The Twelfth District. Towards a Connected History of Achaemenid Northeastern Central Asia
«When the Persian king referred to his Greek “subjects” in their various subcategories, he certainly may have included the entire Greek world in this claim, whether it held “true” or not for those Greeks included in his list of imperial subjects. The same applies to the Saka who lived in the vast territories of the north and the east. The dynamic between these two concepts manifested in the imperial border zones that developed within the tension between these two competing concepts, which are contradictory only at first glance».
- R. Rollinger, The Persian Empire in Contact with the World. In The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. Volume V. The Age of Persia, ed. K. Radner, N. Moelle, and D. T. Potts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 928.
1. And I Think It’s Gonna Be a Long Long Time. Once Again on Baktria: Why and How
The present dissertation to study the processes - and to identify their underlying actors – which fueled the emergence and development of the most important satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire in the East (Baktria and the neighboring regions of Sogdiana and Chorasmia). It does so by adopting three mutually complementary perspectives: the «imperial» (top-down), the «local» (bottom-up) and the «liminal» (frontier studies). At the same times, it subjects the sources (both written and archaeological), to an innovative methodology in this field of studies by making extensive use of the ethnographic record on the one hand and, on the other, a wide range of secondary literature focusing on historical and human geography.
In the face of the great vitality shown by research on Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Central Asia over the past fifteen years, the Achaemenid period still remains comparatively little explored, although both archaeological investigation and some very recent documentary discoveries have significantly increased the body of sources available for the study of this region. Moreover, due to the geopolitical events of the past forty years, research on Central Asia in general - and pre-Hellenistic Asia in particular - has faced remarkable challenges. In the case of Achaemenid Bactria, the dearth of literary sources on the one hand and, on the other, the linguistic obstacles arising from the hindrances, for most Western scholars, of accessing the – bodacious - Russophone archaeological literature, has meant that, since the time of some seminal studies by Pierre Briant (1983, 1984, 1985), this region of the Empire has been neglected in favor of contexts, such as Babylonia or Egypt, which are better covered by the extant evidence. In recent years, however, there has been a significant reversal of this trend. The publication of the results of a massive survey of Eastern Afġānistān (Gardin et al., 1989-1998) has shown that, contrary to earlier assumptions, even before the rise of the Seleukid satrapy and the kingdom of Baktria (Coloru 2009, Morris 2019a), the region enjoyed a highly complex infrastructure, such that it was a key piece in the Achaemenid imperial mosaic.
The discovery of some parchment documents that can probably be traced back to the archives of an important Achaemenid official on the eve of Alexander’s invasion (329-327 BCE, Naveh - Shaked 2012) also showed the deep level of Central Asian integration within the imperial administrative machinery (King 2021). This has been further confirmed by the publication of a new dossier of tablets from the Persepolis archives, from which we can see the very high regard in which workers (kurtaš) originating from Baktria as well as the officers assigned to their escort were held (Henkelman 2018a). Although to date it has been impossible to bring to light the archaeological levels of the capital of the satrapy (Baktra), the work of the French Archaeological Delegation to Afġānistān (DAFA) in the oasis of Balḫ has recently uncovered a complex system of fortifications apparently intended to control the surrounding steppes by means of garrisons located at strategic points in the oasis: this seems to further back hypotheses put forward by Briant regarding the strategic importance of the city as a stronghold of Achaemenid power in Central Asia (Maxwell-Jones 2015, Marquis 2018).
Despite these significant advances, the image of Baktria still in vogue among both some scholars and the wider audience is that of an ungovernable province, a breeding ground for «autonomist» drives on the one hand and, on the other, under constant threat from the «nomads» of the steppes. Conquered by Cyrus II and integrated into the fold of the Empire by Darius I, the satrapy would progressively have removed itself from Achaemenid power beginning with the reign of Xerxes: from there, it has been argued, regions such as neighboring Sogdiana would become «independent» from Achaemenid control, finally erupting, by the time of Darius III, into a state of «anarchy» culminating in the invasion of Alexander (Holt 2005, Wu 2010).
Distancing itself from such narratives, the present dissertation intends on the contrary to show how, throughout the entire history of the Empire, the whole of Central Asia (not only the oasis territories, but also the steppes) remained an integral part of its framework, and a critical one – economically, socially, and politically – at that. To this end, its overarching goal is to to analyze the relations between the political-administrative center of the satrapy and the surrounding territory in greater depth than has been done so far, since the ecology (and thus the politics) of the Central Asian oases cannot be understood without adequate consideration of the surrounding steppes and deserts.
Put it otherwise, given the significant increase in documentation over the past decade, the present dissertation sets for itself the goal of calling into question the mainstream view of Baktria as a Perilous Frontier (however important it might have been) of the Achaemenid Empire still so popular among both researchers, especially historians, and the wider public today. At the same time, it seeks to develop a new understanding of this region and the surrounding territories as a «complex space», in which different social actors - not only the Empire and its administration, but also the peoples of the steppes, whom some important recent studies (Miller 2014) have shown to be decisive actors on the Baktrian chessboard - move around and constantly negotiate the terms of mutual coexistence and mutual exploitation (White 20112).
Key to this effort through the work is moreover a critical examination of categories such as of mobility and fixity (Horden-Purcell 2000) in light of the most recent studies on interactions in frontier spaces in Inner Asia (Di Cosmo 2015, 2018). Such a wide-ranging comparative approach in the context of Achaemenid historiography ought to be taken as perhaps the boldest – and as the 8 chapters of the work strive to show, fruitful – contribution of the present dissertation to current scholarship on pre-Hellenistic Central Asia.
Such a strategy is necessary because of the fact that, unlike more recent research on post-Achaemenid Baktria, which has turned decisively toward cultural history (Mairs 2014, Hoo 2020), the study of the Persian satrapy appears exclusively interested in investigating the impact of the Achaemenid conquest on Central Asia, thereby relegating a multitude of local actors to the background of the historical trajectory of Persian rule. However, the ever-expanding dataset of primary sources available today offers an opportunity to critically reevaluate concepts such as «center» and «periphery», as well as to significantly deepen our understanding of the social complexity of Achaemenid Baktria. In doing so, the present dissertation aims at giving back voice and agency to actors (starting with the steppe people) that have been overly neglected until now.
A qualifying point of the work as a whole, and one that distinguishes it from all previous research focused the same subject, is the attempt to place Achaemenid Baktria squarely within is (Central)Eurasian, in the wake of some important recent studies (for example Kuz’mina 2008 and Beckwith 2009) that have emphasized the importance of this space as a subject of historical action and not as a remote periphery (Morris 2019a). To this end, extensive use is be made through the entire dissertation of comparative evidence and methodological insights drawn from studies on, among others, the relations between the Hán China and the Xiōngnú nomads. (Di Cosmo 2002, Miller 2015). There reason behind this choice is that this disciplinary field provides the scholar of Achaemenid Baktria with important ethnographic material, which the present dissertation tries to exploit to the bottom of their remarkable potential in order to analyze in a new perspective (co-dependence rather than opposition) the relations between the Achaemenid Empire and the Central Asian people.
2. Of The Earth With Many People: A Survey of the Present Work
The general introduction (Why Baktria, after all? An Introduction to Altneuland) aims at centering the recent scholarly debate on pre-Islamic Central Asia within a wider tradition of historical, anthropological, and archaeological research. Here the case is made for adopting a connected, truly Eurasian perspective, which looks at both Baktria and the Achaemenid Empires against the background of a broader historical and sociopolitical context, in synchronic and, crucially, diachronic perspective. This, it is argued through the chapter, provides valuable opportunities for making the best of a wide array of comparative evidence and methodological approaches which might prove crucial, as several chapters in the work set out to show, to shed better light on the formative stages and the inner workings of the Northeastern borderlands of the Empire, especially during time periods (such as the long 5th century, from the reign of Xerxes onwards), where the documentary evidence is particularly scanty.
Chapter 2 (Baktria in Wonderland: Sources and Methods on Achaemenid Central Asia) focuses on the the available sources. It has recently been suggested that, as it comes to the Hellenistic or the Kuṣāṇa periods, the real challenge for scholars is how to profitably exploit the extant evidence, which a thorough investigation of the record shows being not as scanty as usually bemoaned. The five sections of the chapter are meant to show that the same can be said concerning the Achaemenid period. In order to achieve this goal, besides taking stock of the usual Greek and Latin accounts, of the royal inscriptions and the Persepolis tablets, of recent archaeological research and of excavated texts, the present works makes use of a wide set of theoretical approaches and methodologies (from cultural memory and intentional history to the scholarship of the so-called Imperial Turn). The case study of a famous passage in Herodotus (3.117) on Achaemenid hydraulic infrastructure in Chorasmia is offered at the end of the chapter as a trial test to show how such a comparative, sometimes heavily theoretically informed approach as the one pursued through the present work can help in paving the way towards a less imperiocentric, bottom-up oriented assessment of the Achaemenid imperial experience in Central Asia.
Chapter 3 (Nomina nuda tenemus) ought to be taken as an excursus of sort, for it critically addresses a long-lasting debate on the – several time suggested, sometimes uncritically accepted, but in many respects problematic – hypothesis of a pre-imperial history of Central Asia. A survey of the scholarship, and a discussion of the (mostly archaeological) evidence available suggests that the unavoidable starting point for reconstructing the genesis of the satrapy and the mechanisms that ensured its control by the Empire is the Bīsutūn inscription. That no pre-Achaemenid Empire (Ḫayānid, Mede, or otherwise) existed before Cyrus, however, is not the same as to claim that the conqueror was faced, upon entering Central Asia, with a remote periphery or a politically blank space. This is made particularly clear by a close reading of a crucial paragraph in the Bīsutūn inscription, which for the first time mentions a «Persian» as «satrap in Baktria». As suggested in the second part of the chapter, once read against the grain of a growing body of literature on Empire formation and of the messy nature of its working on the ground, Darius’ terse statements open a window on an intriguing process of power negotiations in which local communities and their élites were able to considerably affect imperial goals and ambitions.
With these premises established, chapter 4 (The Road to Oxiana: Reconstructing a Presumptive Satrapy) attempts to reconstruct the sociopolitical and economic landscape of Central Asia during the 6th century BCE. This is, it is argued, a critical step towards a better understanding of the conditions faced by the Teispid (and later Achaemenid) administrators once they tried to consolidate their conquest of Baktria and the neighboring regions. To this end, the few narrative and archaeological pieces of evidence available are integrated with a thorough discussion of the socio-political organization of the steppe, ranging much wider than Baktria proper both in space and time. If in fact, based on the currently available evidence, it seems highly probable that the geographical and administrative configuration of Baktria (perhaps even its very name) should be interpreted as the result of the inclusion of Central Asia in the Persian political and administrative framework, it appears at the same time no less evident that the process of this inclusion took place according to a very precise pattern, dictated to a not inconsiderable extent by 1. ecological and 2. socio-political contingencies. These two factors were chiefly responsible for the development of an extremely sophisticated system of territorial exploitation capable of integrating, while at the same time being inevitably modified by them, structures built up over the previous centuries for the functioning of which it was essential to offer 1. economic, 2. social and 3. political guarantees to actors capable of controlling these structures and the relational networks which fueled them. Not only were these structures not dismantled, but to a considerable extent they were exploited to their own advantage by the Persians, who even took care of their further expansion and development within the imperial infrastructures.
Chapter 5 (Thus Saith the Lord: Darius, Son of Vīštāspa) is chiefly devoted to Darius’ reign, which thanks to the Persepolis Fortification Archive stands out as by far the better-known period of Achaemenid rule in the East. It is divided into two main parts. The first one offers an overview of the current scholarly standpoint on the Persian administration in the region, combining both literary and documentary evidence. It shows how and to what extend the Empire was able to extract material and human wealth from the territories it conquered, and furthermore shows how, thanks to their remarkable skills, Baktrians and other Central Asians critically integrated into the administrative framework of the Empire considerably beyond the Northeastern satrapies of their origin. In the second part, however, the focus shifts to a more local perspective. By investigating the production and circulation of luxurious specimens of material culture such as drinking vessels, the chapter closes by pointing out how and to what (considerable) extent locals succeeded in negotiating their position as subjects of the Great King, while never giving up on their remarkable agency.
From Xerxes’ reign down to the middle 4th century BCE (the scope of Chapter 6: Uno fumavit Baktria tota rogo? Achaemenid Baktria from Xerxes to Aḫvamazdā), we are left with close to nothing to investigate local and trans-regional development in Northeastern Central Asia. Given moreover that the literary evidence covering – however scantily – this period is filled with court intrigues and prudish anecdotes, it has become commonplace in scholarship to frame this period as one of stagnation if not of decay. The main goal of the chapter is to question such an assessment. It does so, on the one hand, by critically reexamining Greek and Roman evidence on Baktria and, on the other, by bringing such accounts in dialogue with both archaeology and excavated texts (such as the Aramaic Ritual Texts from Persepolis). The case study of a major Achaemenid-period site in Southern Uzbekistan (Kyzyltëpe), is extensively discussed in order to show that, if from its excavations a thorough picture emerges of the imperial administrative footprint during the long 5th century, a proper contextualization of the findings against scholarship on pastoralism remarkably brings to the fore the agentic capacity of local actors.
The Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria (ADAB) deserve a detailed treatment on their own, and therefore they are thoroughly discussed in Chapter 7 (My Kingdom for a Camel. On Satraps and Powerbrokers in 4th Century Achaemenid Baktria). The value of this dataset lays, on the one hand, in its nature as a primary source illustrating, in astonishing details, the inner working of Achaemenid power in Central Asia from a regional, at times micro-historical perspective. Once again, the chapter is divided into two main sections. The first takes stock on the scholarly debate sparked by the publication of this remarkable body of evidence, and shows how, even at the very eve of Alexander’s campaign, the Persian imperial paradigm in and across Baktria had transformed the satrapy into a political, economic, and cultural unity linked both to the rest of the Empire and to regions beyond it, where Achaemenid power was nominal at best. At the same time, the ADAB shows a system of socio-political networks capable of involving in a symbiotic relationship all the social actors present in the territory of the satrapy, from the satraps of the Great King to the stewards of a camel driver. Such a network, even though was critical to securing Persian overlordship over the land, its resources, and its people, could however also be exploited by local powerbrokers to pursue their own aims and goals, sometimes openly defying the satrap’s authority. In order to better understand this apparent contradiction, in a second part of the chapter the ADAB are put into dialogue with the longue durée of Central Asian social and administrative history. Against this backdrop, a dialectical relationship once again emerges between central power and regional authorities, which the comparative approach presented in this chapter shows to have been at the same time, and over a remarkably long time-span, both profitable, and therefore solid (by virtue of the mutual dependence of the two players) and fraught with tensions, and therefore sensitive: to understand its social mechanisms, the conclusion argues, is crucial in order to make better sense of the reasons for the expansion, consolidation, and fall of the Empires, at least the pre-modern ones, in this region of Eurasia.
Finally, Chapter 8 (Голые Годы. Alexander in Baktria), discusses how – and why – the unexpected coming on stage of a young conqueror from the Empire’s periphery ended up in the opening of a new chapter in the history of the relations between the Baktrian élites on the one hand and, on the other, representatives of imperial power. In the first part of the chapter, the two-year Central Asian campaign is reviewed, paying particular attention to its impact on local resources (especially in the steppes) and the texture of communal – not only élite – solidarity. In a second step, the outcome of the expedition is evaluated against Seleukos’ reconquest of the former Achaemenid East. In doing so, it is shown why the system established by the Persians came to an end, and why Alexander’s heirs had to fight hard (and eventually to come to terms with those élites who survived the campaign), to rebuild some sort of it in order to substantiate their claims on the lands which once the Great Kings ruled.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unitn.it/oai:iris.unitn.it:11572/395309 |
| Date | 07 December 2023 |
| Creators | Ferrario, Marco |
| Contributors | Supervisore: Stark, Sören, Weber, Gregor, Ferrario, Marco, Giangiulio, Maurizio |
| Publisher | Università degli studi di Trento, place:TRENTO |
| Source Sets | Università di Trento |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | alleditors:Supervisore: Stark, Sören, alleditors:Weber, Gregor |
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