Central Asia

I

Introduction

Central Asia, name commonly given to a region of disputed extent located in the middle of the Eurasian land mass. It is fringed by forests in the north and mountains in the south but primarily consists of desert and grassland or steppe, interspersed with more fertile oases, the centres of agriculture, and the sites of cities. The existence of extensive pastureland, similar to the prairies of North America, has made Central Asia throughout history pre-eminently the land of the pastoral nomad. The nomads’ flocks and herds of domesticated animals, skill with horses, aptitude for the hunt, and mastery of the compound, or composite, bow (made from wood, horn, and sinew) made them formidable opponents of the settled civilizations that surrounded Central Asia and the region witnessed several powerful states and empires based on the power of the nomad, organized in clans, tribes, and, occasionally, great confederations.

In the 20th century the phenomenon of the conflict of nomadic and sedentary populations in and around Central Asia was broadened into a general geopolitical theory by the geographer Halford Mackinder. Mackinder saw history as a series of contests between the powers that controlled Central Asia (which he named “the heartland” or the pivot area) and those that controlled what he termed “the rimland”. The rimland was that part of the Eurasian continent which could be controlled from the sea: the heartland was that part which was invulnerable to attack from the sea and was controlled by land-based powers, particularly those that had mastered land communications. Through most of history these powers had been the nomads, who employed horse and camel transport, but the advent of railways in the 19th century, Mackinder believed, had opened up a new era in world history and gave a crucial advantage to the powers that controlled the heartland. He foresaw a future dominated by an alliance of the two great land powers of Russia and Germany that would overcome the sea-based power of the British Empire. Mackinder’s views, in various forms, influenced the thinking of Nazi Germany through the geographer Karl Haushofer and some of the geopolitical thinking of the Cold War.

A second broad theory, one particularly associated with the American geographer Ellsworth Huntington, sought to explain the history of Central Asia by reference to climatic cycles, alternate periods of wet and dry weather. Huntington argued that the pressure of nomads at different times was directly related to these climatic changes: in wet periods pasture was abundant and flocks and populations increased; in dry periods the nomads pressed on the surrounding sedentary societies. Neither this theory, nor that of Mackinder, is accepted by all students of Central Asia.

The concept of the heartland involved a very broad definition of Central Asia extending from Dongbei (also known as Manchuria) to the plains of Hungary and embracing the steppeland of Ukraine. Other definitions have selected a smaller area focused on Turkistan, including what was known in the 19th century as Russian or Western Turkistan and Chinese or Eastern Turkistan. Russian geographers used the term “Middle Asia” to describe Russian Turkistan and reserved the term “Central Asia” to refer to an area further east. When they wanted a term to embrace the whole region from Turkistan to Mongolia they used the expression “Inner Asia” and this term is that most commonly used to describe the whole region by modern scholars. “Central Asia” is usually reserved for the whole of Turkistan. Although state boundaries allow political distinctions to be made it is difficult to divide the whole region on any convincing geographical basis.

II

Ecological Zones

The central part of Central Asia is the great steppe where nomadic people have moved their livestock following water and grass since antiquity. In most times groups of nomads moved in circles, for example moving to the cool highlands in the summer and plains in the winter (a process known as “transhumance”). However, natural disasters, such as drought and extreme cold weather, and military conflicts among the nomadic groups would force some of the groups to move long distances across the steppe, even to the surrounding kingdoms and empires. The great steppe is flanked to the south by mountains and deserts. The highest mountain range in the world, the Himalaya, blocks winds from the ocean producing the arid climate of the Tibetan Plateau and the whole of Central Asia. Between the mountains and the steppe lie the Gobi Desert and the Takla Makan Desert, which only camels can manage to cross. Melting snow from the Tian Mountains and the Kunlun Mountains feeds several seasonal rivers and underground reservoirs around the Takla Makan Desert in the Tarim Basin, creating oases that could sustain agriculture with elaborated irrigation systems. In the western part of Central Asia, the catchment area of the two major rivers feeding the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, is the meeting place of the steppe zone and the agricultural zone.

III

History

Central Asia forms the crossroads of cultural and material exchanges of Eurasia and has therefore been the birthplace of many great events in world history. The steppe was the earliest thoroughfare linking the land mass and transferring people, animals, and cultural traits from one end to the other. The conflict of nomadic peoples on the steppe for resources and dominance led to the formation of imperial confederacies with formidable military powers, while driving some groups out of the region. Conflicts between nomads on the steppe and their neighbouring sedentary societies often led to westward and southward migrations, feeding agricultural empires and kingdoms with waves of invasions and immigration. Once a group of people became the dominant force, its language prevailed over a large area; once the imperial confederacy collapsed, its language branched and spread to other regions, and often vanished from the steppe. Indo-European languages, Altaic languages, and Sino-Tibetan languages prevailed in parts of Central Asia in different periods.

A

Early Trade and Migrations

The early nomads of Central Asia did not develop writing and references to them by neighbouring agricultural societies such as China are vague. Around 1500 bc a group of nomads entered South Asia from Central Asia. The language they spoke, Vedic Sanskrit (see Sanskrit Language), is the best recorded among the earliest-known Indo-European languages. A language closely related to Vedic Sanskrit is Avestan Persian (see Persian Language), which became the language of ancient Iran. In Central Asia, various Indo-European tongues related to the two languages, such as Tuharan, Sogdian, and Saka, remained languages of local peoples well into the first millennium bc, when the movements of the nomads were better recorded by the Chinese, Indians, and Greeks. Meanwhile, nomads in Central Asia developed a sophisticated material culture represented by animal motifs on bronze, silver, and gold. Their exquisite metal artefacts were mostly parts for the horse harness and its decoration. During the mid-first millennium bc horseback riding enabled nomads in Central Asia to move swiftly over the steppe. The Scythians, or Sakas as they were called in Asia, migrated along the steppe routes to the Eastern European steppe. The exact reason of their migration is not clear. In the same period, when the Xiongnu became the dominant power on the Mongolian steppe, the Yuezhi, an Indo-European-speaking people, were active around the northern foothills of the Tian Mountains. The Xiongnu became such a great threat to the agricultural empire of China that the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Shi Huangdi, had to build the Great Wall to defend the northern borders in the 3rd century bc. On the steppe, the Xiongnu defeated the Yuezhi and chased the tribe westwards all the way to Bactria in Afghanistan in the mid-2nd century bc. Prior to the coming of the nomads, Bactria was a Hellenistic region dotted with Greek cities. The Yuezhi adopted the local Gandharian language, a variation of the Sanskrit, and the Greek alphabet and established the Kushan Empire, crossing Central Asia and South Asia. The Yuezhi-Kushans, in their turn, forced other nomadic groups, the Saka-Scythians and the Parthians, into South Asia and the Iranian Plateau. This series of migrations on the Central Asian steppe actually initiated the commercial activities of the Silk Route. As Chinese silk textiles and yarns arrived in the Mediterranean region through India and Iran, Roman glassware, golden coins, and wine were taken by sea or carried by camels to India, Central Asia, and China.

In order to protect the trade routes against the Xiongnu, the Han Empire (206 bc- ad 220) propagated agricultural technology to the oases around the Takla Makan Desert. Populations of oasis states such as Turfan, Khotan, and Kucha increased quickly and became the way stations for the trade passing through and bases for Buddhist proselytization. The desert routes replaced the steppe routes as the artery of transportation, and Buddhist statues, stupas, and cave temples became landmarks on the trade routes (see Buddhist Architecture). Upstream of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the Sogdian people built several agricultural states and caravan cities such as Samarqand and Bukhara. The region called Sogdiana never formed a single state but Sogdian merchants permeated all the trade stations in Central Asia and became go-betweens of the nomadic powers on the steppe and the authorities of the surrounding agricultural states. Agricultural developments on the oases provided infrastructure for long-distance trade linking Eurasian agricultural empires. Trade and communication brought various linguistic, artistic, and religious elements into Central Asian cultures, including the Greek language and alphabet; the Kharoshthi and Brahmi scripts, the various Prakrit languages (see Indian Languages), and Buddhist religion from India; Sogdian as a mercantile language; Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and the Persian language from Iran; Nestorian Christianity from Syria; silk, sericulture (silkworm breeding), and agricultural technology from China.

After the conquest of the Kushan Empire by the Sassanids of Iran in the 3rd century ad, nomads from the steppe continuously flooded into the oasis regions and countries surrounding Central Asia. The Hephthalites rose in the late 4th century from the Mongolian steppe, crossed the Altai Mountains, and then invaded Sogdiana. In the 5th century the Hephthalites occupied Tuharestan, the land of the former Kushans, and contended with Sassanian imperial power for a hundred years, while making several destructive incursions into South Asia. In the mid-6th century, the Turkish confederacy arose in north Asia and moved westward. Allying with the Sassanids to attack and annihilate the Hephthalites, the Turkish confederacy became the paramount power on the steppe and absorbed many nomadic groups into its fold. This large confederacy soon split into several branches. Those on the eastern side of Central Asia conflicted with the rising Tang Empire in the early 7th century and suffered defeats. Nevertheless, Turkish power remained in Central Asia and the Turkish language gradually replaced the Indo-European languages, thus gaining the region the name of Turkistan. The drama of the formation and collapse of large confederacies of nomads continued even after the Islamic conquest of Central Asia in the 8th century (see Spread of Islam).