A Sogdian Precursor of Omar Khayyam in Transoxania

By late 60's of the 6th century the Turkic Kaganate had made its way into the system of political and economic relations of the major states of the time: Byzantium, the Sasanian Iran, China. The headquarters of the West-Turkic Kaganate was in Suyab (on the river Chu). Having become the political leader in Central Asia and taken control of the trade along the Great Silk Road, the Turkic Kagans established close relations with the Sogdians. The political and economic links with Sogd had determined the specific character of the villages and cities in Transoxania. The written sources and the archaeological evidence attest to the Sogdians having been scattered along the Silk Road, maintaining active contacts with the Turks. As a result of this intensive interrelations between Sogdians and the Turks during the 6th-early 9th centuries the mentioned area has become the home for the formation of an original cultural complex, which can be rightly designated as a Turkic-Sogdian symbiosis. The Turkic heads or patrons of the Sogdian urban communities are mentioned by the Sogdian inscriptions on the rims of khums found on several sites in the Chu river valley.' The Sogdian writing and written language prior to the creation (on the Sogdian basis) of the Old Turkic writings, the Runic and Uighur, were in official use in the Turkic states at the Transoxania and the North-Western Mongolia. That is attested, for instance, by the Turgesh coins having the legends, which are Sogdian in writing and language. There was a similar situation in other early Turkic states. The epitaph to Taspar-Kagan also describing the major events of the First Kaganate, was compiled and drawn in the Sogdian language on the

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