Sart
Encyclopedia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
which has had shifting meanings over the centuries. Sarts, known sometimes as Ak-Sart ("White Sart") in ancient times, did not have any particular ethnic identification, and were usually (though not always) town-dwellers.
Origin
There are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit "sarthavaha" (merchant, caravan leader), a term supposedly used by nomads to described settled townspeople. . Or it may be a corruption of the Sogdian ethnonym "Soghd."The earliest known use of the term is in the Turkic text Kudatku Bilik ("Blessed Knowledge"), dated 1070, in which it refers to the settled population of Kashgaria. In that period the term apparently referred to all settled Muslims of Central Asia, regardless of language.
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in the Jami' al-Tawarikh writes that Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
commanded that Arslan Khan
Arslan Khan
Arslan Khan was the Prince of the Karluks. Mongol emperor Genghis Khan commanded that Arslan Khan be given the title Sartaqtai, which was said to by synonymous with Tajik. Ironically, it was the name of one of the khan's sons....
, prince of the Muslim Turkic Karluks, be given the title "Sartaqtai", which he considered to be synonymous with "Tajik" (It is possible, however, that Rashid al-din, who was Persian, misunderstood the meaning of this, as "Sartaqtai" was the name of one of the Genghis Khan's sons).
13-th century Mongolian source, "Secret History of the Mongols" states that the Mongols called people from Central Asia, most notably Khwarezm
Khwarezm
Khwarezm, or Chorasmia, is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, which borders to the north the Aral Sea, to the east the Kyzylkum desert, to the south the Karakum desert and to the west the Ustyurt Plateau...
, as "Sartuul
Sartuul
Sartuul is one of the Mongol clans. Today, they primarily live in the Zavkhan Province of Mongolia.The origin of the Sartuul people is Turkic merchants and artisans from Khwarizm. According to Pelliot, Sartuul means merchant in plural. Mongols called Muslim merchant a Sart or the place he came...
". "Sar" in Mongolian means "moon", hence sart or sarta would mean "ones with (flag with) moon", since the Muslim people had Hilal symbol on their flags. One of the Mongolian tribes living in the Zavkhan province are descendants of merchants from Khwarezm, who resided in Harhorin. This tribe, still, is called Sartuul.
Alternative meanings
In the post-Mongol period we find that Ali Sher Nawa'i refers to the Iranian people as "Sart Ulusi" (Sart Ulus, i.e. Sart people), and for him "Sart tili" (Sart language) was a synonym for the Persian languagePersian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
. Similarly, when Babur
Babur
Babur was a Muslim conqueror from Central Asia who, following a series of setbacks, finally succeeded in laying the basis for the Mughal dynasty of South Asia. He was a direct descendant of Timur through his father, and a descendant also of Genghis Khan through his mother...
refers to the people of Margelan as "Sarts", it is in distinction to the people of Andijan
Andijan
Andijan or Andizhan is the fourth-largest city in Uzbekistan, and the capital of the Andijan Province. It is located in the east of the country, at , in the Fergana Valley, near the border with Kyrgyzstan on the Andijan-Say River...
who are Turks, and it is clear that by this he means Persian-speakers. He also refers to the population of the towns and villages of the vilayat of Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
as "Sarts".
A further change of use seems to have occurred with the arrival in the oasis regions of Turkistan
Türkistan
*Türkistan is the local name for Turkestan, a region of Central Asia.*Türkistan, Kazakhstan is a historic city and place of pilgrimage in southern Kazakhstan...
of the Uzbeks
Uzbeks
The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China...
under Shaybani Khan. They distinguished between themselves as semi-nomadic speakers of a Kipchak
Kipchak language
The Kipchak language is an extinct Turkic language of the Kipchak group.The descendants of the Kipchak language include the majority of Turkic languages spoken in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus today, as Kipchak was used as a lingua franca in Golden Horde–ruled lands.Kazakhs are remnants of...
dialect, and the settled Turkic-speaking populations already living in the oasis towns, most of whom spoke the Uyghur
Uyghur dialects
Uyghur is a Turkic language spoken in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, administered by China, by the Uyghur people. It is a language with two standard languages and several dialects. However, these are all mutual intelligible at large, in spite of the various differences.- Dialects :Various...
dialect. It is at this date that the distinction between the terms "Sart" and "Tajik" seems to have made itself felt, as previously they were often used interchangeably. Even after the Uzbeks switched to a settled way of life, they continued to maintain this distinction between Turkic-speakers who were members of one of the Uzbek tribes, and "Sarts" who were not.
In June 2010 The term "SART" was used in ethnic conflict between Kirghiz and Uzbeks on Southern Kirghistan to indicate less mongoloid race, Uzbeks from Kirghiz.
SART O'L
Separation between the Uzbek and Uyghur nationalities
Throughout the Qing Dynasty, the sedentary Turkic inhabitants of the oases around the Tarim speaking QarluqQarluq
The Karluks were a prominent nomadic Turkic tribe residing in the regions of Kara-Irtysh and the Tarbagatai Mountains west of the Altay Mountains...
-Chagatay
Chagatai language
The Chagatai language is an extinct Turkic language which was once widely spoken in Central Asia, and remained the shared literary language there until the early twentieth century...
dialects were still largely known as Taranchi
Taranchi
The term Taranchi denotes the Muslim sedentary population living in oases around the Tarim Basin in today's Xinjiang, whose native language is Turkic Karluk, and whose ancestral heritages include Iranic and Tocharian populations of Tarim and the later Turco-Mongol immigrants of the Qarluq, Uyghur,...
, Sart, ruled by their Moghul
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...
rulers of Khojijan or Chagatay
Chagatai Khans
The Chagatai Khans were the heads of the Chagatai ulus from Chagatai Khan's inheritance of the state in 1227 to their removal from power by the Dzungars and their vassals in 1687...
lineages. Other parts of the Islamic World still knew this area as Moghulistan
Moghulistan
Moghulistan or Mughalistan is a historical geographic unit in Central Asia that included parts of modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Chinese Autonomous Region of Xinjiang...
or as the eastern part of Turkestan
Turkestan
Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...
, and the Qing Chinese generally lumped all of its Muslim subjects under the category of Hui
Hui people
The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's...
, without making distinctions among the Chinese speaking Dungan
Dungan language
The Dungan language is a Sinitic language spoken by the Dungan of Central Asia, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China.-History:...
-Hui and other language groups such as the Taranchi
Taranchi
The term Taranchi denotes the Muslim sedentary population living in oases around the Tarim Basin in today's Xinjiang, whose native language is Turkic Karluk, and whose ancestral heritages include Iranic and Tocharian populations of Tarim and the later Turco-Mongol immigrants of the Qarluq, Uyghur,...
, Sart, Salar
Salar language
Salar is a Turkic language spoken by the Salar people, who mainly live in the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu in China; some also live in Ghulja, Xinjiang...
, Monguor, Bonan
Bonan
The Bonan people are an ethnic group living in Gansu and Qinghai provinces in northwestern China...
etc. This is akin to the practice by Russians lumping all Muslims connected to Ottoman or Muslim Chinggisid spheres "Tatar", irrespective of their linguistic group.
Before being renamed "New Territory" (Xinjiang
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
) by Zuo Zongtang
Zuo Zongtang
Zuo Zongtang , spelled Tso Tsung-t'ang in Wade-Giles and known simply as General Tso in the West, was a Chinese statesman and military leader in the late Qing Dynasty....
, this eastern part of Turkestan was more often known to the Qing Chinese as Hui Jiang, or "The Frontier of the Huis". Qarluq Turkic speaking Taranchi and Sart are often known as "Chantou Hui" (Turban-wearing Hui), for their headgears distinctive from those of the Chinese-speaking Hui. It was based on this designation of Hui
Hui people
The Hui people are an ethnic group in China, defined as Chinese speaking people descended from foreign Muslims. They are typically distinguished by their practice of Islam, however some also practice other religions, and many are direct descendants of Silk Road travelers.In modern People's...
, that Sart-Taranchi participants of the Czarist Central Asian Islamic modernist movement, the Jadid
Jadid
The Jadids were Muslim modernist reformers within the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. They normally referred to themselves by the Turkic terms Taraqqiparvarlar , Ziyalilar , or simply Yäşlär/Yoshlar...
Movement, concluded that the modernized ethnonym of the Sart-Taranchi of Moghulistan should be Uyghur, because the names Hui and Uyghur are cognates. It was from outside of Qing Domain, well within the Czarist controlled parts of Central Asia, that Sart-Taranchi, Uzbek and Russian scholars first propagated the use of the modern ethnonym Uyghur, despite the fact that connections between the Karakhanid-Chagatayid societies and the Steppes Uyghur Empire and Karakhoja, Shazhou Uyghur states, are tenuous at best. To illustrate the artificiality of the distinctions between the modern Uzbek and Uyghur nationality, one only needs to look at Saipidin Eziz, the first chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. General Saipidin was born to a Kashgar Sart merchant family with Andijan roots. Technically, one with Andijan roots would be classified as Uzbek as many Xinjiang people with connections in Uzbekistan, and speaking Turkic dialects local to Uzbekistan, continue to be classified as "Uzbeks in Xinjiang". However, since Kashgar Sarts and Andijan Sarts are hardly different culturally from each other, Saipidin grew up to identify himself primarily with his hometown Kashgar, and has always been identified as an Uyghur. The Uzbek culture does derive largely from the Sart culture common to most of Turkestan during the Karakhanid and Chagatay eras. However the Uzbek Khanate which did not rule Xinjiang, but only Uzbekistan in early modern times, had its ruling culture derived from the true Uzbeks, a Kypchak horde similar to the Kazakhs and Karakalpaks
Karakalpaks
The Karakalpaks are a Turkic speaking people. They mainly live in the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and in the delta of Amu Darya on the southern shore of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The name "Karakalpak" comes from two words: "qara" meaning black, and "qalpaq" meaning hat...
. The modern Uzbek nation did absorb something from this Kipchak ruling culture which can be discerned from the doppa
Doppa
The Doppa , a square or round hat originating in the Caucasus and worn by Kazan Tatars, Uzbeks and Uyghurs. The Doppa means hat in Uyghur but however a baseball hat is not called a "Doppa" normally. The doppa is derived from a Turkic, more pointed, ancestral cap, which can be seen in some of the...
s worn by the Uzbeks and Uyghurs. The Uyghurs usually wear the square doppas whereas the Uzbeks usually wear the round doppas in similar make as the Kazakh and Kazan Tatar doppas.
In 1911, the Nationalist Chinese, under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
, overthrew Qing Dynasty rule and established a republic, the first in Asia.
By 1920, Uyghur nationalism had already become a grave challenge to the Qing and Republican Chinese warlords controlling Xinjiang. Turpan poet Abdulhaliq
Abduxaliq Uyghur
Abduhalik Uyghur was a Uyghur poet.Abudhalik began his studies in a Madrasah at the age of eight. He studied Arabic, Persian, and Uyghur classics...
, having spent his early years in Semey (Semipalatinsk) and the Jadid
Jadid
The Jadids were Muslim modernist reformers within the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. They normally referred to themselves by the Turkic terms Taraqqiparvarlar , Ziyalilar , or simply Yäşlär/Yoshlar...
intellectual centres in Uzbekistan, returned to Xinjiang with a pen name that he later styled as a surname: Uyghur. He wrote the famous nationalist poem Oyghan, which opened with the line "Ey pekir Uyghur, oyghan!" (Hey poor Uyghur, wake up!). He was later martyred by the Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai
Sheng Shicai
Sheng Shicai was a Chinese warlord who "ruled" Xinjiang province from April 12, 1933 to August 29, 1944....
in Turpan in March,1933 for inciting Uyghur nationalist sentiments through his works.
Modern meanings
Vasily BartoldVasily Bartold
Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold was a Russian and Soviet historian and turcologist.-Biography:Bartold was born in Saint Petersburg.Bartold's lectures at the University of Saint Petersburg were annually interrupted by extended field trips to Muslim countries...
argues that by the 19th century those described as "Sarts" had become much more Turkicised than had previously been the case. In the literature of Imperial Russia in the 19th century the term was sometimes used to denote the Turkic-speaking peoples of Ferghana, Tashkent
Tashkent
Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...
, Chimkent and the Southern Syr Darya Province
Syr Darya
The Syr Darya , also transliterated Syrdarya or Sirdaryo, is a river in Central Asia, sometimes known as the Jaxartes or Yaxartes from its Ancient Greek name . The Greek name is derived from Old Persian, Yakhsha Arta , a reference to the color of the river's water...
, (also found in smaller numbers in Samarkand
Samarkand
Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...
and Bukhara
Bukhara
Bukhara , from the Soghdian βuxārak , is the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 . The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time...
). "Sart" was also commonly employed by the Russians as a general term for all the settled natives of Turkestan. There was a great deal of debate over what this actually meant, and where the name came from. Barthold writes that "To the Kazakh
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
every member of a settled community was a Sart whether his language was Turkic
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
or Iranian
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....
". Nikolai Ostroumov
Nikolai Ostroumov
Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov was an educationalist in Turkestan.He studied under Nikolai Il'minskii at the Kazan Theological Seminary, where he studied Arabic and Turkic languages as well as Islam....
was firm in his conviction that it was not an ethnic definition but an occupational one, and he backed this up by quoting some (apparently common) local sayings: "A bad Kirghiz becomes a Sart, whilst a bad Sart becomes a Kirghiz". This confusion reached its peak in the 1897 Russian Empire Census
Russian Empire Census
The Russian Imperial Census of 1897 was the first and the only census carried out in the Russian Empire . It recorded demographic data as of ....
: the Ferghana Province
Province
A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...
was held to have a very large Sart population, the neighbouring Samarkand Province very few but a great many Uzbeks. The distinction between the two was often far from clear. Although historically speaking the Uzbeks were descended from tribes which arrived in the region with Shaibani Khan in the 16th century, Sarts belonged to older settled groups. It seems that, in Khorezm at least, Sarts spoke a form of Persianised Oghuz
Oghuz languages
The Oghuz languages, a major branch of the Turkic language family, are spoken by more than 110 million people in an area spanning from the Balkans to China.-Linguistic features:...
Turkic while Uzbeks spoke a Kipchak
Kipchak language
The Kipchak language is an extinct Turkic language of the Kipchak group.The descendants of the Kipchak language include the majority of Turkic languages spoken in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus today, as Kipchak was used as a lingua franca in Golden Horde–ruled lands.Kazakhs are remnants of...
dialect closer to Kazakh
Kazakh language
Kazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....
. In Fergana the Sarts spoke a Karluk dialect that was very close to Uyghur
Uyghur language
Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...
and is believed to be the earlier dialect of modern Uzbek. In 1924 the Soviet regime decreed that henceforth all settled Turks
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...
in Central Asia would be known as "Uzbeks", and that the term "Sart" was to be abolished as an insulting legacy of colonial rule. The language chosen for the new Uzbek SSR
Uzbek SSR
The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Uzbek SSR for short, was one of the republics of the Soviet Union since its creation in 1924...
was not, however, Uzbek, but Sart.
It is thus very difficult to attach a single ethnic or even linguistic meaning
Linguistic meaning
The nature of meaning, its definition, elements, and types, was discussed by philosophers Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. According to them 'meaning is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they mean '. One term in the relationship of meaning necessarily...
to the term "Sart". Historically the various Turkic and Persian peoples of Central Asia were identified mostly by their lifestyle, rather than by any notional ethnic or even linguistic difference. The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Turkmens were nomads, herding across steppes, mountains and sand deserts, respectively. The settled Turks and Tajiks, on the other hand, were Sarts, as they either lived in cities such as Khiva
Khiva
Khiva is a city of approximately 50,000 people located in Xorazm Province, Uzbekistan. It is the former capital of Khwarezmia and the Khanate of Khiva...
, Bukhara
Bukhara
Bukhara , from the Soghdian βuxārak , is the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 . The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time...
or Samarkand, or they lived in rural agricultural communities.
Use by the Dongxiang
Interestingly, the Muslim, Mongol-speaking Dongxiang peopleDongxiang people
The Dongxiang people are one of 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China...
of Northwestern China
Northwestern China
Northwestern China includes the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Ningxia and the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai.-Administrative divisions:ProvincesAutonomous Regions-Outer Northwest China:...
call themselves Sarta or Santa. It is not clear if there is any connection between this term and the Sarts of Central Asia.
Use in Siberia
Sart was one of the names applied to the Siberian BukharansSiberian Bukharans
The Siberian Bukharans were merchants from Bukhara who settled in Siberia in the 17th Century after the area had been conqueored by the Russians. They were also known as Sarts and occasionally also classed as Tatars....
who settled in Siberia in the 17th century.