Sart
Sart is a name for the settled inhabitants of Central Asia which has had shifting meanings over the centuries.
Origin
There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit sārthavāha (सार्थवाह), meaning "merchant, trader, caravan leader", a term supposedly used by nomads to describe town-dwellers, according to Vasily Bartold, Gerard Clauson, and most recently Richard Foltz.[1][2]
The earliest known use of the term is in the 1070 Karakhanid Turkic text Kutadgu Bilig "Blessed Knowledge", in which it refers to the settled population of Kashgar.[citation needed] The term referred to all settled Muslims of Central Asia regardless of language.
Rashid al-Din Hamadani in the Jami' al-tawarikh writes that Genghis Khan commanded for Arslan Khan, prince of the Karluks, to be given the title "Sartaqtai", which referred to Tajiks and Uzbeks.[3]
A 13th-century Mongolian source, the Secret History of the Mongols, states that the Mongols called artisans captured from Central Asia, most notably Khwarazm, Sartuuls.
Alternative meanings
In the post-Mongol period we find that Ali-Shir Nava'i refers to the Iranian people as Sart Ulusi ("Sart people"), and for him Sart tili ("Sart language") was a synonym for the Persian language. Similarly, when Babur refers to the people of Margilan as "Sarts", it is in distinction to the people of Andijan who are Turks, and it is clear that by this he means Persian-speakers. He also refers to the population of the towns and villages of the vilayat of Kabul as "Sarts".
Similarly, Babur wrote in the Baburnama in 1525, "In the country of Kābul there are many and various tribes. Its valleys and plains are inhabited by Tūrks, Aimāks, and Arabs. In the city and the greater part of the villages, the population consists of Tajiks (Sarts)."[4]
A further change of use seems to have occurred with the arrival in the oasis regions of Turkestan of the Taza Özbek Pure Özbeks[5] under Muhammad Shaybani. They distinguished between themselves as semi-nomadic speakers of a Fergana Kipchak language and the settled Turkic-speaking populations already living in the oasis towns, most of whom spoke the Chagatai language, one of the Karluk languages. It is at this date that the distinction between the terms Sart and Tajik seems to have made itself felt, as previously they were often used interchangeably. Even after the Uzbeks switched to a settled way of life, they continued to maintain this distinction between Turkic-speakers who were members of one of the Uzbek tribes, and Sarts, who were not.
In June 2010, "Sart" was used in ethnic conflict between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan to distinguish the less East-Asiatic Uzbeks from Kyrgyz.[citation needed]
Development of ethnic identity in Central Asia
Throughout the
In 1911, the Nationalist Chinese under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen overthrew Qing Dynasty rule and established the Republic of China.
By 1920,
Modern meanings
Historically speaking the Sarts belonged to older settled groups, whereas the Uzbeks were descended from tribes which arrived in the region with Muhammad Shaybani in the 16th century. It seems that in
In 1924 the Soviet regime decreed that henceforth all settled Turkic-speaking peoples in Central Asia (and many others who spoke Persian such as in Samarkand and Bukhara)[citation needed] would be known as "Uzbeks" and that the term "Sart" was to be abolished as an insulting legacy of colonial rule.[citation needed], even though Lenin himself used the term in his communiqués.
For the first few years, however, the language chosen by the Soviet authorities for the new
The Uighurs are the people whom old Russian travellers called Sart (a name which they used for sedentary, Turkic-speaking Central Asians in general), while Western travellers called them Turki, in recognition of their language. The Chinese used to call them Ch'an-t'ou ('Turbaned Heads') but this term has been dropped, being considered derogatory, and the Chinese, using their own pronunciation, now called them Weiwuerh. As a matter of fact there was for centuries no 'national' name for them; people identified themselves with the oasis they came from, like Kashgar or Turfan."[6]
This proved itself to be largely incomprehensible to most inhabitants of the primary cities, from Tashkent to Bukhara. It was therefore replaced by the modern, fundamentally Persianized urban Uzbek, which is the only Turkic language without any vowel harmony.
It is thus very difficult to attach a single ethnic or even
Use by the Dongxiang
The Muslim, Mongol-speaking Dongxiangs of Northwest China call themselves Sarta or Santa. It is not clear if there is any connection between this term and the Sarts of Central Asia.
Use in Siberia
Sart was one of the names applied to the Siberian Bukharans who settled in Siberia in the 17th century.
Footnotes
- ^ Golden, Peter B. An Introduction to the History of Turkic Peoples (1992). p. 150
- ^ Foltz, Richard A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East Note 27 for Chapter 4 [1]
- ISBN 978-1-134-60076-2.
- ^ John Leyden, Esq.; William Erskine, Esq., eds. (1921). "Events of the Year 910 (1525)". Memoirs of Babur. Packard Humanities Institute. p. 5. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
- ^ Golden, Peter B. An Introduction to the History of Turkic Peoples. p. 406-408
- ^ Lattimore (1973), p. 237.
References
- Owen Lattimore. (1973) "Return to China's Northern Frontier." The Geographical Journal, Vol. 139, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 233–242.
- Ostroumov, Nikolai Petrovich (1884), Значение Названия "Сарт", Tashkent
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Ostroumov, Nikolai Petrovich (1890), Сарты – Этнографические Материалы, Tashkent, p. 7
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Barthold, V V(1934), "Sart", Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 4 (S-Z), pp. 175–176
- Barthold, W; Subtelny, Maria Eva (1997), "Sart", Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 9 (SAN-SZE), pp. 66–68
- ISSN 0021-910X
- Subtelny, Maria Eva (1998), "The Symbiosis of Turk and Tajik", in Manz, Beatrice (ed.), Central Asia in historical perspective, The John M. Olin critical issues series, Boulder CO USA: Westview Press (published 1994), ISBN 0-8133-8801-5
- Nava'i, Ali Shir; Devereaux, Robert (1966), Muhakamat al-Lughatayn, Leiden: Brill
- Arat, Reşit Rahmeti (1947), Kutadgu bilig, Türk Dil Kurumu, vol. 87, Istanbul: Millî Eğitim Basımevi, p. 571
- ISBN 0-375-76137-3
- Ṭabīb, Rashīd al-Dīn; Thackston, Wheeler(1978), Rashiduddin Fazlullah's Jamiʻuʾt-tawarikh = Compendium of chronicles, Sources of Oriental languages and literatures, vol. 4, Cambridge MA USA: Harvard University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, p. 78