The Sogdians are a very important ethnic group on the Silk Road, mainly from the 3rd to the 8th century AD, that is, from the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, the Sogdians are famous for their business, so it can be said that most of the Silk Road is supported by Sogdians.
For Chinese, there were two Sogdians who should be most familiar with them, namely An Lushan and Shi Siming, who caused the Anshi Rebellion. Yes, both were Sogdians, except that An Lushan's patrilineal line was Sogdian and the matriarchal line was Turkic.
An Lushan's clan and the harmonic terrier of a failure in history
The Old Book of Tang records that An Lushan's father was a bastard Hu. The "Hu" of the Tang Dynasty refers to the various ethnic groups in Central Asia and even West Asia, including the Western Regions, and the "bastard" of the hybrid Hu does not necessarily have the meaning of cursing An Lushan, and the current semantics are not exactly the same, and the hybrid Hu in the Tang Dynasty in fact often refers to the Sogdians.
Tang Dynasty foreign Hu people image
Regarding the issue of An Lushan's ethnicity, the Old Book of Tang borrowed an area from An Lushan's mouth, and there is a special record that occurred at a dinner party with Ge Shuhan.
The reason why this meal is famous is because the meal was specially arranged by Tang Xuanzong Li Longji.
Geshuhan was a famous general of the Tang Dynasty, a Turk, and from his surname "Geshu", we know that he came from the Geshu tribe of the Turkic Tuqishi. Tuqi Shi was a branch of the Western Turks, Geshuhan was the son of the chief of the Goshu clan, and his mother was the daughter of the Yu Khotanese royal family of Wei Chi, yes, the family of Wei ChiGong.
Ge Shuhan served in Longyou, and the Tang Dynasty's Longyou Province roughly included today's Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and most of Xinjiang, because at that time, the Beiting Capital Protectorate and the Anxi Capital Protectorate were all under the jurisdiction of Longyou Province.
The jurisdiction of the Tang Dynasty included parts of central and western Asia
Goshuhan won many victories in the war against Tibet. Therefore, there will be "the Big Dipper seven stars high, Goshu night with a knife." So far, peeping at the horses, I dare not cross Lintao. " verse.
The reason why An Lushan and Ge Shuhan were at odds was mainly because when Ge Shuhan was in Longyou, he was once a cousin of An Lushan, An Sishun, but the two were at odds and had a grudge, so Ge Shuhan had a bad relationship with An Lushan. By the way, Guo Ziyi, who later became more bullish and put an end to the An Shi rebellion, also worked under An Sishun and has always had a good relationship with An Sishun. Because An Sishun had drawn a line with his cousin An Lushan before the An Shi Rebellion, when An Lushan rebelled, An Sishun was not too involved at first, but was dismissed from the military post, but was eventually framed by Ge Shuhan for colluding with An Lushan and executed.
Then, when Li Longji arranged the meal in the twelfth year of Tianbao (753), An Sishun, An Lushan, and Ge Shuhan were already the envoys of the festival who were alone, so Li Longji arranged for these three generals, or the three major ministers, to eat, with the purpose of making the two sides reconcile at the meal, not to cause contradictions, and to contribute to the development and stability of Datang with one heart. The person who specifically presided over this meal was the famous grand eunuch Gao Lishi.
However, this dinner game ended in failure, and An Lushan almost fought with Ge Shuhan at the dinner table. Because at the dinner table, An Lushan said a paragraph to Ge Shuhan: "My father is Hu, my mother is Turkic; my father is Turkic, and my mother is Hu, which is similar to the Gong clan, so why not be close to each other?" "That is to say, we are all the same, why not unite and fraternity?"
An Lushan's words are actually a kind of overture, almost set, and take the initiative to reconcile with Ge Shuhan. As a result, Ge Shuhan said: "The ancients cloud: the wild fox is ominous to the cave, in order to forget the original also." Dare not be exhausted. ”
The meaning of Goshuhan's words is that the fox howls at his cave, which is ominous, and that he has forgotten Ben. So how dare I not do my best to make friends with you?
Here, Goshuhan quotes an old saying and plays with a harmonic terrier, and the wild fox's "fox" means "hu". The ancients thought that the fox howling at its cave was cannibalism, so they said that they had forgotten Ben. The original meaning of Goshuhan should also be to express that the two sides should be friendly, and should not forget the original and cannibalize each other. But An Lushan was probably uncultured, didn't understand, or was it because he was too sensitive, thinking that Ge Shuhan scolded him as a wild fox, so he immediately exploded, scolding Ge Shuhan: "The Turks dare to be so ye?!" ”
Ge Shuhan was about to answer the call, but when he saw that Gao Lishi next to him had made a look at himself, he held back the words and did not say a word. Anyway, we don't know if Ge Shuhan wanted to explain or prepare to argue with An Lushan. But we at least know that this is the first ever example of a harmonic terrier failure.
When Ge Shuhan finally quelled the Anshi Rebellion, because of the blind command of the chancellor Yang Guozhong, resulting in the loss of Chang'an's Tianjian Tong Pass, Ge Shuhan was captured by his rebellious generals and sacrificed to An Lushan, Ge Shuhan did not regard death as a death for the Tang Dynasty, but put down his body and surrendered to An Lushan in a low voice, but was eventually killed by An Lushan's son An Qingxu.
So through the conversation at that dinner, we know that An Lushan's mother is not a problem with the Turks, the focus is on which "Hu" is his father's "Hu"?
Earlier scholars have various theories about the clan of An Lushan, such as believing that the father of An Lushan was a Khitan and a Xi person. But it is now almost certain that his patrilineal line is Sogdia. Because in the Tang Dynasty, if a Hu person's surname was An, then it was almost certain that it was one of the nine surnames of Zhaowu from Sogdia.
Of course, there is also a theory about An Lushan's origin that his original surname is Kang, and later his mother remarried to a family with the surname of An, and then changed her surname to An. But the fact is that in the Tang Dynasty, there were already different theories about An Lushan's origins, and there were already different and confusing reasons for this--there may be political reasons for this, because after the An Shi rebellion was settled, An Sishun's old subordinate Guo Ziyi once wrote a letter to cry out for his old leader, and he insisted that An Lushan was not a member of the old An family, and that "his real surname was Kang", and the old An family looked at him pitifully and "mourned his loneliness", so he adopted him and assumed the surname of An. In short, it is necessary to resolutely draw a clear line between An Lushan and An Sishun.
Portrait of An Lushan painted by later generations
Some scholars in later generations believe that An Lushan's so-called adoptive father with the surname An is actually his uncle, so there is no possibility that An Lushan is surnamed Kang.
However, whether it is an an lushan surname an or a surname kang, the identification of his Sogdian identity does not pose any problem, because "Kang" is also one of the nine surnames of the Sogdian Zhaowu, and it is the first surname of the Sogdians at that time.
Although the name "Lushan" looks like a Chinese name, it can actually be determined to be a transliteration of the Sogdian word roxšan, meaning "guangming". The specific research, phonetic transcription and so on will not be expanded.
So what is the surname of Zhaowu Jiu?
Sogdians with the surname Ofewu
The so-called Nine Surnames of Zhaowu are also known as nine surnames Hu, Hybrid Hu, Sogdian Hu and so on. It is the 9 surnames used by the Sogdians in datang – in fact, more than 9 – and the source of these surnames is the name of the country of these Sogdian countries. From which country you come from, your last name is what you are.
These Sogdian city-states, mostly distributed in the Zelafshan River valley between the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers in today's Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, are basically lined up in an east-west direction along the Zelafshan River. This area of the Sogdian state distribution is known as the Sogdian region, and today it is pronounced more closely as "Sogdiana", which includes the kangguo, anguo, shiguo, miguo, Heguo, Shiguo, Biguo, Muguo, and the city-states of Zhongcao, Dongcao, and Xicao. According to the New Book of Tang and the Biography of Kang Guo, the nine surnames of Zhaowu are Kang, An, Mi, He, Cao, Shi, Huoxun, and Pengdi; according to the Tongdian compiled by the Tang Dynasty scholar and poet Du Mu's grandfather Du You, it is Kang, Mi, Shi, Cao, He, An, Xiao'an, Na Sebo, Unnayu, and Mu – anyway, the Wei Shu, the Sui Shu, the two Tang Shu, and the Tongdian are all different.
The "Land of Sogdia" is roughly in its place today
Distribution of some Sogdian city-states
Among the nine countries with the surname Zhaowu, Kang is the largest and the eldest of all Sogdian countries, and is the second largest city in today's Uzbekistan, samarkand, a famous city on the Silk Road. The ancestral state of An Lushan is Bukhara, which also belongs to Uzbekistan today. These two city-states were the central city-states of the Hezhong region at that time, and they were very famous in history, and some of the idioms in Uyghur today are often related to these two cities. For example, in Uyghur, if a person is not sincere and hypocritical to invite people to dinner, it will be said to be a Samarkand-style guest; if you say that you go to sleep, you will say that bukhara went to a trip - similar to the Chinese "see Zhou Gong went" or "went to Mengjiazhuang". Obviously, these clichés allude to the fame and prosperity of these two cities.
As for today's Largest City in Uzbekistan, toshkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, it was the Stone State of that year.
There is no doubt that the Chinese of the Jin and Tang Dynasties simplified these place names according to the customs of Chinese, as to why Samarkand is referred to as Kang, Bukhara to An, etc., there is no conclusion today, and there are many speculations, such as some people think that Samarkand is referred to as "Kang", which is probably the last syllable of the name "kand", and so on.
Knowing the surname of Zhaowu Jiu, we will understand that Shi Siming was also a Sogdian, ancestral from the shi kingdom (kass), also known as the kass, also known as the qisha, the stone, the solid sand, the qisha, etc., located in the shahri sabuz in the south of today's Uzbekistan. The name of Shi Siming was changed by Tang Xuanzong, and Shi Siming's original name was "sū(sū) gan", which means "glowing" and "burning" in Sogdian. This shows that Tang Xuanzong Li Longji changed his name to "Siming", and it is very clear what "窣干" means.
The discredited Tang Emperor Xuanzong Li Longji
The reason why the ancients called the Sogdian state Zhaowu Jiu surname, according to Chinese historical sources, was that people at that time believed that these countries originally lived in Zhaowu City, Zhangye County, north of the Qilian Mountains, and later defeated by the Xiongnu, moved west to the central Asian river region, that is, the river of the Syr Darya River and the Amu Darya River, and spread out its branches and leaves, forming a nine-surname state.
Historically, the area around the Hexi Corridor was indeed originally a nomadic land of the Dayue people, and in 174 BC, the Xiongnu defeated the Dayue people, and the Dayue people ran to today's Ili, drove out the Wusun people, and then entered the Amu Darya Valley. Because of this, some people think that the Otsuki clan and Sogdia are the same thing.
But in fact this may not be the case. Some scholars believe that Zhaowu is more likely to be a Sogdian language, a transliteration of the official title "Jabghu".
Because as early as the 6th century BC, the historical records of the Persian region have already appeared in the Sogdian and Sogdian regions, which is six or seven hundred years earlier than the westward migration of the Great Moon Clan. At that time, the Sogdian region was subject to the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia.
The Sogdians never formed a unified state in history, except for the initial submission to the Persians, Alexander submitted to the Greeks during the Crusades from 329 BC to 323 BC, and later to the Sassanid Persian Dynasty, the White Huns (嚈達), the Turkic Khaganate, and the Tang Dynasty of China. By the way, when Alexander conquered the Sogdian region, he also married the Sogdian princess of Samarkand, whose name was Jokshana, and many people believe that this name is actually "Lushan" of An Lushan, which is a different Chinese translation of a word. You can also understand that Alexander married the "Princess of Light" of Samarkand, and An Lushan was the "An Xiaoming" of the Tang Dynasty.
The scene in the 2008 film "Alexander" in which Alexander marries the Sogdian princess Joxana
In fact, the name "Lushan" is very common among the Sogdians, for example, in the documents unearthed in Turpan, there is a name such as Cao Lushan of the Sogdians, "Lushan" should be one of the common names of the Sogdians, similar to the English name of Peter, George and the like.
In 631, Emperor Taizong of Tang defeated the Eastern Turks, and in 657 AD, Emperor Gaozong of Tang defeated the Western Turks. In 658, a year after defeating the Western Turks, varkhuman, the lord of the City-State of Kang, led the subjects of the Nine Sogdian Kingdoms to submit to the Tang Dynasty, and Tang set up the Governor's Mansion of Kangju in his sogic homeland, which was under the jurisdiction of the Anxi Capital Protectorate, giving great autonomy to the Sogdian city-states, and the Sogdians began a brilliant era.
The language and ethnicity of the Sogdians
The language of the Sogdians belongs to the East Iranian language of the Indo-European Iranian language family. In China today, the language of East Iranians is Tajik. Today, the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and the whole of Central Asia are mostly ethnic groups that use Turkic languages, such as Uyghur, Uzbek (Uzbek), Kazakh, Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz), Turkmen, Tatar, etc., and further west there are Azerbaijani, Turkish, etc. Historically, however, Sogdian has been the international language of the Silk Roads, and even in the second half of the 6th century, it was the official language of the Turkic tribes. This is because the Sogdians were highly developed in commerce and culture at that time.
In terms of writing, the Sogdians would use a variety of alphabetic systems to spell Sogdian for different ethnic groups, but their main use was the Aramaic script, which was also called Aramite, Alan, etc., derived from Phoenician, and Like Sogdian, it was also the world's common script.
Sogdian letters
Aramaic influenced many later generations of writing, and later Uighurs originated from Aramaic, and traditional Mongolian originated from Uighur, and Manchu from traditional Mongolian, so many people may have a hard time imagining that the Manchu script written on the plaques hanging on the Forbidden City in Beijing today actually originated from the distant Phoenicia. In fact, almost all of the world's alphabet can be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet, such as the Greek alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet, the Arabic alphabet, and the Latin alphabet, while the Phoenician alphabet is derived from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
From ancient Egypt and Phoenicia to the Qing Dynasty in Beijing thousands of years later, the Sogdians who played a key role in the spread of writing were those Sogdians who were active on the Silk Road.
As for the Sogdian race, it is generally said that they belong to the Europa race, the Iranian race, that is, the Caucasian race. It's just that now the terms about caucasians and yellows are increasingly discarded by scholars, and are considered pseudoscience, and in today's West, we can no longer see such statements as and yellows, but we are still singing black eyes, black hair, yellow skin, forever and ever the descendants of dragons. This is not discussed, and those interested can look at related works such as "Becoming Yellow: A Brief History of Asian Racial Thinking" by Michael Keevak, Gregory Cochran, and Henry Harpending's "Ten Thousand Years of Explosion".
The Sogdians who controlled the Silk Roads
Historically, the Sogdians were known for their trade, or rather, the Sogdians were a merchant people. Tang Dynasty historical records record that the Sogdians were "good merchants and merchants, and competed for the benefit of the baht." The twentieth year of the man, that is, the far side country, comes to the middle of summer, and the place of benefit is everywhere. ”
In 1907, the Jewish-British explorer Stein found eight Sogdian letters from the early 4th century AD in the Beacon of the Great Wall west of Dunhuang, which coincided with the beginning of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms of the Central Plains, or more precisely, the Yongjia Rebellion (311-313 AD), because the letters clearly recorded that the capitals of Luoyang and Yicheng were attacked and sacked by the Xiongnu (Han Zhao Liu regime) and the emperor (the Western Jin dynasty) fled. Therefore, scholars generally date these letters to June and July 313 AD.
There is speculation as to why these letters remain in this beacon, but the most likely is that the war caused the interruption of the mail.
These letters were written by Sogdian merchants living in present-day Wuwei and Dunhuang to their hometown of Samarkand and Loulan in the Western Regions. Because at that time, Loulan was also one of the important settlements of the Sogdians.
Of the eight letters, all but one of the Sogdian women's letters were related to commerce. From these letters, people today learn about the various goods traded by the Sogdians at that time, including gold and silver jewelry, wheat, pepper, various textiles, musk, camphor, and so on. Of course, the Sogdians also traded slaves, loan sharks, and so on.
The Sogdians controlled the trade along the Silk Roads for a long time, leaving Sogdian footprints at almost every major point of communication and in important towns. Turpan and Dunhuang are the two major settlements of the Sogdians, and Turpan has unearthed many trading documents on precious metals and spices, and the two sides of the transaction are basically Sogdians.
The image of the Sogdians in Tang Sancai
Because the Sogdians were good at business, they were fluent in many languages, which was a natural translation, the so-called "nine dialects", which literally means that they are fluent in nine languages.
An Lushan and Shi Siming's initial career was as a translator in the market - Yalang.
Yalang is also called Tooth Man, Tooth Man, Tooth Servant, which is the Tang Dynasty's name for translators, and now it is still called this in some dialects. And the title seems to be more inclined to refer to foreign trade translation. The name that appeared earlier than the tooth man and the tooth man is the tongue man, and it is obvious that the meaning expressed is the same whether it is the tooth or the tongue: because the translator must first be able to speak a foreign language, and the tooth and tongue must be used to speak.
Historical records record that An Lushan spoke the "Nine Domains" and knew nine foreign languages, and Shi Siming was less, but there were also six kinds. Of course, some scholars believe that the so-called "Nine Domains" and "Six Domains" are only general references, which mean that many foreign languages can be used.
Because of this characteristic of the Sogdians, the translation industry in the Tang Dynasty was basically the domain of the Sogdians, whether it was the two capitals of the empire: Chang'an and Luoyang, or the border towns of Yingzhou (present-day Liaoning), Gaochang (present-day Turpan), etc., there were a large number of Sogdian translators.
In addition, whether through historical records or excavated documents and inscriptions, it is shown that the Sogdians also served as soldiers and officials in China during the Jin and Tang dynasties.
The Sogdians brought not only goods to the Central Plains, but also music, dance, painting, sculpture and other arts to the Central Plains, such as the most famous HuXuan Dance and the Kang Guole, An Guo Le, and Tianzhu Music in the Nine Musics of the Tang Dynasty.
The dance scene of the "Nine Parts Music" restored today
Today's Chinese and foreign scholars agree that the Sogdians, who were active on the Silk Roads from the 3rd to the 8th century AD, played an important mediating role in cultural exchanges between Persia, India and China.
Religion of the Sogdians
At the same time as the spread of commodities, the Sogdians were also the disseminators of religion and culture, and the so-called "Sanyi Religion" in history was almost all brought to the Central Plains by the Sogdians.
As I have said before, "Sanyiism" is not a religion, but refers to the three religions of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Jingjiao, Zoroastrianism, also known as Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism is Mingism, and Jingjiao is a branch of Christianity.
The Sogdians mainly believed in Zoroastrianism, so there were Zoroastrian shrines, that is, Zoroastrian churches and temples, everywhere where the Sogdians lived.
Zoroastrian symbol
Zoroastrianism is also known as "Zoroastrianism", and more precisely, Zoroastrianism of the Sogdians is considered a variant of Zoroastrianism, which is different from Zoroastrianism in Persia itself. Zoroaster, also translated as Zarathustra, has been mentioned in my previous texts, and the name means "camel herder", and in Sogdian culture, there has always been a camel cult, because for the Sogdians who traveled on the Silk Road all year round, the camel was a symbol of peace on the journey, the most reliable partner and means of production. At the same time, the camel is also the embodiment of the Sogdian god of war, in the sogdian ruins and tombs excavated today, many camel murals, bronzes and coins with camels have been found, and the image of the Sogdian god of war is often sitting on the triangular camel or winged camel and on the throne held by the camel.
Sogdian painting with camels
Due to the influence of the Sogdians, Gaochang, Yanqi, Shule, and Khotanese in the western regions of the Tang Dynasty were all popular, and there were many Zoroastrian shrines in Chang'an and Luoyang. For example, Puning Fang, Chonghua Fang, Liquan Fang, Buzheng Fang, Jinggong Fang in Chang'an City, Nanshi, Lide Fang, and Huijie Fang in Luoyang City.
In the Tang Dynasty, the Ancestral Halls of Chang'an City were distributed
For these sogdians, the Zoroastrian temple had an important cohesive effect. In each Sogdian settlement, there was a leader named Sapao, Sapao, also written as Sapo, Safu, Sa Pao, etc., which was originally the Sogdian name for the leader of the caravan, and later evolved into the leader of the settlement, that is, the boss of all The Sogdians in a place. Later, Sa Bao became a formal position in the Chinese dynasties, formally appointed by the government, with corresponding grades and responsibilities, such as the Tang Dynasty's Sa Bao Zheng Wu Pin, and also equipped Sa Bao with auxiliary military attachés, secretaries and other positions. The high priest of the Zoroastrian Shrine is called Zoroastrian, from the Seven Pins, in addition to the ungraded Zoroastrian Blessings, who are in charge of the daily affairs of the Zoroastrian Shrine.
Where did the Sogdians end up?
Where did the Sogdians, who once had a great presence in Chinese history, end up? Or what nation did the future generations become?
To talk about this matter, we still have to talk about the Anshi Chaos first.
We know that the Tang Dynasty was a dynasty that absorbed the culture of the four sides, that is, people said that they liked Hu Feng, and a large number of Hu people and foreign nationalities held important positions, in addition to the generals An Lushan, Shi Siming, and Ge Shuhan, there were also Gao Xianzhi (Goguryeo, note that it is not Goryeo), Ashina Sheer (Turkic royal family, that is, Blue Turks), Ashina Sima (i.e., Li Sima, Turkic royal family), Zhi Zhi Si Li (Turk), Li Guangbi (Khitan), Servant Huai'en (TieLe), Qifu He Li (TieLe), Bai Xiaode (Guizi Royal Family), An Yuanshou (Sogdia), Li Guochen (Sogdian, original surname An) and so on. However, the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion caused the Tang people at that time to instinctively reject the Hu people and resist Hu Hua, and even after Tang Suzong Li Heng returned to the retaken Chang'an, "those who took the word 'An' at the gate of the palace province changed it", that is, all the names of the city gate streets where the word "An" appeared were changed to the word "An". Therefore, the "Tang Huijiao" records that at that time, the Anhua Gate was changed to the Dali Gate, the An gate was changed to the Xiantian Gate, and as for the various workshops with the word "An" were also changed, but the various workshops after the name was changed, basically not long after they were changed back, everyone was still not used to it, the only exception was the original Anxing Fang, after changing to Guanghua Fang, it has not changed back, about the word "Anxing" is connected together, or some sensitivity.
At the same time, the literati at that time also believed that the scourge of the Anshi Rebellion was caused by everyone's preference for Hu Feng, and this group of people was equivalent to the public knowledge of later generations and had considerable influence. At that time, although there was no Weibo, everyone could write poetry, so including Liu Zongyuan, Liu Yuxi, Bai Juyi, and Bai Juyi's good friend Yuan Shu, who are well known to us, all had special poems to criticize the issue of liking Hu Feng and reusing Hu Ren.
However, it is also interesting to say that Yuan Shu's ancestors were not Han Chinese, but descendants of the Xianbei Tuoba clan of the Northern Wei Dynasty. We know that The Northern Wei Emperor Tuoba Hong promoted Sinicization, and the Xia Edict changed the Tuoba clan to the Yuan surname, and Yuan Shu was the nineteenth grandson of the Northern Wei Zhaocheng Emperor Tuoba Shiyi.
Yuan Shu may not be too familiar with some people, but if you say that "The Tale of the West Chamber" is estimated to be no unfamiliar, Yuan Shu is the male protagonist of the original version of the "West Chamber", and later Yuan Shu wrote down a period of his past according to his personal experience, which is the famous Tang legendary novel "The Legend of the Warbler", thus becoming the blueprint for the meta-miscellaneous drama "The Tale of the West Chamber" written by Wang Shifu later. According to today's norms, Before Wang Shifu's "West Chamber" is released (performed), a line of subtitles should be typed: "Adapted from Yuan Shu's novel "The Legend of yingying".
And Yuan Shu's affair is far more than these, such as his story with Xue Tao, a famous young tang literary and artistic woman who is 11 years older than himself and the inventor of the cultural heritage "Xue Tao", which is the most famous romantic love story in the literary and art circles of Datang, in addition, Yuan Shu also chased stars, and the gossip of Liu Caichun, a popular female star of Datang at that time, is also well known. Wait a minute.
Xue Tao notes
Pulling far away, continue to talk about the Hu people's problem.
Due to the rejection and resistance of the Hu people and Hu Hua at that time, the Hu people of the Tang Dynasty were very unhappy, first of all, the Hu generals were suspected and suppressed, including quelling the Anshi rebellion, the battle achievements were outstanding, "the battle merits were pushed to the first in ZTE", and Li Guangbi, who was equally famous with Guo Ziyi, was not spared, and finally died of depression under suspicion. Forty-six people in the family were martyred for the country during the Anshi Rebellion, and the loyal servant Gu Huai'en was directly forced to rebel and died of illness in today's Ningxia.
Li Guangbi, a famous general of ZTE who quelled the Anshi Rebellion
In this environment, the situation of the Sogdians can be imagined.
One of the Sogdians who remained in the Central Plains at that time was to change their surname to Li, because surnames such as An and Kang often knew that they were Sogdians at first glance. But this situation is because the royal family gave the surname of Li to change, it is not easy to copy. Therefore, the most common way is to change your own county, that is, to change your hometown and family tree, no longer saying that you are from the nine surnames of Zhaowu, but looking for ancestors among the celebrities of the Central Plains, indicating that you have always been a Central Plains person. The most typical example is probably that most of the Kang surnames no longer say that their ancestors are from the Kang kingdom, but call themselves Huijian people, and the ancestor is the younger brother of King Wu of Zhou, Uncle Kang (Wei Feng, the first monarch of the Wei kingdom).
We know that Huiji County is a famous county in Jiangnan, located in today's Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas, the county rule is in Suzhou, shusheng Wang Xizhi once served as the internal history of Huiji, so it was later known as Wang Huiji. The Sogdians called themselves Huijian people, which naturally looked like authentic Han Chinese, but in fact, there was also a place named Huiji County in Guazhou at that time, which was located in Chijin Town, Yumen, Gansu Today. Because the Sogdians entered the Central Plains, they all entered the Western Regions first, then the Hexi Corridor, and then entered the Central Plains, so they said that they were hesiotes of Hexi, there was nothing wrong with them, at least to catch up, several generations ago must have lived in hexi. That is to say, people surnamed Kang played a trick here, or transferred flowers and elder trees. More Sogdians directly said that their ancestors were people from a certain place in the Central Plains or simply said that they were Chinese. In this way, a large number of Sogdians eventually integrated into the Han Chinese.
The image of the Sogdians of the Tang Dynasty
One of the more famous examples of this is the Sogdian Kang family monastery found in the West Cemetery of Jiaohegou in Turpan.
According to Zoroastrian customs of the Sogdians, after death, a person will be buried or cremated, and then the remains will be loaded into a special urn. However, in the Sogdian tombs of Turpan, the burial customs have been no different from those of the Han people, not only the name has long been Sinicized, but after death, they also adopted the family burial mode and inscribed epitaphs like the Han people. From the excavated epitaphs, the epitaph format is also completely Sinicized, and there is no difference between them and the Han epitaphs.
The Kang family epitaph found in the Jiaohegou West Cemetery in Turpan shows that this Kang family, from gaochang of the Qi clan until the Tang Dynasty, had been settling in the Turpan Basin and served in the local government of Gaochang and the local army of Xizhou in the Tang Dynasty, and in the last epitaph, it is clearly written that "it first came from China and moved to Jiaohe County", that is, its ancestors came from China and migrated to Jiaohe. It shows that he has completely sinicized or concealed his origins.
However, on this point, some people do not agree, mainly because the last party epitaph does not have a surname written on it, so it is believed that this last tomb does not belong to the Kang family, but is mixed in later and occupies the Kang family cemetery. Scholars of the Identification School believe that all tombs are owned by one family, and there is little possibility of mixing.
However, whether mixed in or not, in fact, all the surnames of Kang, An, Shi, Mi, Shi, He, Cao and other surnames among the Han people today are most likely derived from the nine surnames of Zhaowu and the ancestors are Sogdians. Of course, it is also possible that it originated from other ethnic groups, such as one of the historical surnames originated from the Turkic Ashina clan.
As for Kang, Ann and Mi, they are almost certainly of Sogdian origin. As for the three surnames of Kang, An and Mi, there are still some Sources of Han Chinese, but today, they basically do not exist.
A large number of Sogdians also integrated into other ethnic groups, such as the Shatuo tribe. Shatuo, a branch of the Turks. In the late Tang Dynasty, it became an important force around the Tang Dynasty, and in the five generations of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms after the Tang Dynasty, the Shatuo people successively established three dynasties of Later Tang, Later Jin, and Later Han, and the founding emperor of the Later Jin Dynasty, the famous Emperor Er, and Shi Jingyao, who ceded the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, is generally believed to be the Sogdians who were Shatuo.
The Sogdians in Xinjiang gradually integrated into the later Gaochang Uighur and Qarakhanid Khanates in later years.
The Sogdians in Central Asia also gradually Turkified, and after the eastward expansion of Islam, the nine kingdoms of Zhaowu were attacked by the Great Eclipse, that is, the Arab army, the so-called "Great Eating Army Burning, Prosperity turned into scorched earth".
In 706 AD, the kingdom of Bi fell.
In 711, the state of Kang was besieged for half a year, ran out of food, and was forced to surrender after a fruitless request for help from the Tang Dynasty.
In 712, Anguo fell.
In 722 AD, the easternmost part of the Sogdian region, the city of Pichikent, joined forces with the Turks, the Stone Kingdom, and the Bakhana (present-day Fergana) to fight against the Great Eclipse, and eventually the city was burned, the king was killed, the Sogdians fled in large numbers, the Sogdian states eventually disappeared into the long river of history, and the Sogdians islamized.
Many people believe that the Tajiks of Tajikistan today have more ancestry from the Sogdians of Central Asia, and there is a saying that the Yagnospi of Tajikistan are direct descendants of Sogdia.
But we know that after centuries of fusion and change, the Sogdians have merged into the Han, Tajik, and Turkic language groups.
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