A look at the Salar’s Samarkand Origins

China is a country made up of 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, the Salar being one of them. They are a Turkic-speaking Islamic people who live mainly in Xunhua County in eastern part of Qinghai Province. Along with the other ethnic groups, they have their own distinct dialects, culture, history and origins.

The Salar themselves claim that their ancestry lies in Samarkand, in modern day Uzbekistan. In the 13^th century, they moved eastwards until they reached modern day Qinghai Province. Scholars have agreed with the Salar and their migration from Central Asia to China has been met with much interest.

According to one scholar, Mi Yizhi, claims that there are three possible explanations of the Salar’s migration from Samarkand. In the first, he says that the Salar were once an Oghaz tribe known as the Qaluer. The Oghaz were the descendants of the eldest son of Dagh Khan, one of the six sons of Oghaz Khan who gave his name to the people.

Sometime between the 9^th and 12^th centuries the Qaluer changed their name to the Saluer and followed other Oghaz tribes from the Saihun River basin, Yili, and Rehai (Isighgol) to Hezhong (Transoxania), Hualazimo (Khorarim), Huluoshan (Khorasam in Northern Iran), and eastern Anatolia.

However, during the Selzuk Empire (c. 1055 – 1258) the Saluer were forced into moving once more to the west. There were some who stayed in Marou and Sarakhs (modern day Turkmenistan) are known as the Turkomans. Between 1370 and 1424 the Saluer came to Samarkand and then passed through the Turpan Basin (present day Xinjiang), and Suzhou, ultimately reaching the Salar's present home in the region known today as Xunhua.

The second explanation draws on the work of Mula Sulaiman's investigations into the Hui ethnic’s group origins. Mi has suggested that the Salar were the descendants of the brothers Kharaman and Akhman who lived near Salark in Turkmenistan. When they moved to Qinghai they took 170 families with them, and these were the ancestors of the Salar.

The third explanation lies in linguistic similarities. Scholars have suggested that the similarities in the languages of the Salar, the Turkoman and the Uzbek suggest that they were all one people at one time.

The Salar celebrate their heritage with the doye oyna, a play which traces their migration from Samarkand to China. It is a way for these remarkable people to remember their Central Asian heritage.

Bibliography:

Jianzhong, Ma & Stuart, Kevin (1996) "Stone Camels and Clear Springs" The Salar's Samarkand Origins, Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

Prehistoric Settlement Patterns around Tepe Yahya

Since its discovery in 1967, the ancient site of Tepe Yahya in modern day Iran has been of great interest to archaeologists. Symmetrical in shape, rising to a height of 30 meters, it measures 180 meters at the base and 40 meters at the top. It lies around 225 kilometres from the modern city of Kerman. The mound is located in a mountainous valley where it is the dominating feature of the surrounding landscape.

Excavations have found that Tepe Yahya was inhabited during a timeframe of five millennia, roughly from the middle of the fifth millennium BCE to the second half of the first millennium CE. Although there is a noticeable gap between occupations timeframes in the second millennium, Tepe Yahya seems to have been occupied continuously. The following periods have been distinguished as:

Period IV: 4500 – 3800 BCE

Period V A-C: 3800 – 3400 BCE

Period IV C: 3400-3000 BCE

Period IV B: 3000-2500 BCE

Gap

Period IV A: 2100-1800 BCE

Gap

Period III: 750-500 BCE

Period II A & B: 500 BCE -200 CE

A Period I A & B: 200 -700 CE

When looking at the archaeological record, nearly nine tenths of the mound was attributed to pre-Achaemenean times, more precisely, from the middle of the fifth century to the early second millennium BCE. After a few gaps, the site was re-inhabited but produced less than one tenth of the present volume of the mound. However, when looking at the surface data available, it indicates a third, fourth and fifth millennium site.

The shards found on the surface were heavier and larger than the ones buried in the soil, almost doubling the average weight of the latter. “In the open fields around Tepe Yahya, most of which show signs of past or recent cultivation, sherds are found in considerable numbers down to a depth of about 50 cm., which probably represents the level reached by animal-drawn plows”.

Archaeologists, after performing careful surface survey of the surrounding area, believe that the “successive inhabitants of Tepe Yahya had an increasingly smaller surface area at their disposal. Given the steepness of the mound, it is unlikely that its slopes provided additional building space or Lebensraum … As the superimposed settlements at Tepe Yahya diminished in size, condemned by the inexorable laws of mound construction, did their populations decline correspondingly, or did they spill over onto the surrounding plain?”

Bibliography:

Vidali, Eda & Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C. (1976) Prehistoric Settlement Patterns around Tepe Yahya: A Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, the University of Chicago Press.