The Caravan Network
The Sogdian merchants, based at Samarkand, strung together colonies along the Silk Road in more than fifty cities — communities that settled and were handed down through generations. Tang cities held Sogdian quarters under a leader called the sabao. Their language spread not by conquest but by commercial necessity, until Turkic and Uyghur nomad states adopted it for administration. Business that connects points with people who live there — a shape that runs on to the Hanseatic League and to today's trading houses. What gives us their faces is a bundle of letters found in 1907 by Aurel Stein in the ruins of a watchtower near Dunhuang: a mailbag from the early fourth century that was never delivered. It shows them settling with paper credit rather than hauling heavy coin — and among the commercial letters sits a private one from a woman named Miwnay, abandoned at Dunhuang, appealing to her husband and her mother for help. A bundle of trade records with a life inside it. The New Book of Tang adds that among the Sogdians, a newborn boy had honey put on his mouth and glue placed in his hand — so that he would speak sweetly and never let money go. A good story; but the real strength of these people lay in the relay network, the family ties, and the number of languages they spoke.