Sart

Sart was a term used in the history and ethnography of Iran and Central Asia.^[1] It was a term commonly applied to sedentary Turks and Tajiks in Central Asia.^[2] Usually bilingual in Turkic and Persian,^[3] they belonged to the same cultural tradition and occupied the same economic role.^[4]

The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Turkmen, being proudly devoted to their rural, nomadic ways of life and values, strongly disliked the highly Persianized speech of Turkic by the Sarts. This instance is comparable to the prejudice the 11th century Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari had displayed toward Sogdianized urban Turks. Meanwhile, the Persian Tajik dialect had been adopting Turkic vocabulary and syntax, which caused it to shift away from standard Persian.^[3]

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.^[5][6]

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 Uyghurs and Uzbeks.^[7]

• 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{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Ostroumov, Nikolai Petrovich (1890), Сарты – Этнографические Материалы, Tashkent, p. 7{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Barthold, W. & Subtelny, M.E. (1997). "Sārt". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume IX: San–Sze. Leiden: E. J. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-10422-8.
• Breel, Yuri (1978), "The Sarts in the Khanate of Khiva", Journal of Asian History, vol. 12, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, pp. 121–151, 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
• Thackston, Wheeler (2002), The Baburnama : memoirs of Babur, prince and emperor, New York: The Modern Library, pp. 5, 156, 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
• Foltz, Richard (2019). A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1784539559.
• Levi, Scott C. (2017). The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709 – 1876: Central Asia in the Global Age. University of Pittsburgh.
• Roy, Olivier (2000). The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0814775554.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sarts.

• "Demography of Central Asia" at Encyclopædia Iranica
• "Tajik – The Ethnonym: Origins and Application" at Encyclopædia Iranica