6.
This region, favoured in soil and climate, is favoured also in position. Lying at the mouth of the two great roads of emigration from the far East, the valleys of the Jaxartes and the Oxus, it is the natural mart between High Asia and Europe, receiving the merchandize of East and North, and transporting it by its rivers, by the Caspian, the Kur, and the Phasis, to the Black Sea. Thus it received in former days the silk of China, the musk of Thibet, and the furs of Siberia, and shipped them for the cities of the Roman Empire. To Samarcand, its metropolis, we owe the art of transforming linen into paper, which the Sogdian merchants are said to have gained from China, and thence diffused by means of their own manufacturers over the western world. A people so circumstanced could not be without civilization; but that civilization was of a much earlier date. It must not be forgotten that the celebrated sage, Zoroaster, before the times of history, was a native, and, as some say, king of Bactriana. Cyrus had established a city in the same region, which he called after his name. Alexander conquered both Bactriana and Sogdiana, and planted Grecian cities there. There is a long line of Greco-Bactrian kings; and their coins and pateræ have been brought to light within the last few years. Alexander's name is still famous in the country; not only does Marco Polo in the middle ages speak of his descendants as still found there, but even within the last fifteen years Sir Alexander Burns found a man professing that descent in the valley of the Oxus, and Lieutenant Wood another in the same neighbourhood.
Nor was Greek occupation the only source of the civilization of Sogdiana. Centuries rolled on, and at length the Saracens renewed, on their own peculiar basis, the mental cultivation which Sogdiana had received from Alexander. The cities of Bokhara and Samarcand have been famous for science and literature. Bokhara was long celebrated as the most eminent seat of Mahometan learning in central Asia; its colleges were, and are, numerous, accommodating from 60 to 600 students each. One of them gained the notice and the pecuniary aid of the Russian Empress Catharine.[32] Samarcand rivals Bokhara in fame; its university even in the last century was frequented by Mahometan youth from foreign countries. There were more than 300 colleges for students, and there was an observatory, celebrated in the middle ages, the ruins of which remain. Here lies the body of Timour, under a lofty dome, the sides of which are enriched with agate. "Since the time of the Holy Prophet," that is, Mahomet, says the Emperor Baber, "no country has produced so many Imaums and eminent divines as Mawar-al-nahar," that is, Sogdiana. It was celebrated for its populousness. At one time it boasted of being able to send out 300,000 foot, and as many horse, without missing them. Bridges and caravansaries abounded; the latter, in the single province attached to its capital, amounted to 2,000. In Bactriana, the very ruins of Balkh extend for a circuit of 20 miles, and Sir A. Burns wound through three miles of them continuously.
Such is the country, seated at present between the British and the Russian Empires, and such as regards its previous and later state, which the savage Huns, in their emigration from Tartary, had necessarily encountered; and it cannot surprise us that one of their many tribes had been persuaded to settle there, instead of seeking their fortunes farther west. The effect upon these settlers in course of time was marvellous. Though it was not of course the mere climate of Sogdiana that changed them, still we cannot undervalue the influence which is necessarily exerted on the mind by the idea of property, when once recognised and accepted, by the desire of possession and by the love of home, and by the sentiment of patriotism which arises in the mind, especially with the occupation of a rich and beautiful country. Moreover, they became the guests or masters of a people, who, however rude, at least had far higher claims to be called civilized than they themselves, and possessed among them the remains of a more civilized era. They found a race, too, not Tartar, more capable of civilization, more gifted with intellect, and more comely in person. Settling down among the inhabitants, and intermarrying with them, in the course of generations their Tartar characteristics were sensibly softened. For a thousand years this restless people remained there, as if chained to the soil. They still had the staple of barbarism in them, but so polished were they for children of a Tartar stock, that they are called in history the White Huns of Sogdiana. They took to commerce, they took to literature; and when, at the end of a few centuries, the Turks, as I have already described, spread abroad from the iron works and forges of Mount Altai to Kamtchatka, the Volga, and the Indus, and overran these White Huns in the course of their victories, they could find no parties more fitted than them to act as their diplomatists and correspondents in their negotiations with the Romans.
Such was the influence of Sogdiana on the Huns; is it wonderful that it exerted some influence on the Turks, when they in turn got possession of it? History justifies the anticipation; as the Huns of the second or third centuries settled around the Aral, so the Turks in the course of the sixth or seventh centuries overran them, and descended down to the modern Affghanistan and the Indus; and as the fair region and its inhabitants, which they crossed and occupied, had begun at the former era the civilization of the first race of Tartars, so did it at the latter era begin the education of the second.