CHAPTER SEVEN THE TURCO-SOGDIAN MILIEUX To the Chinese the Sogdians were the main merchants of the Türk steppe. They played the role of counsellors to the nomads and had a strong foothold in the economic and political life of the successive Türk qaghanates which controlled the steppe from Mongolia between the middle of the 6th and the middle of the 8th centuries. Under what conditions was this establishment effected? The Sogdian presence from ’à‘ to Gansu—that is, all along the zone of contact between sedentary and nomadic lands—suggests several hypotheses. The Sogdians could have entered the world of the steppe from Sogdiana: this is the most common and immediately logical hypothesis. But it can be shown that the first contacts between Sogdians and Türks probably took place much further to the east, and that it was from their commercial bases in Gansu that the Sogdians gained a foothold among the Turkic-speaking peoples. The Turco-Sogdian cultural fusion, attested from the 6th to the 10th century, had been preceded by a long protohistory whose examination enables us to give an account of the Sogdian commercial monopoly among the Türks. 1. Birth of the Turco-Sogdian Milieux The Türk Empire The Türk Empire emerged abruptly from the fluid situation pre- vailing in the nomadic world at the end of the 540s.1 Bumın Qaghan, of the Ashina clan, after having supported the Rouran, the ethnos then dominant in the steppe, revolted against them in 552 and destroyed them. His second successor, Muqan Qaghan (553–572), conquered all the steppe to the north of China, while his uncle (“temi 1 A recent, handy and up-to-date review of the ethnogenesis and history of the Türks in its political, economic and cultural aspects can be found in Golden, 1992, pp. 115–154. 200 chapter seven (the Sizabul of Byzantine sources, 552–575/6) took control of the western steppes, and in 560, in agreement with the Sassanid sover- eign Khusrò Anòshervàn, crushed the Hephtalites and seized Sogdiana. At the end of the 570s, the Western Türks controlled all the steppe as far as the Crimea. The half-century which followed is more confused: the western qaghanate became politically independent in 583, and dynastic rivalries emerged which were exploited on one hand by the Chinese, and on the other by certain subject tribes. Tardu (576–603), son of (“temi, briefly reunified the whole of the empire at the beginning of the 7th century. To the east, under pressure first from the Sui and then from the Tang, the qaghanate collapsed and disappeared after 630. To the west the situation was more stable, in spite of revolts, but after 630 the qaghanate disintegrated into several tribal confederations, with the On Oq in Central Asia and the Bulgars to the west. After 659 Central Asia was formally under Chinese control. The Khazars migrated from the Altai and seized the steppe north of the Caucasus from the 670s. To the east a second Türk qaghanate formed under Qutlugh (682–691), then under Qapaghan (691–716) and Bilge (716–734). This qaghanate gave way to the Uighur qaghanate after 744. Between 715 and 740 the Türgesh dominated to the west, but lost Sogdiana to the Arab armies, and then lost their own independence to China. The Chinese collapse in 755 opened the way to the Qarluqs in Semire‘’e. In the western steppe, as far as Khorezm to the east, the Khazars were the dominant power from the 8th to the 10th cen- tury, and converted to Judaism.2 Their empire served then as the hub of large-scale commerce in Eastern Europe.3 With the conquest of Sogdiana by the Türk armies against the Heph- talites, in 560, a genuine Sogdo-Türk fusion was created. Numerous examples attest to this. Thus, ’akin ’ur-Bil’ga, one of the kings of Panjikent at the end of the 7th century, was a Türk, and his suc- cessor Dèwà“tì‘, though bearing an Iranian name, was himself of Türk descent, according to his genealogy as related in the History of Nishapur.4 And again, the only Sogdian contract of marriage which 2 The chronology as well as the extent of this conversion is highly disputed: see Zuckerman, 1995. 3 De la Vaissière, 2000. The principal reference remains Dunlop, 1954. 4 Liv“ic, 1979..