DFG Abschlussbericht

This project has addressed the interaction of factors leading in the Early Middle Ages to the emergence of towns in a previously non-urbanized region of Central Asia. While Arabic written sources of the 10th century report Dzhankent (Turkic for ‘New Town’) on the lower Syr-darya as the capital of the Oguz (a federation of Turkic nomads), new archaeological evidence and C14 dates from the deserted town demonstrate a much earlier origin of the settlement: in the 6th century, very exactly the time when the Northern Silk Road started operating through this region. According to finds, there were soon contacts to the southern trading hub of Khwarazm on the Amudarya. An intriguing find from this phase is the late 8th century skeleton of a domesticated cat, the first one known from this region. In the late 9th century, after the arrival of the Oguz and probably under their control, the settlement was rebuilt as a walled town on a Khwarazmian model, but without the monumental buildings one would expect in a ‘nomad capital’ of this period. In its new shape, Dzhankent existed for not much longer than a century, being a short-lived ‘boom town’ on the intersection of the Northern Silk Road and the documented north-south trade corridor between Central Asia and northern Europe. Scientific analyses of samples from a curious annexe against the northern town wall suggest that this was at one time a slave pen, implying that Dzhankent may have played a role in the thriving slave trade of the period – and was then abandoned when that trade folded in the late 10th or early 11th century. It is hardly a coincidence that the historically documented ‘nomad state’ of the Oguz disintegrated at exactly that time. Environmental change may have been a contributing factor, but there is no solid evidence for that. The town’s history as it emerges from the results of our project and from the wider historical context highlights an interplay of factors in the emergence of urbanism in this place: geo graphy, trade, and population interactions.