The Ideology Of The Ninth And Tenth Centuries 33
was also located in this territory and the populations of the two cultures played
an important role in it. It is assumed that the name Kangju derives from the old
and mythical Turanian center Kangha (Kang). It brings memories of the times
when Iran and Turan separated and when the Turanians were led by Afrasiab,
later considered the founder of many of the steppe Iranian-speaking or Turkic-
speaking tribes and peoples. The name Kang or Kangha was also used for the
Syr Darya River. Ancient Kangha probably became the empire Kangju around
the second century BC; the last mention of it dates from 270 AD. In the fifth
century, Kangju was a small area, subject to the Hephthalites.64
Of special interest is the Dzhetyasar culture (eighth-seventh century BC
to the ninth century AD), which—despite its crossroad location on the lower
reaches of the Syr Darya, where practically all the steppe migrations passed65—
is particularly conservative. The Lower Syr Darya has almost always been the
center of nomadic unions from the Southeastern, Eastern and Northern Cis-
Aral Regions. Often nomads would migrate southward from these regions,
passing through the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, before
continuing on towards the southern regions of Middle Asia, to the Hindu Kush
Mountains and the deserts of Central Iran.66
The economy of the Dzhetyasar culture was mixed and consisted of stock-
breeding and agriculture, with the stock-breeders using the Dzhetyasar oasis
for their winter pasture-ground. In the summertime, they usually migrated
towards the pastures around the Ilek and the Ural Rivers. There they inter-
acted with an Ugrian and Sarmatian population. Thus, this annual north-south
migration helped cultivate closer ties between these ethnic groups during the
whole existence of the Dzhetyasar culture. This is why the connection between
the Dzhetyasarians and the Sauromatians from the Volga Region is indicated
by similarities in their archaeological culture and anthropological type. As a
result, the area between the South Cis-Ural Region and the lower reaches of
the Syr Darya can be perceived as a single economic and cultural zone as early
as the fourth-third century BC. In the second century BC, the Sarmatian cul-
tural influence reached south of Bukhara, which is consistent with the possible
involvement of Sarmatians of the Cis-Ural Region in the defeat of Bactria.67
64 Kliashtornyi 1964, 163–167 and 173–174; Kliashtornyi and Sultanov 2000, 25; Vainberg
1990, 92, 100, 203–204, 209–210, 280–283, and 302–303; Levina 1996, 375–376 and 1998, 56;
Andrialov and Levina 1979, 97; P’iankov 2001, 337.
65 Andrialov and Levina 1979, 94.
66 Vainberg 1990, 118–119.
67 Vainberg 1990, 98–99 and 181–182; Smirnov 1964, 192, 197, 287–288, and 290; Fedorov
and Fedorov 1978, 54 express a similar point of view, the latter postulating that “even in