the ‘outside’ other 27
Great Silk Road^45 and the headquarters/capitals of the khagans. Th is
was a valid situation in relation to Byzantines, Persians, and Chinese.
However, as far as the borders are concerned, there is a signifi cant
exception, which has already been mentioned. It is related to the sym-
biosis between the nomad Turks and Uighurs, on the one hand, and
the sedentary Sogdians, on the other. In Eastern Turkistan and the
Semirechie, between the sixth and the ninth century, there were no
real barriers such as earthen ramparts, walls, etc., which is another
proof for the long held conclusion that there was no sharp confl ict
between sedentarists and nomads in Middle Asia during the early
medieval period. Apparently the otherness of the Sogdians (who, apart
from everything else, spoke East Iranian dialects) was not regarded as
a total otherness by the Turk and the Uighur, who spoke some Tur-
kic dialects and had another lifestyle. For that reason aft er the mid-
sixth century, as has already been mentioned, the Sogdians quite oft en
accepted Turkic titles, names, clothes and habits, thus easily becoming
part of the Turkic military and political system and at the same time,
in their turn, established and inhabited the fi rst towns in the khaga-
nate.^46 Both the Turkic and the Uighur towns used the Sogdian ones as
a model and it is likely that the greater part of them were planned and
constructed by Sogdian craft smen. Th ey were among the places where
the sedentary East Iranian civilization ‘opened’ itself for the nomadic
otherness and vice versa. According to A. von Gabain, the concept of
‘city’ among the Central Asian peoples is a specifi c Iranian one and
is represented by “kent/kand” (Sogd. ‘kndh’), although it matches the
original Turkic ‘baliq’.^47 Th is conclusion proves once again the exist-
ing Turkic-Sogdian symbiosis and the fact that the otherness of the
(^45) Lubo-Lesnichenko 1994; Liu 1998; Barfi eld 2001, 234–249; De La Vaissière 2002,
124–153, 183–191. For the Great Silk Road’s extension in the lands of Northern Cau-
casus see, Pletneva 1996; Savchenko 1999, 125–141. 46
See Minorsky 1978, N 1 (pp. 283–285), who gives the translation of Tamîm ibn
Baḥ̣r’s report. Th ere, the author mentions that in the khagan’s capital Ordubaliq (later
to be called Karabalghasun) the main part of the populace was Manichaean and its
preoccupation was mainly the trade; this fact is one more proof about the existence of
enough Sogdians living there. Also see, Golden 1992, 160; Mackerras 1990, 335; Mack-
erras 1972 (2nd ed.), 10, 88–89, 152. All these authors assume that the coup d’etat of
Ton Bagha-tarkhan (who later became Alp Qutlug, 779–789) was directed against the
Sogdians and the infl uence of the sedentary civilizations, in general; the latter had
never been viewed by the local aristocrats as something absolutely positive.
(^47) von Gabain 1983, 623. Th e Uighur inscription from Shine-usu narrates that Mo-
yen-ch’o khagan ordered Sogdians and Chinese to build up the town of Baybaliq, on
the Selenga River—for this see, Mackerras 1990, 321.