conquered by Greco-Bactrian invaders from the west. Chinese chroniclers date its towns to more than 2,100 years ago, as a path between Greek, Chinese and Parthian civilisations, it was home to Babur, founder of the Mughal Dynasty, tying the region to modern Afghanistan and South Asia. The Russian Empire conquered the valley at the end of the 19th century, it became part of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, its three Soviet republics gained independence in 1991.
The area remains Muslim, populated by ethnic Uzbek and Kyrgyz people intermixed and not matching modern borders. There have been substantial numbers of Russian, Kipchaks, Bukharan Jews and Romani minorities. Mass cotton cultivation, introduced by the Soviets, remains central to the economy, along with a wide range of grains and vegetables. There is a long history of stock breeding, leatherwork and a growing mining sector, including deposits of coal, sulfur, rock-salt and some small known oil reserves; the Fergana Valley is an intermountain depression in Central Asia, between the mountain systems of the Tien-Shan in the north and the Gissar-Alai in the south. The valley is 300 kilometres long and up to 70 kilometres wide, forming an area covering 22,000 square kilometres, its position makes it a separate geographic zone. The valley owes its fertility to two rivers, the Naryn and the Kara Darya, which unite in the valley, near Namangan, to form the Syr Darya. Numerous other tributaries of these rivers exist in the valley including the Sokh River.
The streams, their numerous mountain effluents, not only supply water for irrigation, but bring down vast quantities of sand, deposited alongside their courses, more alongside the Syr Darya where it cuts its way through the Khujand-Ajar ridge and forms the valley. This expanse of quicksand, covering an area of 1,900 km2, under the influence of south-west winds, encroaches upon the agricultural districts; the central part of the geological depression that forms the valley is characterized by block subsidence to depths estimated at 6 to 7 kilometres filled with sediments that range in age as far back as the Permian-Triassic boundary. Some of the sediments are marine clays; the faults are overthrusts. Anticlines associated with these faults form traps for petroleum and natural gas, discovered in 52 small fields; the climate of this valley is warm. In March the temperature reaches 20 °C, rapidly rises to 35 °C in June and August. During the five months following April precipitation is rare, but increases in frequency starting in October.
Snow and frost, down to -20 °C occurs in January. As early as 500 BC, the western sections of the Fergana Valley formed part of the Sogdiana region, ruled from further west and owed fealty to the Achaemenid Empire at the time of Darius the Great; the independent and warlike Sogdiana formed a border region insulating the Achaemenid Persians from the nomadic Scythians to the north and east. The Sogdian Rock or Rock of Ariamazes, a fortress in Sogdiana, was captured in 327 BC by the forces of Alexander the Great. In 329 BC, Alexander the Great founded a Greek settlement with the city of Alexandria Eschate "The Furthest", in the southwestern part of the Fergana Valley, on the southern bank of the river Syr Darya, at the location of the modern city of Khujand, in the state of Tajikistan, it was ruled by Seleucids before secession of Bactria. After 250 BC, the city remained in contact with the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom centered on Bactria when the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus extended his control to Sogdiana.
There are indications that from Alexandria Eschate the Greco-Bactrians may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar and Ürümqi in Chinese Turkestan, leading to the first known contacts between China and the West around 220 BC. Several statuettes and representations of Greek soldiers have been found north of the Tien Shan, on the doorstep to China, are today on display in the Xinjiang museum at Urumqi. Of the Greco-Bactrians, the Greek historian Strabo too writes that: they extended their empire as far as the Seres and the Phryni; the Fergana area, called Dayuan by the Chinese, remained an integral part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until after the time of Demetrius I of Bactria, when confronted with invasions by the Yuezhi from the east and the Sakas Scythians from the south. After 155 BC, the Yuezhi were pushed into Fergana by
The Anabasis of Alexander
The Anabasis of Alexander was composed by Arrian of Nicomedia in the second century AD, most during the reign of Hadrian. The Anabasis is a history of the campaigns of Alexander the Great his conquest of the Persian Empire between 336 and 323 BC. Both the unusual title "Anabasis" and the work's seven-book structure reflect Arrian's emulation of the Greek historian Xenophon, whose own Anabasis in seven books concerned the earlier campaign "up-country" of Cyrus the Younger in 401 BC; the Anabasis is by far the fullest surviving account of Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire. It is a military history, reflecting the content of Arrian's model, Xenophon's Anabasis. Nor does Arrian aim to provide a complete history of the Greek-speaking world during Alexander's reign. Arrian's chief sources in writing the Anabasis were the lost contemporary histories of the campaign by Ptolemy and Aristobulus and, for his books, Nearchus. One of Arrian's main aims in writing his history seems to have been to correct the standard "Vulgate" narrative of Alexander's reign, current in his own day associated with the lost writings of the historian Cleitarchus.
The Anabasis gives a broadly chronological account of the reign of Alexander the Great of Macedon, with a particular focus on military matters. After a short Preface concerning Arrian's sources, Book 1 covers the early years of Alexander's reign, including notable descriptions of Alexander's sack of Thebes in 335 and the battle of the Granicus in summer 334 BC. Book 2 is dominated by three large set-piece military operations: the campaign and battle of Issus and the sieges of Tyre and Gaza. Book 3 begins with an account of Alexander in Egypt, including his visit to the oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwah, before turning to the battle of Gaugamela and defeat of Darius III; the latter half of the book describes Alexander's pursuit of Darius through northern Iran, the revolt of the pretender Bessus, the deaths of Philotas and Parmenion. Book 4 describes the long Sogdian campaign of 329-327 BC against Bessus and Oxyartes, the early stages of the campaigns in the Punjab, with a notable departure from chronological sequence at 4.7-14, where Arrian collects many of the most notorious stories tending to Alexander's discredit in a single apologetic digression.
Book 5 continues the narrative of the Indian campaign of 326 BC, including Alexander's arrival at Nysa, the battle with Porus at the Hydaspes river, the decision at the Hyphasis not to push on further into India. Book 6 describes the journey down the Indus to the Indian Ocean, including the brutal violence inflicted on the local inhabitants by the Macedonians en route, the crossing of the Gedrosian Desert. Book 7 recounts the events of Alexander's final year, including the Susa marriages, the Opis mutiny, the death of Hephaestion, Alexander's own death. Arrian's Anabasis has traditionally been regarded as the most reliable extant narrative source for Alexander's campaigns. Since the 1970s, however, a more critical view of Arrian has become widespread, due to the work of A. B. Bosworth, who has drawn scholars' attention to Arrian's tendency to hagiography and apologia, not to mention several passages where Arrian can be shown to be downright misleading; the only complete English translation of Arrian available online is a rather antiquated translation by E.
J. Chinnock, published in 1884; the original Greek text used by the Perseus Digital Library is the standard A. G. Roos Teubner edition published at Leipzig in 1907; the most used scholarly English translation is Loeb Classical Library edition, in two volumes. The work first appeared in 1929 and was revised with a new introduction and appendices by P. A. Brunt in 1976. An English translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt appeared in Penguin Classics in 1958; this edition was revised and enlarged with introduction and notes by J. R. Hamilton in 1971; the Landmark Ancient Histories, edited by Robert B. Strassler, includes The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander, edited by James Romm, translated by Pamela Mensch; the Landmark edition includes extensive margin maps on every other page. A new translation by Martin Hammond with introduction and notes by John Atkinson appeared in the Oxford World's Classics series in 2013. Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt, Penguin Classics, 1958 and numerous subsequent editions.
Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, translated by P. A. Brunt, with Greek and English text, edited by Jeffrey Henderson, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press. Books I-IV: ISBN 0-674-99260-1 Books V-VII and Indica: ISBN 0-674-99297-0 Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, translated by E. J. Chinnock Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Battle of the Granicus, from the Loeb edition. Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Sogdian Rock, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt
Amu Darya
The Amu Darya called the Amu or Amo River, known by its Latin name Oxus, is a major river in Central Asia. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, in the Tigrovaya Balka Nature Reserve on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, flows from there north-westwards into the southern remnants of the Aral Sea. In ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Greater Turan. Persian: آمودریا, translit. Âmudaryâ. Ôxos). In classical antiquity, the river was known as the Ōxus in Latin and Ὦξος in Greek — a clear derivative of Vakhsh, the name of the largest tributary of the river. In Vedic Sanskrit, the river is referred to as Vakṣu; the Brahmanda Purana refers to the river as Chaksu. The Avestan texts too refer to the River as Yakhsha/Vakhsha. In Middle Persian sources of the Sassanid period the river is known as Wehrōd; the name Amu is said to have come from the medieval city of Āmul, in modern Turkmenistan, with Darya being the Persian word for "river". Medieval Arabic and Islamic sources call the river Jayhoun, derived from Gihon, the biblical name for one of the four rivers of the Garden of Eden.
Western travelers in the 19th century mentioned that one of the names by which the river was known in Afghanistan was Gozan, that this name was used by Greek, Chinese, Persian and Afghan historians. However, this name is no longer used. "Hara and to the river of Gozan...""the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i.e. the Oxus or the Amu Darya...""... and were brought into Halah, Habor, Hara, to the river Gozan..." The river's total length is 2,400 kilometres and its drainage basin totals 534,739 square kilometres in area, providing a mean discharge of around 97.4 cubic kilometres of water per year. The river is navigable for over 1,450 kilometres. All of the water comes from the high mountains in the south where annual precipitation can be over 1,000 mm. Before large-scale irrigation began, high summer evaporation meant that not all of this discharge reached the Aral Sea – though there is some evidence the large Pamir glaciers provided enough melt water for the Aral to overflow during the 13th and 14th centuries.
Since the end of the 19th century there have been four different claimants as the true source of the Oxus: The Pamir River, which emerges from Lake Zorkul in the Pamir Mountains, flows west to Qila-e Panja, where it joins the Wakhan River to form the Panj River. The Sarhad or Little Pamir River flowing down the Little Pamir in the High Wakhan Lake Chamaktin, which discharges to the east into the Aksu River, which in turn becomes the Murghab and Bartang rivers, which joins the Panj Oxus branch 350 kilometres downstream at Roshan Vomar in Tajikistan. An ice cave at the end of the Wakhjir valley, in the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamir Mountains, near the border with Pakistan. A glacier joins the Pamir River about 50 kilometres downstream. Bill Colegrave's expedition to Wakhan in 2007 found that both claimants 2 and 3 had the same source, the Chelab stream, which bifurcates on the watershed of the Little Pamir, half flowing into Lake Chamaktin and half into the parent stream of the Little Pamir/Sarhad River.
Therefore, the Chelab stream may be properly considered the true source or parent stream of the Oxus. The Panj River forms the border of Tajikistan, it flows west to Ishkashim where it turns north and north-west through the Pamirs passing the Tajikistan–Afghanistan Friendship Bridge. It subsequently forms the border of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for about 200 kilometres, passing Termez and the Afghanistan–Uzbekistan Friendship Bridge, it delineates the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for another 100 kilometres before it flows into Turkmenistan at Atamurat. It flows across Turkmenistan south to north, passing Türkmenabat, forms the border of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan from Halkabat, it is split by the Tuyamuyun Hydro Complex into many waterways that used to form the river delta joining the Aral Sea, passing Urgench, Daşoguz, other cities, but it does not reach what is left of the sea any more and is lost in the desert. Use of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s.
Historical records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the Aral Sea, into the Caspian Sea, or both, similar to the Syr Darya. The 534,769 square kilometres of the Amu Darya drainage basin include most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan, the northeast corner of Afghanistan, a narrow portion of eastern Turkmenistan and the western half of Uzbekistan. Part of the Amu Darya basin divide in Tajikistan forms that country's border with China and Pakistan. About 61% of the drainage lies within Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, while 39% is in Afghanistan; the abundant water flowing in the Amu Darya comes entirely from glaci
Sogdia
Sogdia or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization that at different times included territory located in present-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan such as: Samarkand, Khujand and Shahrisabz. Sogdiana was a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. In the Avesta, Sogdiana is listed as the second best land that the supreme deity Ahura Mazda had created, it comes second, after Airyanem Vaejah, "homeland of the Aryans", in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, indicating the importance of this region from ancient times. Sogdiana was first conquered by the founder of the Achaemenid Empire; the region would be annexed by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC. The region would continue to change hands under the Seleucid Empire, Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Kushan Empire, Hephthalite Empire, Sasanian Empire; the Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centred on the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, southeast of Kangju between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, embracing the fertile valley of the Zeravshan.
Sogdian territory corresponds to the modern provinces of Samarkand and Bokhara in modern Uzbekistan as well as the Sughd province of modern Tajikistan. During the High Middle Ages, Sogdian cities included sites stretching towards Issyk Kul such as that at the archeological site of Suyab. Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian language, is no longer a spoken language, but its direct descendant, Yaghnobi, is still spoken by the Yaghnobis of Tajikistan, it was spoken in Central Asia as a lingua franca and served as one of the Turkic Khaganate's court languages for writing documents. Sogdians lived in Imperial China and rose to special prominence in the military and government of the Chinese Tang dynasty. Sogdian merchants and diplomats traveled as far west as the Byzantine Empire, they played an important part as middlemen in the trade route of the Silk Road. While following the faiths of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, to a lesser extent, Nestorian Christianity from West Asia, the gradual conversion to Islam among the Sogdians and their descendants began with the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana in the 8th century.
The Sogdian conversion to Islam was complete by the end of the Samanid Empire in 999, coinciding with the decline of the Sogdian language, as it was supplanted by Persian. Oswald Szemerényi devotes a thorough discussion to the etymologies of ancient ethnic words for the Scythians in his work Four Old Iranian Ethnic Names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka. In it, the names provided by the Greek historian Herodotus and the names of his title, except Saka, as well as many other words for "Scythian," such as Assyrian Aškuz and Greek Skuthēs, descend from *skeud-, an ancient Indo-European root meaning "propel, shoot". *skud- is the zero-grade. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda, which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, in which the d has been replaced by an l. According to Szemerényi, Sogdiana was named from the Skuda form. Starting from the names of the province given in Old Persian inscriptions and Suguda, the knowledge derived from Middle Sogdian that Old Persian -gd- applied to Sogdian was pronounced as voiced fricatives, -γδ-, Szemerényi arrives at *Suγδa as an Old Sogdian endonym.
Applying sound changes apparent in other Sogdian words and inherent in Indo-European he traces the development of *Suγδa from Skuda, "archer," as follows: Skuda > *Sukuda by anaptyxis > *Sukuδa > *Sukδa > *Suγδa. Centuries before the conquest of Sogdiana by the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, Sogdiana possessed a Bronze Age urban culture, displaced by the Indo-European migrations of the Iron Age; this large-scale migration included Eastern Iranian speaking peoples such as the Sogdians. The original Bronze Age towns appear in the archaeological record beginning with the settlement at Sarazm, spanning as far back as the 4th millennium BC and at Kök Tepe, near modern-day Bulungur, from at least the 15th century BC. Achaemenid ruler Cyrus the Great conquered Sogdiana while campaigning in Central Asia in 546–539 BC, a fact mentioned by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories. Darius I introduced the Aramaic writing system and coin currency to Central Asia, in addition to incorporating Sogdians into his standing army as regular soldiers and cavalrymen.
A contingent of Sogdian soldiers fought in the main army of Xerxes I during his failed invasion of Greece in 480 BC. A Persian inscription from Susa claims that the palace there was adorned with lapis lazuli and carnelian originating from Sogdiana. Given the absence of any named satraps for Sogdiana in historical records, modern scholarship has concluded that Sogdiana was governed from the satrapy of nearby Bactria; the satraps were relatives of the ruling Persian kings sons who were not designated as the heir apparent. Sogdiana remained under Persian control until 400 BC, during the reign of Artaxerxes II. Rebellious states of the Persian Empire took advantage of the weak Artaxerxes II, some, such as Egypt, were able to regain their independence. Persia's massive loss of Central Asian territory is attributed to the ruler's lack of control. However, unlike Egypt, recaptured by the Persian Empire, Sogdiana remained inde
Khujand
Khujand, sometimes spelled Khodjent and known as Leninabad in 1936–1991, is the second-largest city of Tajikistan and the capital of the northernmost province of Tajikistan, now called Sughd. Khujand is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, it is situated on the Syr Darya at the mouth of the Fergana Valley and was a major city along the ancient Silk Road inhabited by ethnic Tajiks. It is proximate to both the Kyrgyzstan borders. Khujand is the site of Cyropolis, established when king Cyrus the Great founded the city during his last expedition against the Saka tribe of Massagetae shortly before his death. Alexander the Great built his furthest Greek settlement near Cyropolis in 329 BC and named it Alexandria Eschate or "Alexandria The Furthest"; the city would form a bastion for the Greek settlers against the nomadic Scythian tribes who lived north of the Syr Darya River. According to the Roman writer Curtius, Alexandria Ultima retained its Hellenistic culture as late as 30 BC; the city became a major staging point on the northern Silk Road.
It became a cultural hub and several famous poets and scientists came from this city. In the early 8th century, Khujand was captured by the forces of the Umayyad Caliphate, under Qutayba ibn Muslim; the city was incorporated into the Umayyad and subsequent Abbasid Caliphates, a process of Islamicization began. In the late 9th century, however, it reverted to local rule of Turkic governors, incorporated for a short period into the Samanid Empire, it came under the rule of the Kara-Khanid Khanate in 999 and after the division of Kara Khanids in 1042, it was part of Eastern Kara Khanids, later passed to the western one. Karakhitans conquered it in 1137, but it passed to Khwarazmshahs in 1211. In AD 1220, it resisted the Mongol hordes and was thus laid to waste - around 20,000 Mongol soldiers surrounded the city and besieged it but a local man opened the doors of the city and let the Mongol army in. In the 14th century, the city was part of the Chagatai Khanate until it was incorporated into the Timurid Dynasty' in the late 14th century, under which it flourished greatly.
The Shaybanid dynasty of Bukhara next annexed Khojand, until it was taken over by the Kokand Khanate in 1802, however Bukhara regained it in 1842 until it was lost a few decades to the Russia. In 1866, as most of Central Asia was occupied by Russian Empire, the city became part of the General Governorate of Turkestan, under Tsarist Russia; the threat of forced conscription during World War I led to protests in the city in July 1916, which turned violent when demonstrators attacked Russian soldiers. In 1918 when Turkestan ASSR was dismantled, the city became a part of Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1929 in order to gain a sufficient number of inhabitants for the newly created Soviet Republic of Tajikistan the city of Khujand, inhabited by ethnic Tajiks, was transferred by Soviet Communists from Uzbek SSR to the Tajik SSR; the city was renamed Leninabad on 10 January 1936 and it remained part of the Soviet Union until 1991. With the independence of Tajikistan, Khujand became the second largest city in the nation.
It reverted to its original name in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 1996 the city experienced the Ashurov protests during which citizens called for the President, Emomali Rakhmonov to step down; the popular protests were followed by a protest from the city's prisoners, many of whom had been sentenced to long jail terms for minor crimes and who were living in poor conditions. The protest led to the Khujand prison riot in which between 150 prisoners were killed. In the early 2000s many residents of Khujand had little to no access to water, what water they did have was unsafe to drink and had to be boiled. In 2004, The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development joined to help improve the situation, providing 32,000 water meters for inhabitants and developing improved access to water. Residents pay for their water supply, which in turn helps Khujand's municipal water company to continue to renovate and improve their services.
The project is in its third stage of development, should be completed by 2017. In comparison to other Central Asian projects aiming to improve access to water, this project is considered a success and has been applied to Kyrgyz cities and towns such as Osh, Jalal-Abad and Talas, with a possible extension into the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek. Khujand Airport has scheduled flights to Dushanbe as well as several international destinations. There is a rail connection between Khujand and Samarkand in Uzbekistan on the way to Dushanbe; the city is connected by road to Panjakent in the Zeravshan River Valley as well as Dushanbe via the Anzob Tunnel. As of December 2014 the construction of highway between capital and Khujand has been carrying on. Necessary works like cementation and installation of ventilation equipment are still going on inside the Istiqlol Tunnel, after specialists from the ministry detected an error while analyzing the 40-million-U. S.-dollar project in July. The 5-km tunnel, located 80 km northwest of Dushanbe and built with assistance from Iran, is a transit route between Dushanbe and the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.
After its completion, the Dushanbe-Khujand highway will open for traffic the whole year round and the transit time is expected to be cut by four to five hours. During
Ancient Greek
The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in Ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is roughly divided into the Archaic period, Classical period, Hellenistic period, it is succeeded by medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it resembled Attic Greek and in its latest form it approaches Medieval Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians and philosophers, it has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects; the main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic and Doric, many of them with several subdivisions.
Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", in poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects; the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period, they differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not than 1120 BCE, at the time of the Dorian invasion—and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BCE.
The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians; the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Non-west is called East Greek. Arcadocypriot descended more from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.
Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, Northern Peloponnesus Doric; the Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek. All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, these colonies developed local characteristics under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects; the dialects outside the Ionic group are known from inscriptions, notable exceptions being: fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, in Aeolian, the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar and other lyric poets in Doric.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 6th century CE, the Koine had metamorphosized into Medieval Greek. Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language at least related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: a dialect of Greek; the Macedonian dialect (or l
