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Sart

Historical term for settled inhabitants of Central Asia

Sart

Historical term for settled inhabitants of Central Asia

Two Sart men and two Sart boys in the early 20th century

Sart was a term used in the history and ethnography of Iran and Central Asia. The term was commonly applied to sedentary Turks and Tajiks in Central Asia. Usually bilingual in Turkic and Persian, they belonged to the same cultural tradition and occupied the same economic role.

The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Turkmen, being proudly devoted to their rural, nomadic ways of life and values, strongly disliked the highly Persianized speech of Turkic by the Sarts. This instance is comparable to the prejudice the 11th century Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari had displayed toward Sogdianized urban Turks. Meanwhile, the Persian Tajik dialect had been adopting Turkic vocabulary and syntax, which caused it to shift away from standard Persian.

Origin

There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit sārthavāha (सार्थवाह), meaning "merchant, trader, caravan leader", a term supposedly used by nomads to describe town-dwellers, according to Vasily Bartold, Gerard Clauson, and most recently Richard Foltz.

Rashid al-Din Hamadani in the Jami' al-tawarikh writes that Genghis Khan commanded for Arslan Khan, prince of the Karluks, to be given the title "Sartaqtai", which referred to Uyghurs and Uzbeks.

Footnotes

References

  • Owen Lattimore. (1973) "Return to China's Northern Frontier." The Geographical Journal, Vol. 139, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 233–242.
  • {{Citation
  • {{Citation
  • {{Citation | author-link =Yuri Bregel | publication-date =1978 | publication-place =Wiesbaden
  • {{Citation | author-link = | editor-last =Manz | editor-first =Beatrice | publication-date =1994 | publication-place =Boulder CO USA
  • {{Citation | author-link = | author2-link = | publication-date =1966 | publication-place =Leiden
  • {{Citation | author-link = | publication-date =1947 | publication-place =Istanbul
  • {{Citation | author-link =Wheeler Thackston | publication-date =2002 | publication-place =New York | url-access =registration
  • {{Citation | author-link =Rashid-al-Din Hamadani | author2-link =Wheeler Thackston | publication-date =1978 | publication-place =Cambridge MA USA

References

  1. Golden, Peter B. ''An Introduction to the History of Turkic Peoples'' (1992). p. 150
  2. Foltz, Richard ''A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East'' Note 27 for Chapter 4 [https://books.google.com/books?id=Ff2ZDwAAQBAJ&dq=sart+sarthavaha+merchant&pg=PT244]
  3. Dagiev, Dagikhudo. (2013). "Regime Transition in Central Asia: Stateness, Nationalism and Political Change in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan". Taylor & Francis.
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turkic-peoples-of-asia ethnic-tajik-people uzbeks
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