Greater Soghdiana included not only Samarqand and Bukhara, but areas of Soghdian influence or colonization to the east such as Farghana and Shash. The Soghdian language, and a culture based on trading as far as China and on the land holdings of the local aristocracy of dihqans, held sway over this widely extended area. Finally in Bactria, which included Chaghaniyan, most of present Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan the Kushan-Bactrian language in a modified Greek alphabet was in use in the 1st/7th and 2nd/8th centuries. In Bactria, the centre of Iranian Buddhism, that religion still claimed many adherents. Finally, to the south in the Hindukush mountains, in the Kabul valley, Ghazna and in Zamindavar, a resurgence of Hinduism had reasserted Indian influence. Although by the time of Isma'il b. Ahmad most of Soghdiana was Muslim and Khwarazm much the same, large parts of Bactria, and almost all of the Hindukush and southern Afghanistan regions had not been Islamicized. In all these areas, however, no matter what the religious changes, ancient customs and practices of rule continued to exist. In the many valleys of the mountainous areas, the only political reality was expressed in the form of a vassal-lord relationship. Thus the Arabs in their conquests in Central Asia had been obliged to make separate agreements with each town or oasis, which probably considered the new masters in the old vassal-lord relationship which had existed previously in this part of the world. The Samanids were heirs of this tradition.
When the four sons of Asad were given governorships under the Tahirids, they not only fitted into the Central Asian pattern of various local dynasts, but the relationship between them was one of family solidarity, a characteristic of that "feudal" society. We do not know whether the system of rule in pre-Islamic Soghdian society was based on a strong family tradition where the eldest member of the family would succeed to the paramount rule, but if we remember that later among the Biiyids the system of the senior amirate was a political reality, and among the Qarakhanid Turks, after the fall of the Samanid dynasty, such a system of succession was practised, one may ask if this system was not an old Iranian rather than a Central Asian custom. We do not have enough information to answer this question, but it seems to have existed in Central Asia at an early date.
Growing Human Population in Iran Plateau
