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SOCIETAS IRANOLOGICA EUROPAEA (SIE), international association in the field of Iranian studies. On the 1st and 2nd of October 1981 a “Meeting of experts in Iranian and Persian studies” was held at the British Academy in London. In addition to J.Carswell and M.Evans of the British Academy, the meeting was…

SODIQI MUNŠI, Mirzo, Tajik poet (b. between 1753 and 1758 in the village of Jondori Bukhara; d. 20 October 1819 in Qarshi). Little is known of his life and career. At the madrasa in Bukhara he was a brilliant student, impressing his teachers with his innate ability and extensive knowledge,…

SOFRA, in the most common usage of the term, a piece of cloth that is spread on the floor, and on which dishes of food are placed at meal times. Since sitting at dining tables has become increasingly common nowadays, the word may also refer to an ordinary tablecloth. Apart…

SOGDIAN LANGUAGE one of the Eastern Middle Iranian languages once spoken in Sogdiana. i. Description. ii. Loanwords in Persian.

SOGDIAN LANGUAGE i. Description Sogdian is one of the Eastern Middle Iranian languages once spoken in Sogdiana (northern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) before the Islamization of the area in the 10th century. Sogdians were traders along the Silk Roads and founded many diasporas along the routes, with the result that the…

SOGDIAN LANGUAGE ii. Loanwords in Persian Loanwords from Sogdian into Persian were adopted through the cultural relations and commercial interactions which existed between Iran proper and Transoxiana, the birth place of Sogdian language. The Sogdians, the speakers of this Iranian language, played such a prominent role in the overland trade…

SOGDIAN LITERATURE i. Buddhist A considerable number of Buddhist Sogdian texts dating from around the 8th century CE were unearthed from “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas” at Dunhuang in western China and from Turfan in Chinese Turkestan. The bulk of Buddhist Sogdian texts were discovered by expeditions from Europe and…

SOGDIAN TRADE. The people of Sogdiana were the main caravan merchants of Central Asia from the 5th to the 8th century. Origins. Little is known of the origins of Sogdian trade. The first mention of Sogdian merchants is found in the Shiji (Shih Chi), written around 100 BCE and based…

SOGDIANA the name in Classical sources for Suγd, the region of Central Asia north of the river Oxus/Amu Darya. i. The name. ii. Historical geography. iii. History and archeology. iv. Sogdian art.

SOGDIANA i. The Name The name of the ancient and medieval land around Samarqand, which is usually rendered in European languages as Sogdiana, Sogd, or Sogdia (sometimes written with gh, as commonly in the German adjective soghdisch), has been attested in a series of mutually related forms in many languages…

SOGDIANA ii. Historical Geography For physical geography, see CENTRAL ASIA i; for the cities or regions within Sogdiana, see relevant articles (e.g., Bukhara, Samarqand, Keš, Košāniya, Panjikant, etc.); for maps, see Figure 1; de la Vaissière, esp. map 5; and Bregel, esp. p. 25. The earliest records of the name of…

SOGDIANA iii. HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY Sogdiana, an Iranian-speaking region in Central Asia, stretches from the rivers Āmu Daryā in the south to the Syr Daryā in the north, with its heart in the valleys of the Zarafšān and the Kaška Daryā.  But this description, appropriate for the early period, varied over…

SOGDIANA iv. SOGDIAN ART Sogdian art is primarily the art of the inhabitants of Sogdiana (Sogd, Sogdia) in pre-Islamic times. Its development and apogee was limited to four or five centuries before and during the Muslim conquest of Transoxania. Sogdian art of the heartlands flourished in the settled areas of…

ŠOKUROV, MOḤAMMADJĀN (Taj. Muhammadjon Šukurov; also Šakuri), Tajik scholar and literary critic (b. February 1925, Bukhara; d. 16 September 2012, Dushanbe; Figure 1, Figure 2).   Moḥammadjān Šokurov was born to the family of Šarifjān Maḵdum Ṣadr-e Żiāʾ (1867-1932), who had been a chief justice (qāżi-kalān) in the Emirate of…

SOLAYMĀN, Il-Khan of Iran (739/1339-745/1344).  A great-grandson of Yošmut, son of Hülegü (Hulāku), he was proclaimed khan in 739/1339 by the Chobanid amir Ḥasan b. Timurtāš (‘Ḥasan-e Kuček’), who forced the previous Il-Khan, the princess Sati Bik (Sati Beg), to marry Solaymān, although according to the contemporary Mamluk author al-Šojāʿi…