Early History

The first people known to have occupied Central Asia were Iranian nomads who arrived from the northern grasslands of what is now Uzbekistan sometime in the first millennium B.C. These nomads, who spoke Iranian dialects, settled in Central Asia and began to build an extensive irrigation system along the rivers of the region. At this time, cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand began to appear as centers of government and culture. By the fifth century B.C., the Bactrian, Sogdian, and Tokharian states dominated the region.
As China began to develop its silk trade with the West, Iranian cities took advantage of this commerce by becoming centers of trade. Using an extensive network of cities and settlements in the province of Maveranahr (a name given to the region after the Arab conquest) in the country between two rivers and farther east in what is today China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Sogdian intermediaries became the wealthiest of these Iranian merchants. Because of this trade on what became known as the Silk Route, Bukhara, Samarkand and Paikent eventually became extremely wealthy cities, and at times Maveranahr was one of the most influential and powerful Persian provinces of antiquity.
The wealth of Maveranahr was a constant magnet for invasions from the northern steppes and from China. Numerous interregional wars were fought between Sogdian states and the other states in Maveranahr, and the Persians and the Chinese were in perpetual conflict over the region. Alexander the Great conquered the region in 328 B.C., bringing it briefly under the control of his Macedonian Empire.

In the same centuries, however, the region also was an important center of intellectual life and religion. Until the first centuries after Christ, the dominant religion in the region was Zoroastrianism*, but Buddhism, Manicheans**, and Christianity also attracted large numbers of followers.