THE STEPPE FRONTIERS OF PĀRSA:NEGOTIATING THE NORTHEASTERN BORDERLANDS OF THE TEISPID-ACHAEMENID EMPIRE*

Marco Ferrario

University of Trento / University of Augsburg

1.Introduction: a history of violence

In the eyes of both ancients and moderns, the Central Asian frontier zone(s) of the Achaemenid Empire, here understood as the satrapies of Baktria, Sogdiana,Chorasmia,andthe semi-desertic steppes to their north, has traditionally assumed the features of a liminal territory characterized by geopolitical instability and cultural alienation.3It is worth emphasizing that we are not dealing with an isolated case.A very influential (albeit debated) interpretation of a(nother) northern imperial frontier – again with the steppe world – in similar terms was proposed by Barfield 1989.For an overview of Eastern Īrān in Achaemenid times,see now Stark 2021; Bichler 2020 for an insightful study on narrative and liminal space (the borders of the – known – world) in Хenophon’s writings.Herodotos’ account of Kyros’ campaign against theSakā(Hdt.1.201–216), in which the founder of the Empire met his death, constitutes a founding moment in the history of this imagery of Central Asia and its inhabitants.4Bichler 2021 provides a detailed study of Herodotos’ narrative of Kyros’ death in Central Asia and of its Fortleben.Chiai 2021 is a useful overview of ethnography and historiography on the (Black Sea) Sakā in Archaic Greece (ibid., 201–202 he briefly discusses the Achaemenid written evidence,mostly from the inscriptions).Indeed: recently argued, Herodotos constitutes an interpretative problem for the entire history of the Achaemenid Empire, starting from its beginnings; it follows that a certain amount of skepticism about his version of Kyros’ death is at least legitimate.5Anderson 2020, 586: “Herodotos is a problem for the entire Persian Empire.”Nevertheless, as some recent studies have shown, there is reason to believe not only that Herodotos’ version of the events surrounding Kyros’ Central Asian expedition is preferable to another tradition circulating in antiquity (and echoed, for example, by Хenophon).6Note Vlassopoulos 2017 and, somewhat more skeptically, Degen 2020 on Хenophon’s Persian ethnography.Following such an account, the conqueror would have died in his bed, having subjugated almost the entire world then known.7Cf.Kuhrt 2021 with previous literature.

As convincingly argued by Robert Rollinger and Julian Degen, in fact, a careful reading of paragraphs 71–76 of the Bīsutūn inscription (column V,reporting on Darius’ expedition against the pointy-hattedSakā) that pays due attention to the Near-Eastern precedents of this crucial text, suggests that the specter of Kyros’ expedition – and its dramatic conclusion – was haunting the Empire’s territories and occupying the minds of its (would-be) ruling class still years after the events.8Rollinger and Degen 2021a.In the light of the prominent role played, for example, in the religious landscape of Pārsa in the critical phase of the Ēlāmo-Īrānian acculturation (cf.especially Henkelman 2008; 2018; 2021b), it would be worth explore in more depth how Ēlāmite kings represented mountain people (see, for example, Balatti 2017, 135–150) in their inscription and self-representation strategies of rulership, for the impact of Achaemenid royal ideology of such discourses might be much more far ranging than hitherto assumed.

In particular, the exceptional importance ascribed by Darius to the passing of a body of water (which in the Herodotean narrative marks Kyros’ crossing of a natural and human, if not divine, threshold, therefore heralding his ruin) and the subsequent subjugation of theSakacommander Skunḫa – whose inclusion in the Bīsutūn relief along with the other so-called “liar kings” prompted the almost complete remaking of the entire inscription – leads to the conclusion that the representation of Darius’ final triumph in thelongus et unus annusthat sanctioned his accession to the throne was shaped in constant dialogue with what was known (or remembered) at the time about Kyros’ last battle.9Waters 2014, 76.

In other words, the victory over theSakāsealed Darius’ triumph at the borders(ideological, if nothing else) of the inhabited world, where no one before him – not even the mighty Kyros – had either managed to venture or to successfully conquer.10See now Waters 2023 on the Teispid origin of the Empire and Minardi 2023 for a thorough overview of the Central Asian satrapies, including Sakā inhabited, if not controlled, territories.As a result, he provided himself with a powerful argument legitimizing his accession to the throne.11It must be remembered that such a move was moreover all the more necessary in a context such as the one in which the founder of the Achaemenid Dynasty came to power: cf.Schwinghammer 2011, as well as the recent Rollinger and Degen 2021b on the (re)foundation of the Empire after the death of Cambyses.Rollinger 2021 elaborates on the ideological significance of (especially, but not exclusively) natural borders in the broader Near Eastern world, of which long-standing tradition the Achaemenids were fully aware.Thomas 2017 provides an astute critical evaluation of the literary sources dealing with the (alleged) kings’ assassination and courtly intrigues: worth pointing out, however, is her emphasis on the succession dynamics as perhaps the only real threat, before Alexander, of course, for the empire’s stability.Additionally, the fact that the precedent of Kyros is constantly alluded to, but never explicitly mentioned in the inscription (for even his very name is left out in Darius’ very carefully crafted genealogy at the beginning of the text), implies that the death of the founder of the Empire in Central Asia set an uncomfortable precedent, from which it was necessary to distance oneself in a way that was both firm and subtle.In short, the affairs of Central Asia were capable – not only in the eyes of Greek authors – of influencing the succession policy of the largest (until then) empire in Eurasia.12Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 212.Cf.Beckwith 2023, 54–114 for the bold – but in the light of,among other things, its complete disregard of a growing body of evidence attesting to the pivotal role of the Ēlāmo-Īrānian background of the Persian (imperial) ethnogenesis, rather unconvincing – suggestion that, in fact, Darius’ accession ought to be seen as little more than the continuation of a“Scytho-Median” Empire.

2.Imperial enemies far away from Pārsa

The picture does not seem to change and indeed appears to worsen during the Achaemenid imperial trajectory.In the opinion of the Chinese historian and archaeologist Wu Хin – one of the most authoritative and committed proponents of this interpretative approach – the available evidence (including first-hand documentation such as Achaemenid seals) suggests that the Central Asian peoples, which is to say mainly, butnot only, theSakā, constituted a constant – and increasing – threat to the geopolitics of the northeastern satrapies,or at least were so presented within the imperial discourse of courtly élites.Consequently, given the importance of a region such as Baktria-Sogdiana (and Chorasmia) in the framework of the newly established polity, unrests in Central Asia might have affected the stability of the entire Empire, and this starting at the very least since the reign of Хerxes.13Cf.at great length Wu 2005, 287–320.

The persistence (and intensity) of these hostilities would, in Wu’s opinion, have profoundly shaped both Achaemenid politics in – and imagination of – Central Asia, to the point of elevating the local populations (and particularly theSakā) to the status of enemies of the Empire par excellence.As a consequence, over time the – repeated – military campaigns against them would have assumed a role of primary importance in the self-representation of the imperial ruling class.14Ead.2010, 559; 2014, 229–230.Cf., moreover, the remarks in Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 204.Sigillography, in particular, would suggest, according to this interpretation, that it was the imperial court itself that promoted the circulation of objects with a profound symbolic meaning and significant social capital (as seals undoubtedly were, especially those produced according to the norms of the so-called “court style”) depicting war scenes with Central Asian subject.The main goal of such a policy would have been to promote a sense of belonging to the Achaemenid political community in opposition to its enemies located at the borders of the world and specifically in Central Asia.15See the contributions by Richard Payne (e.g., 2015 and 2017) for a comparable strategy adopted by the Sāsānids once confronted with the steppe polities during the 5th century AD and Wu 2014 for a thorough discussion of the ideological politics behind the production and circulation of seals featuring warfare in (and against) Central Asia(ns).Such a policy can be understood as one of the strategies developed by empires to shape both central and regional élites according to the model recently put forward by Haldon 2021.Christopher Tuplin recently also came to similar conclusions after carrying out the most detailed study of Achaemenid war-related sphragistic evidence available to date.To put it in his own words,“it is probably safe to infer that fighting in Central Asia played a larger part in the Persianmonde imaginairethan one might suppose from the Greek historical tradition – and even that it did so because there was more actual fighting there than that tradition knows of.”16Tuplin 2020, 378.Emphasis in the original.

2.1.As things got worked out: old questions and new approaches

This essay aims to offer a different understanding of the dynamics underpinning the formation of the Achaemenid frontier zones in Central Asia and the mechanisms regulating the social, political, and economic relations that were structured in this area from the origins of the Empire itself throughout its entire historical evolution.17Cf.King 2021, 315–361 for a treatment of Achaemenid Baktria and its broader Central Asian environment in the 4th century BC.On the northeastern borders of the Empire, see also Minardi 2021.Daffinà 1967 can still be profitably read when it comes to the geography of mobile people across Central Asia (with a special focus on Drangiana).As it will be argued, the – still dominant – conception of the relations between the Persian imperial structure and the Central Asian peoples in predominantly (when notexclusively) warlike and oppositional terms does not adequately take into account the scholarly debate that has been going on for some years now, both in the field of studies on the nature and functioning of empires as socio-political, economic, and cultural entities from a comparative and world-historical perspective and, what matters most, within Achaemenid historiography.18On the histor(iograph)y of empires in a world historical and comparative perspective, see the seminal Scheidel and Morris 2009, Rollinger and Gehler 2014, and now Bang, Bayly and Scheidel 2021.On the Achaemenid Empire in its broader Near Eastern context, see Rollinger 2023 with bibliography.

More specifically, in the following pages, a key piece of evidence for the current interpretation of the Central Asian frontier of the Achaemenid Empire(stemming from Strabo’sGeography) will be investigated in the light of an interpretative model that takes adequate account of the complexity (both in geographical and socio-political terms) of the Central Asian space.19Payne and King 2020.

This complexity – what Bleda Düring and Tesse Stek have eloquently defined as “the practical situations on the ground” – on the one hand imposesstructurallimits on the political-administrative penetration and rationalizing action (to control and exploit men and resources) of an empire, not only in pre-modern times.20“Practical situations on the ground:” Düring and Stek 2018a, 10.This paper provides one of the best introduction to the issues and the topics of contemporary research around the Imperial Turn.On the other hand, and at the same time, it, however, also opens up room for maneuver to individuals and groups (mainly, but not exclusively, local élites)endowed with the social and ecological skills to exploit the opportunities that both the landscape itself and the establishment of imperial power in the space they lived in (and controlled) made available.21See Düring and Stek 2018a/b on the practical situations on the ground.On landscape as a social and historical actor on its own capable of conditioning the plans of imperial polities and officers, see King 2020 and already the path-breaking Scott 1998 (esp.ibid., 309–341).

In the specific case of Central Asia, not least because of the state of the available evidence, an investigation of this kind cannot neglect a comparative methodology that considers thelongue duréeof this region of Eurasia in an attempt to identifystructuralelements characterizing theImperial Experienceof the space under scrutiny here.22This is the approach (successfully) adopted by King 2020.On the sources available for Central Asia during the Achaemenid and the (post) Hellenistic period, see Rapin 2021 and Morris 2019a,respectively, with the references provided in Minardi 2023.The Imperial Experience: Bang, Bayly and Scheidel, W.2021, vol.I.Beckwith 2009 made a forceful case for giving people of what he calls Central Eurasia more agency in shaping world history from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean.

It is furthermore the purpose of this study to show how the traditional reading of the history of the Achaemenid borderlands (not only in Central Asia) in terms of opposition and conflict can be replaced by another, more profitable approach,which interprets the dynamics reflected in the sources as the result of mutual agreements interpreted differently by the involved players with the common aim of obtaining the maximum collective advantage from the interactions taking place on (and beyond) the imperial frontier areas.23See on this topic the compelling argument developed against the background of the Near Eastern longue durée in Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 200 and, for a very different perspective, Wu 2017 and 2018.

In line with the most recent developments in the historiography related to the so-calledImperial Turn, it is to be hoped that, at the end of this contribution,the process of (co-)construction of the Achaemenid imperial space (and of its borderlands) in and across Central Asia will emerge more clearly in terms of adialecticalrelationship, namely, as the intentional development of a space of confrontation and negotiation of (not always) converging interests that influenced decisively, while at the same time being no less significantly affected by, the surrounding environment.24For the theoretical framework which the standpoint outlined here relies upon, cf., e.g., Hämäläinen 2008, Hall 2021, and especially Rollinger 2023.After all, the famous concept of The Middle Ground was originally developed to describe precisely the kind of dynamics this section sought to outline; see White 22011, 52.As brilliantly pointed out by Michael Gehler and Rollinger, in fact, borderlands such as the Achaemenid Northeastern Central Asian satrapies are an area “where an empire’s ‘influence’ is ubiquitous,” and this is because its sheer infrastructural, political, social, and economic presence, with the contextual demands that this causes, triggers, releases, and provokes “complex processes of adaptation and adoption, resistance and integration, emulation and opposition, all of it at the very same time.”25Gehler and Rollinger 2022, 22 for this and the previous quote.This is perhaps the most sensitive description of the general theoretical framework of contemporary scholarship informed by theImperial Turn, which critically informs the understanding of Achaemenid borderlands underpinning the present paper.

With such considerations in mind, let then Strabo take us to (early) Achaemenid Central Asia.

3.Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the furthest of them all?

In the context of the description of the Central Asian territories crossed by Alexander the Great during the final stages of the conquest of the Northeastern territories of the Persian Empire (329–327See, e.g., Vacante 2012 and Howe 2016.BC), Strabo focuses on the siege – and subsequent pillage – of a cluster of settlements at the very outskirts (ἔν τε τῇ Bακτριανῇ καὶ τῇ Σoγδιανῇ) of the Achaemenid domains.Among them,particular importance in the – albeit concise – narrative of the geographer from Amasya assumes Kyropolis (τὰ Kῦρα), which Strabo locates along the banks of the river Iaxartes (today’s Syrdaryo) and bluntly describes as “the last – in the double chronological and spatial sense – foundation of Kyros” as well as an outpost (ὅριoν: that is, limit, border, and, by extension, stronghold) of Persian power.26Strab.11.11.4: καὶ τὰ Kῦρα, ἔσχατoν ὂν Kύρoυ κτίσμα ἐπὶ τῷ Ἰαξάρτῃ πoταμῷ κείμενoν, ὅπερἦν ὅριoν τῆς Περσῶν ἀρχῆς.See Cohen 2013, 254 for further bibliography and Rapin 2018a for the – still debated – localization of the settlement.

Due in no small part to the campaign of Alexander himself, who struggled to impose his authority (which was, moreover, ephemeral, and the result of exhausting negotiations with local rulers) in those territories, this fleeting remark by Strabo has played a critical role in the reconstruction of the sociopolitical dynamics characteristic of the Central Asian frontier zones both in the late Achaemenid period and, in retrospect, throughout the entire span of Persian imperial hegemony in Central Asia.27Traditionally located in the territory of today’s Хuçand (Хyҷaнд, in Taǧikistān), Kyropolis is believed to have been erected in a strategic position, controlling an imposing waterway and an ecological frontier (an ecotone) with the steppe world, with the intention on the part of the Achaemenid administration of securing its northern border(s) in a politically very sensitive area, constantly threatened as it was by incursions led bySakāpeople.28Cf., e.g., the discussion in Holt 1988, 11–52; 2005, 1–66 (on Alexander’s inheritance of the Achaemenid border, on which see now Rollinger and Degen 2021c); Wu 2017.On empire and ecology in a world-historical perspective, see, most recently, Beattie and Anderson 2021.

Kyros’ fateful expedition recounted by Herodotos, in this scenario, would only confirm the precariousness of Persian power along the Central Asian frontier(s)and the consequent need for a massive armed intervention, which nevertheless ended in catastrophe.Although still debated, the more recent identification of the settlement mentioned by Strabo at the site of Nurtepe, in the territory of today’s Jizzax (Жиззax in Uzbekistān), while on the one hand contributing to more precise cartography of (late) Achaemenid Central Asia, on the other hand in no way changes the interpretation of the passage in theGeography, and might even be taken as further corroborating it.29This new identification is the result of a detailed re-examination of the historiographic sources in the light of the archaeological, topographical, and linguistic investigation carried out over the last few decades, in particular by Claude Rapin: cf.Rapin 2018a, 264 and Goršenina and Rapin 2020 for an overview of the debate.Rapin 2021 deals specifically with the Achaemenid period.This said, of course, it should never be forgotten that specifically Greek (and Roman) spatial categories and understandings of the Persian world crook into our extant accounts of the Empire’s geography:Bichler 2006; 2020.Located north of a gorge (which later became famous under the name of Tīmūr’s Gates orTimur Darvaza) connecting the site of modern Samarqand – the Achaemenid Afrāsyāb/Marakanda mentioned among others, by Strabo himself – with the Farġānẹ valley (thus already in a territory with a high density ofSakāpopulation), Nurtepe/Kyropolis, not unlike other crucial sites in Achaemenid Central Asia such as Kyzyltepe (in presentday Surxondaryo) or Koktepe (the most crucial settlement in Sogdiana before the imperial mandated expansion of Marakanda) would have been devised with the primary intention of controlling the movements of the pastoral populations and, if necessary, launching from there intimidating actions, not unlike those that saw the entire Makedonian general staff engaged during Alexander’s Sogdian campaign.30See, beyond Strab.11.11.4, Arr.Anab.3.30.6 and Curt.7.6.10.Cohen 2013, 279–282 provides previous bibliography on the history of the site.Cf., most recently, Rapin 2017 on Koktepe; 2018a,263–271 on Marakanda, and Wu, Sverčkov and Boroffkam 2017 for a detailed report on Kyzyltepe(with the discussion in Wu 2020).

3.1.The presumptive satrapy: Kyropolis and the art of being governed

Faced with this reconstruction, it will be worth developing some methodological considerations that seem to undermine its assumptions, in order to introduce,in the next section, the comparative evidence necessary, as the forthcoming discussion seeks to show, to frame Strabo’s passage in a broader (and more fitting) Central (Eur)Asian context that allows appreciating in all its implications both what the geographer says and, above all, what the text of his work glosses over.31Cf.the methodological remarks in Scott 1998, 11–52.

First, authoritative studies undertaken in recent years have shown that, beyond the ideological and literary agenda of a specific author, Greek (and following in their footsteps Latin) historiography – not to mention geographical inquiry – on Achaemenid subjects is deeply influenced by mental maps.Which is to say,our written evidence often heavily (although not explicitly) relies on the corresponding worldview, in both the physical and figurative sense, produced within the Persian world and not infrequently by the narrower circles around the Great King and his court.32Rapin 2018b and Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 207–214 for a thorough discussion on this topic.It follows that, even in the case of Strabo, his understanding of thegenesis(and even more so of thefunction) of a settlement such as Kyropolis is in no small measure indebted to a discourse –sensuFoucault – on power and empire functional to the consolidation of the same by the Persian ruling class, if not by Darius himself in the broader context of his project of imperial (re-)foundation.33On the Foucaultian concept of ordre du discours, see Foucault 2004.Rollinger 2014a/b on Darius as the promoter of a new discourse on power and empire (with particular emphasis on the staging of the former at the furthermost ends of his domains).See now also Rollinger and Degen 2021b on the Achaemenid Empire after Cambyses’ death.The most obvious implication of the above is that a reading in merely adversarial terms of the foundation of a settlement such as Kyropolis can (or should)notbe accepted without further critical scrutiny.

Second, to claim, as Strabo does, that Kyros’ last foundation on the Iaxartes embodied “the limit of Persian power” (ἦν ὅριoν τῆς Περσῶν ἀρχῆς) is to assumea priorithe existence of a Persian power capable of fulfilling the tasks, anything but trivial, to which, in Strabo’s (and of later interpreters’) understanding,a settlement such as Kyropolis was assigned.34Strab.11.11.4: trans.is my own.Cf.the LSJ (p.1251 s.v.) and the trans.by Jones 1928, 283.It is worth noting that this conclusion is by no means self-evident.On the contrary, it seems to assume a scenario much more consistent with the time of Darius, when the complex administrative and bureaucratic apparatus developed overseveral decadesin order to control the territory, the resources, and the population of the heart of the Empire (roughly corresponding to today’s Īrānian province of Fārs), had already taken several decades to run in, and adapt to, the various local contexts of the immense realm.35Henkelman (2017) has called such impressive administrative system the Achaemenid “Imperial Paradigm.” See most recently Henkelman 2021a with previous bibliography and the path-breaking Henkelman 2017.However,noneof this can be taken for granted at the time of Kyros, when the whole infrastructure of imperial control and exploitation was still being developed and, even more crucially, adapted to the very different geographic and anthropic contexts of the newly conquered territories, a process which, through imperial history, more often than not is carried out based on trials and errors.36Düring and Stek 2018a.To rule an empire, in short, one must first conquer it.37Kuhrt 2021.

Third, a strict interpretation of Strabo’s passage – that is, one that considers it exclusively, or even onlyin bonam partem, as a document ofactual geographyand not as acultural construct– almost entirely obliterates the local context and the constraints it must have imposed on an empire, albeit endowed with formidable means of coercion, still in its dawning phase and consequently much less capable of affirmative action than its representatives were prepared to admit,if not to themselves, undoubtedly to their interlocutors.38See Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 205 for the distinction between real geography on the one hand, and mental mapping (and ideological discourse) on the other.On the structurally conditioned nature of pre-modern empires, see Burbank and Cooper 2021 and Khatchadourian 2016, 1–24 (on the Achaemenid case with additional remarks by Briant 2020 – on Central Asia – and 2021 – more generally on the dynamics of Persian universal rule).Seth Richardson’s meticulous examination of the proclamations of conquest (and subsequent control of the claimed territory) by ancient Mesopotamian rulers has, for example, shown how such “imperial fantasies,” far from celebrating a political-military triumph,were in not infrequent cases thepremiseof the political affirmation that they imply as havealreadybeen accomplished.39Garrison 2011 on “imperial fantasies” with a thorough assessment of the written and visual program of the Bīsutūn inscription.In the poignant words of James C.Scott (2009, 34), “if we take the cosmological bluster emanating from the court centers as indicative of facts on the ground, we risk … ‘imposing the imperial imaginings of a few great courts on the rest of the region.’”

The geopolitical framework implicit in Strabo’s description of Kyropolis (and the socio-economic one, which the geographer deliberately disregards) presents as agivenwhat must have been, in Kyros’ time, a long, arduousprocess, subject to constant negotiation on the part of all the actors involved in it (thus, in addition to theSakāpopulations, also the Baktrians, the Sogdians, and the Chorasmians,who had sustained contacts with the steppe world centuriesbeforethe rise of Persian power in Central Asia).40Minardi 2015 provides an in-depth study of the relationships between Chorasmia (and through it, Baktria, on which during the Achaemenid period see now Gzella 2021) with the world of the Eurasian steppe on the one hand and, on the other, with Persian power.On the rise of Sakā power in Central Asia before the Achaemenids, see now Beckwith 2023, 54–80, whose suggestions are worth of careful consideration and, if necessary, detailed – critical – discussion.Far from sanctioning a process of conquest now brought to an end, the foundation of Kyropolis is far more likely to reflect, in Richardson’s terminology, a “presumptive” affirmation of established power.41Cf.Richardson 2012; 2016 for the concept of a “presumptive state.” In the words of Sean Manning(2021, 220), “outside of the inscriptions, Darius and his servants had to deal with willful individuals who wanted something in exchange for cooperation, and with the endless intermediaries between them and the humble workers who enacted their orders.” Such a picture tailors very well with the situation Kyros and his lieutenants must have been confronted with in Central Asia during the first expansive phase of the Teispid Empire, on which see Waters 2023.

Fourth, the description of the Achaemenid settlement in terms of a bulwark of Persian power in Central Asia presupposes a highly stereotypical conception of the relations between the Empire and the peoples of the steppes (in other words,it, too, is the product of a discourse that runs through ancient, notablynotonly classical, historiography) and therefore needs to be critically evaluated.42See Nečaeva 2018 and especially the contributions by Nicola Di Cosmo (e.g., 2010 and 2018) on the invention of the barbarian in ancient historiography between Greece and China.

In other words, it is undoubtedly true, as has been argued particularly convincingly in recent years by Mischa Meier and Rollinger, that the mere existence of a geopolitical entity such as an empire is a determining factor in reconfiguring the socio-economic arrangements of entire communities oneither sideof the empire’s effective range of political and administrative control.43Cf.Meier 2020 and Rollinger 2023.It is equally true, however, that opportunities of no lesser magnitude (for instance,in terms of resources that can be acquired in order to satisfy the growing needs of the imperial apparatus) are open to the ruling class of the empire being constituted – and to the local élites that are drawn into its orbit – precisely in those frontier spaces that in Strabo’s narrative (or Herodotos’, as his narrative of Kyros’ expedition shows) emerge as an almost exclusive source of threat to the stability of the (allegedly accomplished) conquest.44Hornborg 2021 for a comparative study of the processes of what he calls imperial metabolism and the central importance of the acquisition of resources within and beyond the frontiers of a given empire, according to a dynamic that the scholar defines in terms of an “unequal exchange” (Hornborg 2021) but from which, it is essential to point out, not only the members of the imperial élite had something to gain.

Against this background, an analysis of Strabo’s passage dedicated to Kyropolis that addresses the Central Asian context in which the episode described by the geographer took place cannot fail to ask the following question.What interests – apart from those conditioned by a security-policy which seems more fitting of modern nation states than of (ancient) empires – could an undertaking such as the foundation of a settlement “at world’s end” satisfy from the point of view of the Achaemenid ruling class (both at the imperial and, above all, at the local level)?

Such a question demands a radical change of perspective.It forces us in fact to reflect on the history of Kyropolis from the point of view of those frontier zones which, in the long history of Eurasia, before and far more than a source of danger, has been an inexhaustible reservoir of resources, and in some cases even a sanctuary in which to seek refuge from the rapacious hand of imperial officials.45Beckwith 2009; Scott 2017, 219–256.

For this purpose, however, it is necessary to read Straboagainst the grainof both space and time, framing it in thelongue duréeof Central Asian history, as the next section seeks to show.46Hämäläinen 2008, 1–17 and Scott 2017, 1–35 for a discussion of the methodology of “upstream”(Hämäläinen 2008, 13) reading of the available sources in order to acquire information hidden between the lines of what the (especially written) evidence explicitly says.

4.Smugglingstān.Towards a local history of universal empires

In a passage from theTāriḫ-i Buxārā(تاریخ بخارا), composed between the 9th and 10th centuries AD by the historian and scholar Muḥammad Abū Bakr Ǧa‘far Ibn Naršaḫi (نرشخی بن جعفر بكر محمد أبو, AD 899–959), the reader suddenly comes across a curious anecdote about the city of Ṭawāwīs (طواویس),on the northern outskirts of the oasis along a vital route that connected Buxārā with Samarqand, about “seven parasangas” from the center of the oasis itself(and therefore directly facing the Chorasmian steppe), which deserves to be considered with some attention.47Tāriḫ 4.On Naršaḫi’s life and work, see, e.g., Starr 2015, 575.I take this reference and the following analysis of Naršaḫi’s account from Stark forthcoming, which provides further literature on this anecdote and a thorough archaeological background.See, moreover, Schwarz 2022 for a detailed treatment of what he calls the land behind Buxārā.

Naršaḫi tells us that in this city, as well as in other settlements, such as Kargata(کرگت), built further north, in order to avoid the payment of taxes imposed by the Buxārān administration, on the occasion of important fairs, during the month of Tīr (تیر), thus approximately between June 22 and July 22, no less than ten thousand people used to meet annually, coming from regions as far away as Čāč(some 1,000 kilometers to the east, where today’s Toškent is located), the valley of Farġānẹ (even further east), “and other places.” The purpose of such an event,he tells us, was to traffic in “defective or stolen goods [the word attested in the manuscripts of Naršaḫi’s work ismasrūqāt, مسروقات], without any possibility of compensation” and, what appears to have been the most important aspect of the entire process, sheltered from the city administration, thus making “the fortune of the villagers [of Ṭawāwīs], and the reason for this was certainly not agriculture.”

As Sören Stark shrewdly points out, thebāzārof Ṭawāwīs must, in fact, have constituted a genuine local attraction capable, by itself, of making the economy of the entire settlement flourish since the site is mentioned in the same terms(“a large and populous city”) by the polymath Abū al-Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī (البيروني, AD 973–1048Tafhīm 10.Further details on al-Bīrūnī in Starr 2015, 269–278, which are devoted to his research on astronomical and hemerological matters.) in a work devoted to astronomy, the Kitāb al-Tafhīm (كتاب التفيم).Here the following description is to be found:

Even the magi of Sogdiana have their recurrences and festivals of a religious nature, which they callAḫam[....] and in theirbāzār[...] in which stolen goods are sold [again, the Arabic word is مسروقات], and great confusion reigns in them, nor is it possible to obtain repayment [...] and the fair of Ṭawāwīs, a large and populous city, lasts for seven days from the 15th of Mazhīḫandā, during the festival of Kišmīn [كشمين], which lasts for seven days.48Although apparently in all respects analogous to that of Naršaḫi, al-Bīrūnī’s testimony, particularly authoritative because it comes from an astronomical text (and is, thus,technical, implying its being less constrained by ideological or literary agendas), provides a revealing detail – the dating “from the 15th of Mazhīḫandā – in the light of which the anecdote of Ṭawāwīs’ “black market”acquires a much deeper significance, becoming therefore of considerable interest for the historian not least because it makes possible, as we shall see, to provide Strabo’s account of the foundation of Kyropolis with a broader and more meaningful context than the one allowed by a traditional reading of it in terms of the “adversarial relationship” with the steppe people.49Wu 2010, 549 for the concept of “adversarial relationship” between the Achaemenids and the Central Asians.

From the calendar under discussion in the passage of al-Bīrūnī, namely the Sogdian one, it can in fact be argued, as Stark does not fail to notice, that the month of Mazhīḫandā is to be placed in autumn, which seems particularly plausible by virtue of the fact that the visitors from Čāč and Farġānẹ were in all probability members of pastoral communities who took advantage of the winter migrations to sell their products, which had to be particularly coveted – and therefore sold at corresponding (high) prices – to the point that both at Ṭawāwīs and Kargata the goal was to shelter as much of the (mutual) earnings as possible from the rapacious eyes (and hands) of the Buxārān administration.

But there is more in such an apparently trivial anecdote: since a situation like the one described by Naršaḫi and al-Bīrūnī appears to be closely related to geoecological opportunities (in Tim Ingold’s words the “affordances”) provided by the local landscape, it is perhaps not specious to wonder whether dynamics comparable to those of Ṭawāwīs do not have a much more ancient history and whether, for example, places like the Baktrian and Sogdian fortified settlements(known asqal‘a) studied by Michelle Negus-Cleary in the context of Iron Age Chorasmia were not a remote antecedent of the “great and prosperous city”mentioned in theTāriḫ-i Buxārāand a touchstone for assessing the function of Kyropolis itself.50Negus-Cleary 2015, vol.I; 2017.The essays collected in Günther and Fabricius 2021 are critical for an assessment of the heuristic potential of such concept in ancient studies (especially from an archaeological standpoint, which is the focus of the volume).

Such a suggestion would provide a rather convincing explanation to the attention, archaeologically detectable, for example, in the oasis of Baktra,devoted by the Achaemenids to the expansion of their own sphere of territorial control – in the form of garrisons, post stations or, not least, by means of concessions and privileges to some members of the local élites, in border and impervious territories.If the Buxārān parallel has any heuristic value, the main goal of such a move would, accordingly,nothave been (as, for example, Strabo’s passage on Kyropolis implies) to circumscribe and protect the imperial space from external “barbarism,” but – on the contrary – totap intowhat James Scott has called “non-state zones,” and this chiefly, if not exclusively, because of the resources that only these (allegedly) no man’s lands (which in fact means little more than not – yet – incorporated within the imperial body) were able to provide.51Scott 1998, 419, n.55; 2009, 23–25; 2017, 155.Chinese ethnography even developed a “culinary”classification for these territories (and the people living therein).Accordingly, a space such as that in which Kyropolis was built would have been defined “raw” (shēng 生).On this curious way of classifying both spaces and people by the Chinese (late) Medieval government, cf.Fiskesjö 1999.

What kind of resources, however, must we more concretely imagine were the subject of those exchanges that, according to the argument proposed here, might have taken place at the outskirts of what Thomas J.Barfield has recently called the “archipelago” of Achaemenid political control?52Barfield 2020.In order to put forward some possible answers, we must come back to Naršaḫi and the fair of Ṭawāwīs.

To begin with, it must be noted that the mention of “stolen goods” (مسروقات)has created more than one headache for scholars since the hypothesis that these were the fruits of raids carried out elsewhere fits particularly poorly with the mention of visitors coming from places hundreds of kilometers away for a purpose that could undoubtedly be satisfied within a much more limited radius.Things, however, change radically if one accepts, as Stark does, an elegant proposal – and for this reason all the more convincing since it does little to no harm to the text – for amendment that argues in favour of a corruption,paleographically far from improbable, from ق to ف, thus suggesting a much more plausible reading for the text of theTāriḫ, namelymasrūfāt(مسروفات), or“articles eaten by woodworms (?).”53For this, indeed extremely elegant (and therefore suggestive and alluring in its simplicity)hypothesis, see the discussion in Smirnova 1970, 122–154, already referenced and discussed in Stark forthcoming.Cf., moreover, now Stark 2021 and Jacobs and Gufler 2021 with further bibliography on the Īrānian East and the steppe pastoralists under Achaemenid rule.

Admittedly, not even such a (indeed brilliant) conjecture solves all the problems, and in fact the possibility of seeing silk behind such مسروفات articles runs the risk of re-proposing once again the long-lasting stereotype of the nomadic middleman, committed to shuttling between East and West through the Central Asian oases, bringing with him caravans packed with luxury goods.54Such is, more or less, the picture drawn by Benjamin 2007 and 2018 concerning the Yuèzhī, the Arsakids, and the Kuṣāṇa.On the two latter case studies, see the theoretically much more refined assessment of Leonardo Gregoratti (2017 and 2019 on the Arsakids) and the critical remarks by Lauren Morris (2019b, 681–688, concerning what she rightly labels a sort of crystallization into doctrine of the myth – for such it is – of the Kuṣāṇa middleman).It is, however, worth pointing out that, at least as far as the Achaemenid Empire is concerned, the hypothesis of trade(and not – only – gift giving or tribute) in precious textiles between the Central Asian satrapies,particularly Baktria, on the one hand and the steppe world on the other should not be dismissed out of hand, as a passage in the Συλλoγὴ τῆς περὶ ζῲν ἱστoρίας strongly suggests: see FGrHist 688 F 45 (26)and the conclusions reached by both Henkelman and Folmer 2016, 195 and King 2021, 359–361.

As William Honeychurch has recently pointed out corroborating his assertions with plenty of both archaeological evidence and insightful ethnographic parallels,it seems on the contrary much more feasible that, in the case of Ṭawāwīs at the very least, we are dealing with goods, whatever it is to be understood behind the cryptic مسروقات/مسروفات, coming from a network of relations (a “political community” in Honeychurch’s words) accessible to the population settledat and aroundṬawāwīs (as well as, at least in its intentions, to the Buxārān administration)exclusivelythrough the intermediation of the peoples of the steppe, consequently overturning the persistent and, as it seems, heavily biased,imago receptaof a structural dependence of the nomadicum onThe Outside Word.

In fact, what the anecdote preserved by Naršaḫi shows, is the exact opposite,namely, how it was the latter (we might even say: the Empire) who was tenacious-ly looking for goods coming from circuits of exchange and mobility laying beyond the community of Ṭawāwīs (and of Buxārā itself, meaningoutsideof the reach of imperial administrators were it not for the cooperation, which would of course have come at a cost, of local magnates).55Honeychurch 2015, 86–99.Cf.with regards to the (questionable) argument of structural dependance of the steppe economy from other (agricultural) networks Khazanov 21994, 68–84 and(more recently, using the Huns as a case study) Meier 2020, 406–470 on the one hand and, on the other, Beckwith 2009, 320–362 and Scott 2017, 116–150.

In the light of such an interpretative framework, the inescapable question to ask next is: on what resources from the steppe world (and more generally from relational networks of wide-ranging mobility) could the Achaemenid Empire in Central Asia have been so dependent – and consequently desiring them with the same ardor as the Ṭawāwīs inhabitants (and the local administrators in Buxārā)?The most plausible answer is likely to include at least three categories of “goods:”horses, camels, and, finally, the labor necessary to adequately take care of the first two.56Taking up a remark in Horden and Purcell 2000, 100, we might argue that Ṭawāwīs, and especially its bāzār, seems to have been a locus “of contact or overlap between diferente ecologies.”

Indeed, if it is true, as Christopher J.Tuplin observed in an exhaustive study some years ago, that from amilitarypoint of view there is no reason to assume a particularly prestigious role reserved for cavalry – and horsemen – within the Persian army, it is nevertheless equally true that, especially in the second phase of the Achaemenid imperial trajectory (roughly from the second half of the 5th century to the death of Darius III in 330 BC), the use of highly mobile units (on horseback and camel), made up especially bynon-Persians (in the sense of composed of peoples not originating from Fārs, namely, the so-called barbarian cavalry known to classical historiographers) seems to have been very widespread.57Tuplin 2010.

Moreover (and perhaps far more importantly), it should be noted that, with the exception of Media, repeatedly mentioned as an almost inexhaustible source of horses, and especially of the – apparently exceptionally valuable – Nisean specimens (Nησαῖoι καλεόμενoι ἵππoι, according to Herodotos), the sources of supply available to the Achaemenid kings donotseem to have been many and,for the present discussion a remarkable point, they appear to have been mostly located in areas notoriously difficult to control, from the Negev desert (נגב, i.e.,“south [of Israel]”) to the Armenian Plateau up to the Sogdian steppes and the Farġānẹ valley, whose semi-legendary “celestial horses” (in Chinese known as dàyuānmǎ 大宛馬) still in the 2nd century BC populated the fantasies of the“Martial Emperor” Hàn Wǔdì (漢武帝), who in fact considered their acquisition indispensable for his (massive) campaign against the Хiōngnú.58The importance of “barbarian” cavalry is explicitly formulated in Nep.Dat.8 and Diod.Sic.14.99.2 (see, most recently, Manning 2021, 183–187).About Media as a satrapy ἱππoβότης par excellence, see at least Hdt.3.106, Polyb.5.44, Strab.11.13.7, and FGrHist 156 F 17 (8).That both Bactria and Sogdiana were a valuable source of mounts even in the Hellenistic period has been most recently underlined by Lauren Morris (2019a, 382–383).For the Nisean horses the main source is Hdt.7.40.2: whether these horses were of Median origin or should be identified with the dàyuānmǎ from Farġānẹ mentioned by the Shǐjì (123.21) is a question that will probably remain unsolved.However, as Sven Günther kindly pointed out to me in a personal communication (11.12.2022), the entire story of emperor Wǔdì’s obsession for these mounts is particularly interesting in the context of this paper, for it shows a compelling analogy with the Achaemenid (and Assyrian) precedentes concerning the demands, the reach, and the limits thereof, of imperial authority.Other horse reserves in Armenia and Media Atropatene (modern Azərbaycan and Northwestern Īrān): see Potts 2014, 78;SAA I no.29, SAA V no.171; and Balatti 2017, 127–134.

Now: according to what we can judge from the Persepolis archives, apart from the rather interesting cases of individuals on horseback coming from Baktria and Chorasmia and recorded, perhaps in a military context, as active in Egypt, even more remarkable is the existence of ahierarchyamong the imperial officials(mudunraormudunup) in charge of the care and breeding of horses, some of which explicitly belonged to the Great King (or to what with Wouter Henkelman we might define “the royal economy:” see as a way of example PF 1668 and PF 1669).

Moreover, it seems that among the criteria behind the establishmend of such a hierarchy was thequalityof the horse breeded, as is suggested by the titles ofaššabattiš(“head of horses”) as well as, and above all,pasanabattiš, that is, the“head of the excellent filies” or, finally, by the remarkable fact that in at least four cases (PF 1793, NN 0751, NN 1289, and NN 1352) officers with this title were used to receive meat rations, which provides a compelling clue for their special social status.59On the aššabattiš and the occurrences of this office in the heartland’s record, see Tuplin 2010,132–133 for the unpublished tablets mentioned here.About Central Asian detachments (of Bactrian,Chorasmians, but also other Iranian groups) in other satrapies of the Empire (not only Egypt but also Asia Minor) see, e.g., TADAE D2.12 and TADAE D3.39 with the relevant commentary by Tuplin 2010, 155–156, as well as the mention by Arrian (Anab.4.4.4) and Polyaenus (7.8.1) of the peculiarities of the “Scythian” art of warfare (including the famous “Parthian shot,” which however does not seem to have been the prerogative of the peoples of the steppes, let alone of the Parthians alone: see Overtoom 2020, 46–56 for further details on Central Asian warfare tactics).On the royal economy of Persepolis, see, e.g., Henkelman 2005 and 2010 (the definition mentioned in the text can be found at 2010, 675).Regarding the titling that occurs in the archive: mudunra or mudunup are attested in PF 1018 and NN 2184.An aššabattiš is mentioned in PF 1978, and as for pasanabattiš at least two occurrences can be quoted: PF 1947 and PF 1972.See also Tuplin 2010, 132–135, who postulates that the title of “horsemen” in the sense of “attendants to horses” was a rank of some importance within the imperial administrative hierarchy, but points out (ibid., 133) that meat rations could be a “one-off” donation and not the normal payment of these officers.

Not only that: in one of the most important – and controversial – documents that make up what remains of the archive(s) preserved in theAramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria(dated between November and December 330 BC), line 33 of the first column of parchment C1 (a list of supplies) records the procurement of an unspecified commodity in a place called Asparāsta (’sprstin the Aramaic text, i.e., אספרסת), a toponym interpreted by the editors as indicating “(a place)for horses, a hippodrome?”60Shaked 2004, 32–33, Naveh and Shaked 2012, 174–185 C1 = Khalili A21: on such issue, see Tuplin 2010, 178–179, and Naveh and Shaked 2012, 184 for the etymological reconstruction of the hypothetical toponym אספרסת.

Should the proposed etymology be correct, even although lacking adequate context, the mention of (only one?) אספרסת in Baktria would be an extremely interesting piece of information, for at least two reasons.The first is the existence of a similar infrastructure attested in Idumea under the name ofrkšh(רכשה) which Tuplin proposed to interpret as indicating “a ranch” intended for the breeding – unfortunately, we do not know if by locals, but it would not be a hypothesis to be excluded – of horseson a large scale(a similar business to the one carried out in Gaugamela, this time, however, for camels, at least according to Plutarch).61Tuplin 2010, 120–122 on the Idumean ranch, with further references.Regarding the toponomastic of Gaugamela, cf.Plut.Vit. Alex.31.3 with Henkelman 2017, 57.Cf.the evidence coming from early medieval China discussed by Skaff2012, 258–262.In addition, it is worth remembering incidentally that horse breeding (and their trade for “imperial” buyers) has historically been a very profitable activity for groups of non-sedentary shepherds – from the O‘zbeks to the Türkmens down to the the Aimāq (ایماق) – who were able to supply the thriving Balḫ-āb oasis market along a route that reached as far as India still in modern times.62Barfield 2020, 15, with further ethnographic bibliography.

The second reason concerns the parallel, worthy of further study, that facilities such as the אספרסת of Baktria, the Idumean “ranch,” and Gaugamela itself present with the infrastructural network – of immense proportions – set up by the Táng Dynasty on the northern border of their domains, in the direction of presentday Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, and especially in the Ordos Plateau (known in Chinese asÈěrduōsī鄂爾多斯), with the dual purpose of (1) acquiring, if necessarymilitarily, the specimens bred by the Türkic and Mongolian speaking peoples, including the famous Prževal’skij mounts, considered among the best for military purposes, and (2) of procuring a sufficient number of stallions and mares – as well as the necessary workforce to maintain them – to start adomesticbreeding on a scale that the available figures, recently studied in considerable detail by Jonathan Karam Skaff, allow us to define as “industrial.”63Skaff2012, 241–270 and 2017, in both cases with previous bibliography.Between AD 590 and 837, the Táng Dynasty was able to establish a network of ranches in territories bordering with the Inner Asian frontier of China which covered some 16,000 acres, which around the early 8th century AD was made out of some 65 ranches in which several hundreds of thousands of livestock were sheltered (766,000 animals in AD 725 according to the Xīn táng shū 50.1337, among which were 43,000 horses).

Considering the war resources – in terms of “barbarian” cavalry – that both Bessos and, especially, Spitamenes seem to have been able to mobilize starting,in the case of the latter, from bases such as Koktepe, not by chance situated along theShadow Linebetween Achaemenid territory and the Scythian steppes (what might be called an ecotone), it does not seem too far-fetched to assume that the expansion of this and other sites (such as Čašma-ye Šifâ or Altin Dilyar in Afġān Baktria, Koktepe itself in Sogdiana, and, it might be argued, Kyropolis itself deep intoSakāterritory) served the primary purpose of gaining access, following theṬawāwīs model through tax collection and, if necessary – according to the Táng example – through military incursions (Darius’ Scythian expedition, for instance,and perhaps Kyros’ itself), to a portion of the “heavenly horses” for the cavalry of the King of Kings.64On Afġān Baktria, see Martinez-Sève 2020.Further bibliography on Čašma-ye Šifâ and Altin Dilyar in Ball 2019 (nos.186 and 38).

In the latter case – it must be emphasized – we are dealing with a scenario within which there was ample room for maneuver for the so-called gatekeepers,namely, individuals and/or social groups capable of guaranteeing the Achaemenid administration access to the desired resources at the lowest possible cost(including those – far from negligible – of military expeditions).Accordingly,these men and social groups came into possession –becauseof the establishment of the Empire in Central Asia and its consequential need to extractlocalresources to feed the satrapal apparatus – of a critical negotiating power.This could be put to usebothwhen coming to terms with a, undoubtedly cumbersome,presence like that of the Achaemenid Empire and with its representatives(themselves withtheir ownagendas to promote) and within the local societies inside and outside the borders of the newly established polity since the imperial need for resources and human capital is likely to have stirred competition among local élites in Central Asia, from which could only profit who was able to tap into the Achaemenid administrative and political networks.65See Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 199–203 for a wide range of comparative case studies (from Assyria to 15th century China), which strongly support the scenario laid out here.

By virtue of its strategic position in close contact with the Üstȳrt plateau, it is easy to think that Chorasmia played a significant role in this economy: the possibility of the existence of some kind of Ṭawāwīsante litteramat least in this region – in Achaemenid times under the control of the satrap of Batria – seems to be suggested by the existence, at least from the 1st century BC but likely to reflect earlier practices, of numerous sites (the Russian archaeologist Sergej Bolelov has found about eighty of them), each equipped with granaries for storing agricultural products, wine presses and even kilns.66Bolelov 2006.

In Bolelov’s opinion, the main purpose of these small agricultural settlements(the occupation of which seems to have been of semi-permanent nature) was to produce consumer goods that could be exchanged with the surrounding pastoral groups (in Tsarist times mainly Türkmen).The emergence of these sites on the fringes of the agricultural territory of the surveyed area suggests the intention of the oasis inhabitants to (literally) come as close as possible to the steppe dwellers, which in turn leads one to suppose that the interest in keeping alive this space of socio-political and economic interactions was greater on the partof the formerthan of the latter.67Crescioli 2017, 140 on the possibility that on the Empire’s frontier territories (“mainly Bactria,Sogdiana,” but in the light, for example, of Michele Minardi’s studies – e.g., 2021 – it seems only reasonable to add Chorasmia as well), “workshops (e.g., for jewellery [sic]) specialized in the production of objects for the nomads” flourished, most likely sponsored by the imperial administration itself, in the attempt of tapping into the steppe’s sociopolitical network, which Minardi 2020, 18, n.26 with references has convincingly shown that, starting from Chorasmia, were able to reach as far as the Ural mountain range.Otherwise stated, the Empire needed its “enemies” at least as much as they needed it, if notmore.68This is the overarching argument of Beckwith 2009, looking at the so-called Silk-Road from the perspective of the Eurasian steppes.

Finally, the discovery of a small fortress at the site of Baštepe – once again located along an ecological and sociopolitical borderland, at the outskirt of an oasis facing the mighty Kyzylkum desert – represents an important clue supporting the hypothesis that thelimesof the Central Asian steppe was an area of interest for several social actors, some of which, for example, the Achaemenid Empire, must have spared no resources in their attempt to become part of exchange circuits such as those revealed by the survey carried out by Bolelov and by the anecdote told by Naršaḫi, in Chorasmia and probably much beyond over the territory of Achaemenid ruled (or claimed) Central Asia, including, as this paper has argued,Sakāinhabited land along (and beyond) the shores of the Syrdaryo.69Cf.Stark 2012, 111; 2017; 2020 (on Central Asia and its relationships with the steppes); 2021.See,moreover, Jacobs and Gufler 2021 on the Achaemenids and the Sakā.Recently, the Uzbek-American Expedition to Bukhara directed by Sören Stark himself and Fiona Kidd (New York University) has discovered – August 2021 – a diagnostic fragment of Achaemenid pottery coming from Baštëpe(formerly thought to have been founded ex nihilo during the Seleucid period).Against the background of the previous pages, the hypothesis that the Persian administration in Bactria (through Chorasmia?)had interests in the Buxārān steppes comes as little to no surprise, especially if one thinks that it is exactly from this area that Spitamenes was able to draw much of his cavalrymen as he was fighting against Alexander.This was known to Strabo himself, for he reports that the Sogdian notable was able to take shelter “among the Chorasmians” (Strab.11.11.8).

4.1.Kyropolis strikes back: Strabo at world’s end

In the light of the discussion carried out so far, let us come back to “Kyros’furthermost foundation [κτίσμα] on the banks of the Iaxartes,” the “bulwark[ὅριoν] of the Persian domain (τῆς ἀρχῆς),” and try to rethink the context – and the purpose – of its foundation against the background of the evidence presented in the previous pages.

Although nothing certain is known about the pre-Achaemenid Хuçand, the examples of Ṭawāwīs and, above all, of Baštepe, allow us to assume a similar function for Kyropolis, namely, that of an imperial bridgehead towards the steppe world with aproactiverather thandefensivepurpose: for example, with the intention ofcontrolling(and exploiting), rather than impeding, wide-ranging movements such as those of caravans or, more simply, transhumance routes.70Weaverdyck et al.2021, 313–317 for precisely this argument exploiting evidence coming from Central Asia between the Hellenistic and the Tīmūrid period; King 2021, 353–361 on Achaemenid Baktria.

Likely, levies or other taxes were imposed on those caravans (and/or the mobile shepherds roaming in the area), presenting them as the price for a service of protection fromotherinhabitants of that territory, naturally reserving the possibility of moving on to openly hostile actions should one or more of such,it must be stressed,numerousinterlocutors – one might just think of the fate occurred to Skunkha, which accordingly to Darius himself was replaced byanother(more collaborative?) chief – had shown little inclination to dialogue.71Ibid., 347–361 convincingly developed this very same argument based on a careful study of the ADAB parchments (in particular of ADAB A1).There is in my view no reason to assume that two centuries earlier this was not already established common practice, not only by the Empire and its representatives, but by the Sakā as well: see Beckwith 2023, 48.Such a scenario, it is worth emphasizing, fits remarkably well with wider Eurasian patterns such as those scrutinized by Nicola Di Cosmo within the context of the relations between the Hàn Empire and the so-calledPerilous(for the “nomads” at least as much as for China)Frontierin the northeast, especially in the Ordos and Inner Mongolia.72This is precisely the strategy that, according to Clavijo (Embassy to Tamerlane 11), had made “the lord Tīmūr the sole master of the Iron Gates, and the revenue for his state, which is considerable,comes from the taxes that all merchants heading from India to the city of Samarqand and beyond are forced to pay.” On taxing movement in Achaemenid Bactria, see King 202, 347–361.Against the model developed by Barfield 1989 and 2001, see the convincing argumentation of Di Cosmo 1999 and esp.id.2002, 44–92.Such a scenario is not in contradiction with the hypothesis that sites such as Kyropolis and the “seven cities” in its surroundings acted as Achaemenid garrisons, as suggested among others by Tuplin 1987, 181 and, most recently, by Canepa 2020, who argues that the Empire adopted a subtle (soft) infrastructural imprint for its project of settlement expansion(ism) in Bactria.

Even assuming – while by no means granting – that Kyropolis did indeed perform a presidiary function, the case studies discussed by Richard Payne(focused on Sāsānid Ērān), Richardson (ancient Babylonian kingdoms), and Scott (Southeast Asia in alongue duréeperspective) provide enough comparative evidence to suggest that themainpurpose of such – hypothetical – stronghold(ὅριoν) was not at all to keep the “barbarians”out, but rather to extract reosurces(and taxes) from those people if not even to prevent, as much as possible, those who lived, by love or by force, within the imperial borders from trying toescape,attracted as they might have been, especially in the case of the less privileged social strata, by the conditions of life in thenomadicum, which, as argued by Christopher Beckwith and Scott, were indeed probably much better than those availablewithinthe Achaemenid “civilization.”73See, most recently, Scott 2017, 219–256.A similar issue is discussed in Hämäläinen 2008, 257 –258.That the only aim of Kyropolis was to protect the Empire’s borders against the Sakā is still a shared opinion among scholars: see, e.g., Matarese 2021, 52.

Otherwise stated, it could be argued that, to use Payne’s words, in the case of Kyropolis we might be confronted with another strategy of “territorialization”put in place for purposes of socio-demographic control and in the absence of which the effective administration (and relative exploitation) of a given space would have proved nearly if not outright impossible.74Cf., respectively, Richardson 2012; Payne 2015; 2017; Scott 2009, 23–25; 2017, 155–162.

Beyond horses, a second category of steppe “goods” which, given their paramount importance, might have justified the effort of building a site such as Kyropolis, is represented by camels.75See now King forthcoming with full bibliography on the camels of the King between Persepolis and Bactria.As an example of the strategic use of these animals, beyond the testimony provided by the Persepolis archive, it is not out of place to mention Herodotos’ account of the Achaemenid conquest of Lydia, according to which the excellent local cavalry, among the best in Asia,was defeated thanks to the use of camel-mounted troops, the origin of which we can only speculate on, but which it would not be implausible to locate in Central Asia, all the more so if the conquest of Sardis were to be placedafterat leastoneof Kyros’, apparently numerous, expeditions to the upper satrapies.76Cf.Hdt.1.79–80.Aristot.Hist. An.2.1.10–15 focuses on the physical description of the animal,explicitly teasing out its main differences with its “Arabic” counterpart (namely the dromedary).

It is, however, the third of the above-mentioned “goods” that needs to be studied in some further depth, and this because of the research prospects it could open up with regard both to Achaemenid society, especially at its frontier territories, and to the possibilities of social ascent available to – local – bearers of what Scott has calledmēticskills.77Scott 1998, 309–341, meaning social and ecological skills enabling individuals or groups to take advantage of the local environment in ways precluded to foreigners.

Horses as well as camels, even once preyed upon in “barbarian” territory,require in fact skillful and meticulous care, the acquisition of which technical prerequisites constitutes a far from trivial matter.It is probably for this reason that, in Táng China, as much (if not more, which is already saying quite a lot)coveted than the Prževal’skij horses was the labour force (cf.the “head of horse” attested in the Persepolitan archives) able to guarantee (1) the welfare,(2) reproduction rates, and (3) optimal yield of the herds, to the point that a prisoner of war from the steppes could cost – on the Chinese slave market – up to three times as much as a not equally qualified equivalent (and this despite the ubiquitous derogatory descriptions of the steppe world to be found in historical texts – for example, in the work of the historian and statesman Bān Gù 班固).78Skaff 2012, 295; 2017, 48; and see most insightfully Chin 2014, 143–188 with further textual references and bibliography on Chinese ethnography and historiography on trade and exchange with non-Hàn people (including, but not limited to, the Hànshū 漢書).For what might have been a Babylonian equivalent during the “long 6th century,” see Manning 2021, 184–185 on the šušānu,most likely “herders and gardeners from areas of steppe and semidesert whom ambitious kings tried to force to settle down.” It could be argued that a similar institution was adopted (and adapted) by the Achaemenids in Central Asia, not least thanks to the expertise of local – including Sakā – people.

The available sources (e.g., the invaluableXīn táng shū新唐書,New Táng Annals) testify to the origin of this particularly prized category of labor force within ethnic minorities (especially Sogdians), and from some biographies of these men we are able to guess what career opportunities within the imperial administration the possession of skills in this specific branch of veterinary medicine was able to ensure.79Sogdian was almost certainly a certain Mǐ Zhēntuό (米真陀), another official appointed to cavalry duties (therefore, in Tuplin’s terminology, a Chinese “horse master” of sort; Tuplin 2010, 132–135):cf.Skaff2012, 263–264.

Wáng Màozhōng (王茂中), for example, a native of the Korean peninsula(Koguryŏ고구려), even became head of the imperial stables together with Zhāng Wànsuì (张万岁), who was also a provincial, for he was in fact a native of the city of Mǎyì (馬邑), or “city of horses,” in what is now Shānxī province (山西).As for Lǐ Lìngwèn (李令問), he was elected vice-minister in AD 713 and for years held crucial diplomatic appointments (including state murder, therefore a sort of assassin) in particularly sensitive areas along the western frontier of the Táng Empire by virtue, it should be noted, of his very close contacts with the steppe world, which he acquired through marriage with the Uyġur élites then settled in today’s Gānsù.80Xīn táng shū 133.4547–4548, Skaff2012, 209 and 2017, 51, with further bibliography as well as other textual references.

The most interesting story, however, is perhaps that of a certain Mù Bōsī(目波斯) whose name, literally, means “Persia,” a fact that makes his Central Asian origin – once again most likely Sogdian – extremely probable.Sometime around AD 750, this individual was in fact taken from the same Gānsù (then called Héxī) in which a few decades earlier Lǐ Lìngwèn had been active from the imperial court by virtue of his fame as a veterinarian and transferred with all honors to China.81Skaff 2017, 52: think, on the one hand, of the Krotonian Demokedes (Δημoκήδης), “the most skilled physician of his time” according to Hdt.3.129.3, who served and was highly regarded at the court of Darius to such an extent that, in Herodotos’ account, he had to resort to subterfuge in order to leave the gilded prison at Susa in which the Achaemenid ruler intended to keep him, and,on the other hand, to the observations of Kauṭilīya (कौटिल्य) in the Arthaśāstra (अर्थशास्त्र: e.g.,2.32.15–16: Dwivedi 2021, 238–240) about elephant breeding (on which see also Trautmann 2009 and 2015): even after capture – in itself a complex and risky job, which therefore also required skilled labor – and training, the maintenance of a pachyderm required the employment of no less than 14 people, including veterinarians, tamers, stockers (see Hack 2011 on the exorbitant daily consumption of a single animal), and so on.

Unfortunately, the documentation currently available does not allow to draw up a prosopography even remotely comparable to that of Táng China for the Achaemenid period.However, the comparative material explored in these pages allows to consider in a significantly new light the – precious little – information on individuals such as Spitamenes or Arimazes as well as the more detailed,but mostly context-free, evidence coming from theAramaic Documents.82Evidence such as PF 1943 shows that “Master of the Horses” served at the Persian court and were highly prized for their services: it would not be surprisingly if at least some of them came, not differently than Mù Bōsī, from regions of the Empire, such as Media, Armenia, or Kilikia (but also from Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Baktria, and even the lands of the Sakā) where horse breeding was part and parcel of the local way of life and economy (cf.Diod.Sic.17.110, Strab.11.13.7–8, as well as Hdt.3.90).Further on the Chinese comparandum, see Cunliffe 2015, 248.Most importantly for the purpose of the present paper, the evidence discussed so far allows to set Strabo’s passage on Kyropolis against a wider (Central) Asian background, with important implications for the dynamics characteristic of the imperial borderlands at its northeastern fringes.

At a more general level of methodological order, the discussion developed so far should have revealed the need to consider a space such as Achaemenid Central Asia in the framework of a system of multiform relations (insofar as it was functional to the different interests of numerous actors, often in competition with each other and with imperial officials) centered on the world of the steppes and in symbiotic relation with the socio-political circuits of those worlds.83Arguments similar to those discussed in this section have also been recently put forward by Rhyne King (2020) in light of the evidence coming from an important documentary corpus originating from the district of Rōb (some 80 kilometers south of Samangān, سمنګان in Afġānistān) in the context of a study dedicated to the relations between aristocrats, subjects and imperial regimes, see, moreover,Payne and King 2020.King’s words (2021, 26–27) are worth quoting at some length: “Imperial administrators moved laborers from Arachosia to the imperial core because labor, in particular skilled labor, was the resource the Empire desired most.” The steppes, as this paper seeks to demonstrate,provided access to this very needful thing as well as to a wide range of natural resources, especially horses and camels.

Therefore, the aim of the remaining pages of this paper is, on the one hand,to delve further into the dynamics underlying this relationship(s) and, on the other, to show how it simultaneously provided the means for the imperial administration to seize the necessary tools to control their functioning, and to the actors involved in this (in principle unequal) dialectical exchange, the means to negotiate their social position (and their political and economic space for maneuver) both within their own community and within the new institutions built – but notentirelycontrolled – by the new masters of Central Asia.

Put it otherwise, according to such an interpretative framework, what we were witnessing here would therefore be a dynamic ofparticipationrather than (sole)coercion, as recently argued by Rhyne King in the context of (late antique)Baktria.84King 2020, 263–264.It is against such a background that we should read Strabo’s account of Kyropolis’ foundation.

5.Taming the wild field.Living in and claiming the space

For the purposes of the present essay, the most important consequence of the issues discussed above is the need to rethink the process of the formation of the Achaemenid satrapy of Baktria – and of its steppe borderlands – from a perspective that, on the one hand, takes into serious consideration the physical geography and – more generally – the ecological features (which also means including aspects of what today we would callhumangeography) of this portion of Central Asia.

Otherwise stated, we need considering them to all intents and purposes associal actors, different from each other but operating in a synergistic manner,and as able (moreover) to condition human behavior through both thevariousopportunities (Ingold’s affordances) they offer, while at the same time not losing sight of the limits imposed by them to the plans and goals of empires and their representatives, and this because of the latterlacking, or not possessingenough,the skills necessary to take advantage of those affordances.85See the seminal Ingold 1992 for discussion of this topic.

On the other hand, the critical approach that this paper sought to adopt emphasizes that the multiple landscapes that emerge as a result of the humanenvironment interactions and entanglements such as those highlighted by the account of theTāriḫ-i Buxārāare neither static nor constant, but arecontinually(re-)producedon the basis of the relationships between a wide range of subjects,each endowed with its own proactive capacity (agency), from individuals, to broader communities, to empires, over the course of time.86Similar conclusions (especially as far as the non-deterministic nature of the processes described in this paper) have been reached by Barfield 2020.

It is only from this premise, therefore, that it is possible to think constructively about how supra-regional entities (endowed, consequently, with supra-regionalambitions) such as empires are able – or not – to fit into these social, economic,political, and symbolic networks, as well as about the role that empires themselves have played, in the Central Asian scenario, in shaping the interactions between themselves – in the form of their representatives –, local communities,and the natural environment(s) they moved in and acted upon.87Cf., e.g., Ingold 1993, 156, who rightly points out that each landscape should be understood as the world as it is known from those who inhabit it, who dwell in the different places of which this same space is made out and who moves through its different parts.The ever-changing nature of the spatial context in which a given empire and its representatives on the ground aims at tapping into might therefore be understood as one of the reasons which help to explain the in statu nascendi condition of Achaemenid imperial power in Central Asia at the time in which Kyropolis was built.

The hermeneutic potential of this theoretical toolkit for the study of the Baktrian context (especially, butnotexclusively during the building phase of the Achaemenid Empire) is tremendous, not least by virtue of the fact that it allows us to understanddialecticallyboth the characteristic features of the process of imperial transformation of Baktria (in the words of Henkelman, the Persian “imperial signature”) into an “imperial space” and the unavoidable role playedwithin this same processby social actors who, for different reasons, the documentation – both archaeological and,a fortiori, epigraphic or literary – doesnotallow us to clearly distinguish (or consciously tends to obscure).88Henkelman 2017 on the Achaemenid imperial paradigm and its concrete application on the ground(the signature).

That such actors not only existed, but also contributed decisively to the successes of the Achaemenid Empire (celebrated, for example, in the Apadāna,in the founding charter of Susa or proven by the sheer fact that Kyropolis lasted until it was razed by Alexander) can be deduced from the very needs – for example in terms of natural resources or labor – of a polity as complex as the Persian Empire was, which must have generated in various regions of the territories “far away from Persia,” where “the spear of Persian man has delivered battle,” as Darius has it in his Naqš -i Rustam inscription, real economic and social “micro-systems” born out (and thereforeconditionedby while at the same timeconditioningthem) what Düring and Stek calls the (local) practical situations on the ground.89Cf.DNa § 4 for Darius’ “cosmological blusters” (Scott 2009, 34, trans.Kuhrt 2007, 503).Düring and Stek 2018a, 10 for the “practical situations on the ground,” and Hornborg 2021 for the ecological“unequal exchange” which political entity such as the Achaemenid Empire set in motion while at the same time depending on their smooth functioning.

Examples of these micro-systems are particularly evident (thanks to the written evidence provided by theAramaic Documents) at the end of Achaemenid hegemonic power in Central Asia, but there is no reason to assume that they did not exist previously.The Persepolis archives provide more than one clue in this sense as far as the 5th century BC is concerned, but a proper contextualization of a settlement such as Kyropolis, as this paper argues, compels us to project a comparable scenario back into the 6th century BC, when the very foundations of Achaemenid rule in Central Asia were being laid down.Not only that, but it is even reasonable to assume that it was precisely the new conditions –social, political, and in some ways environmental: think of the infrastructural investments in irrigation, not to mention road networks – created by the advent of the Empire that decisively contributed to the birth (and the furtherexpansion)of these, locally entrenched, systems.90Cf.Ertsen and Wouters 2018, 15, who do not fail to point out that, even in the case we were actually able to detect on the ground clearly structured sociopolitical hierarchies, they should never be taken for granted.On the contrary, the fundamental question driving research should be (1) how and (2) why such hierarchies could (not) be maintained.In the case of (Northern) Baktria, Stride 2007, 105–108 has, for example, noted that, in order to exploit the landscapes in the most efficient way possible, Achaemenid administration was in no small measure dependent on the recruitment of local personnel, which would not have happened for free.This is even more plausible if one considers, as Stride further argues, that such very recruitment most likely happened through the intermediation of “polymorphous” individuals, capable of capitalizing the power they derived from their capacity of moving through different (physical as well as social) landscapes.To these (per se crucial) consideration, following Ando 2017, 10, it might further be added that a recurrent feature of pre-modern empires should be seen in their attempt at what he calls the material expansion of state power through local labor force.The development of Baktrian irrigation canals from the Bronze Age onwards shows how such considerations can fruitfully be applied to the Central Asian case, and the same is likely to have happened in the case of supplying vital resources (such as camels) from the steppe beyond the effective reach of Achaemenid power.

Indeed, given that the vast majority of currently known Achaemenid sites in Baktria and Sogdiana appear to have developed settlements already existing before the Iron Age – and in some cases, such as Koktepe, even the Bronze Age –,it seems reasonable to suggest that one of the strategies used by the imperial administration in order to establish itself in the territory wasto linkpreviously autonomous settlements (or interacting on a situational basis, on the ground of specific, contingent problems) within the satrapal networks – for instance, those created by the establishment of imperial roads, or more specifically, through the extraction of taxes, to the administrative facilities and the broader structure of government in the satrapy – (1) among themselves and (2) with the new gravitational center of the region.91Henkelman and Jacobs 2021 on roads and communication in the Empire.

Such is the sociopolitical –and economic– context in which one should understand the establishment of the major Achaemenid settlements in northern Central Asia, from Baktra (and likely Kuhna Qal‘a) in Baktria to Afrāsyāb/Marakanda in Sogdiana and, of course, Kyropolis at the very fringes of direct Persian political control.92As the comparison with Old Kingdom Egypt’s attempt at establishing some form of control and exploitation of the Eastern desert’s resources suggests (Tallet 2020, 400–404), the establishment of a settlement such as Kyropolis likely was deemed critical in order to tap into local wide ranging socioeconomic networks from which the rising imperial administration promised considerable profits,but which flows and dynamics it could not fully control, at least not without the active engagement of embedded actors, not only of élite standing.It is perhaps against this background that one might assess Strabo’s claim (11.11.1) that, under the Graeco-Bactrian kings, their Empire stretched as far as the Seres and the Phryni: Geus, Günther and Sørensen 2021 as well as Günther 2023 for two recent discussions of why and how “the Orient” was conceptualized in Greek and Roman sources before becoming a repertoire of geographical and cultural stereotypes (but see also Thomas 2021, looking backwards, so to say, to the Achaemenid period).While any form of direct political control has to be excluded (see Vorderstrasse 2020 and Bracey 2020, respectively, on the limits of Kuṣāṇa rule),the evidence recently collected in Kim 2021 compels scholars to rethink the extent of mobile actor’s networks of production and consumption (Morris 2021, 199) during the Achaemenid period, which extent and wealth is likely, if not to have triggered, at least to have it look particularly worth the effort, the infrastructural investment that Kyropolis implies.

In other words, in the light of the interpretative framework developed in this paper, the results of the most recent archaeological investigation provide greater contextual depth to the documentary evidence already available (including a passage such as Strabo’s).Moreover, it allows the former to be better interpreted through the latter, making it possible to conclude, as Henkelman has recently done, that the main goal of the Achaemenids consisted in the creation of a“network of networks” extending across the entire – until then unprecedented – surface of the Empire.93Henkelman 2017, 81.Crucial in this context, however, is to point out,as suggested by Johanna Lhuillier’s research, that such a momentous novelty(the “imperial whirlwind” according to Meier’s definition) is represented by the(attempted)coordinationof pre-existing networks,notby thecreationof these networksex nihilo.94Lhuillier 2018; 2019.

Among the most noteworthy assets of such a scenario at least the following should be highlighted: (1) the different indigenous communities are taken into account as social actors with their own agency more than previous interpretative models have done so far; (2) it programmatically renounces the – overly schematic – separation between “invaders” (the Persians) and “conquered”(the Central Asian population and theSakā); (3) starting from the assumption of the genesis of the satrapy – emblematically marked by the foundation of a settlement such as Kyropolis – as the result of alliances characterized by (a)inevitable constraints imposed by the short time span between the conquest on the one hand and, on the other, Kyros’ death, the consequences of which, as it has been mentioned, still loomed large during the civil war of 522 BC out of which Darius came as the new master of the Empire (not before having outperformed the imperial founder itself along that very frontier where he lost his life) as well as (b) by a decisivesituationalcomponent inherent to the Persian claims to have established their absolute rule “at world’s end,” (4) the interpretative framework developed in this essay takes into account comparable scenarios discussed in the most recent scholarship devoted to other contexts of empire or “state” building,from early Medieval Buxārā to Inner Asia (to which we shall turn in a moment),therefore providing the establishment of the Achaemenid borderlands in Central Asia with a useful touchstone against which to tease out the inner functioning of imperial dynamics which Greek and Roman sources are all too keen to conceal (or to misrepresent).95Cf.Meier 2020, 941.As the German historian rightly points out, “the dichotomy between Romans and Barbarians was steadily put aside in the face of political consideration of the most opportunistic nature.” As a consequence, the (political and ideological) limes between the two worlds was anything but structured, and even less stable over time.This is a crucial premise to be kept in mind while reading an account such as the one presented by Strabo on the foundation and function of Kyropolis.

The consideration of both Henkelman and Lhuillier regarding the processes presiding over the establishment of Achaemenid rule in Central Asia can,moreover, be profitably compared with the results of the most up-to-date studies on the formation of the Хiōngnú imperial polity at the frontier zones of the Chinese Empire.If, as Honeychurch in particular has convincingly shown,neither war activity nor conquestmanu militarican be considered the main means of consolidation and centralization of power in the steppes prior to the rise of Mòdú (冒頓單于, ca.234–174 BC), this makes it necessary to elaborate more complex hypotheses to explain the processes of political formation within the pastoral societies of Inner (and Central) Asia.96Honeychurch and Amartuvšin 2006.

As the previous discussion has tried to show, such a remark bears important implications when it comes to conceptualize the formation of (early) Achaemenid Central Asia as an imperial space – a process in which the establishment of Kyropolis must have played a critical role.As in the Хiōngnú-Chinese case,in other words, the steppe world should be given its own share as a pivotal contributor (notonly, and arguably not even mainly, in adversarial terms) in the formative stage of the sociopolitical and economic landscape the Persians claimed as their own at the very least from Darius onwards.Put it otherwise,when the Great King boasts that “that land became mine,” he is concealing as least as much of what he is saying.

Drawing on the concept of “regional political communities” developed independently by Honeychurch and, in the context of (pre)-Achaemenid Caucasus, by Lori Khatchadourian and Lauren Ristvet, one of the main goals of this paper so far has been to highlight the socio-environmental framework(s)underpinning processes of negotiation, interdependence, and cooperation, based onshared interests, which are central to the creation of inter-communal solidarity at (1) local and (2) trans-regional (including imperial) levels.

Notably, these are all distinctive features of the social relations governing the human groups settled both in Central Asia and in Mongolia, and particularly within pastoral communities which, as the Bīsutūn inscription shows, proved instrumental in the shaping of both Achaemenid administrative policies in Baktria, Sogdiana, and Chorasmia and of their worldview.97Rollinger and Degen 2021a.As shown by Rollinger and Degen 2021c, such a worldview proved to be so powerful as to massively influence Alexander’s policy and self-staging in Central Asia.On“regional political communities” in (pre-)Achaemenid Caucasus and their impact on imperial policy and politics; cf.Khatchadourian 2016, 81–152 and Ristvet 2018.

In the Caucasus, as in Central Asia, an essential factor in understanding the connection between processes of socio-political interaction at the (micro)local level and the ability of the actors involved to juggle effectively within an entity of infinitely larger proportions such as an empire claiming overlordship over both (local) spaces and (local) peoples is to be found above all in theflexibility– dictated not least by the conditions imposed by the surrounding environment and by the need to adapt to it in order to exploit its full potential – of decisionmaking processes at the grassroot level, which are constantly confronted with a macro-regional context characterized by high mobility, increased reciprocal interactions, and consequent increased uncertainty.

Within this framework, a category such as that of “political community” has the not inconsiderable advantage ofnotdepending on coercion, conquest, or strategic planning (as the “adversarial relationship” model does) in order to explain the rise of socio-political and economic influence groups (what, for lack of a better term, we tend to call the – once local, now imperial – élites).On the contrary, it raises fundamental questions about social, political, cultural,and economiccircumstances(including inter- and intra-communalcompetitionfor the exploitation of thesame territorywithdifferent intentions– thus withdifferentterritorialaffordances– in mind) that ensured the recognition of such power groups, which it is reasonable to assume constituted the prerequisites for the formation of the new regional élite – existing alongside, and not infrequently concurring with, the (Persian)ethno-classe dominante– which was caused by the establishment of Achaemenid power in Baktria, and as the foundation of Kyropolis suggests, even beyond in the steppe world.98Honeychurch 2015, 246; Khatchadourian 2016, 81–83; Ristvet 2018.See the insightful remarks by Gary Reger (2017), devoted to the inhabitants of the eastern Egyptian desert and, in particular, on theἸχθυoφάγoι concerning the stunning variability of the affordances provided by a given environment on the basis of the goals which a given human group set for itself in order to best exploit such an environment.Most recently on the concept of ethno-classe dominante, see Basello 2021.

It is from this perspective that it is perhaps possible to interpret some of the most important Achaemenid sites in Baktria, Sogdiana – and on the basis of Negus-Cleary’s studies, even in Chorasmia –, from Altin Dilyar to theBâlâ Hiṣārat Qundūz, from Kuhna Qal‘a to Čašma-ye Šifâ, and from Koktëpe to Kyropolis itself, as centers of local power transformed by the satrapal government into nodes of the political-administrative network of the new territorial unit of theEmpire, with all the consequences in terms of restructuring the power relations within the local social and political hierarchies that such a phenomenon must have caused.99On the sites mentioned in the text see the relevant entries in Ball 2019, while on Koktepe the to-go reference is now Rapin 2017, with previous bibliography (cf.also Rapin 2021 for an archaeological overview of Central Asia under the Achaemenids, as well as Wu 2020).

Further compelling comparative evidence of similar strategies adopted by the Achaemenid administration in spaces equally complex to manage comes from the oases of the western Egyptian desert.Similarly to the interpretative scenario developed in these pages with regard to the context in which a settlement like Kyropolis came into being, the progressive expansion of Persian settlements in territories such as those of the Ḫārǧa (الخارجة) oasis – and, a point not to be underestimated, in the areas bordering it – appears to have been fueled by the transformation of groups of potential marauders or rivals for the control of desert resources into representatives of Persian authority, not least through the recognition of property rights and/or usufruct of plots of land (the very same process, incidentally, reconstructed by Pierre Briant with regards to the Hyrkaniankārīzon the basis of Polyb.10.28).100Colburn 2018, 103; 2020, 95–130.On Hyrkania, see Briant 2017, 352–356.

While such a mechanism undoubtedly describes in a rather precise manner what Briant has called the Achaemenid spin imprinted on the organization of the conquered territories by the satrapal administration (Henkelman’s “imperial signature,” once again), it should not be lost sight of the fact that the recruitment and management of the logistical resources – one thinks, for example, of the draught animals – and the labor force necessary to carry out works of the magnitude implied by the unprecedented scale of imperial needs, must have remained the prerogative of the local élites, whose members now no longer acted, as before,motu proprio, but asrepresentativesof Achaemenid power,subject – often in little more than a formal manner (as in the case of an individual such as Spitamenes, to all intents and purposes a peer of Bessos) – to the authority of the Persian satrap itself.

In other words, one could go so far as to argue that, as in the case of Ṭawāwīs,a settlement like Kyropolis could be established, and flourished,notdespite, but thanks to the commitment of the local population, whose élites saw all to clearly what could be gained by partaking in such an enterprise.

In some cases, it should furthermore be added, the strategic needs of the satrapal administration appear to have been responsible for a drastic reconversion of the entire economy of a given territory in order to favor the development of a given settlement, to the advantage of the local big men, (1) in the internal sociopolitical chessboard and (2) on an imperial scale.One of the most egregious examples of this phenomenon is undoubtedly that of Termiz (ترمذ), in the lower Surxondaryo since the site corresponding more or less to the area of the current Uzbek provincial capital was transformed, almost instantaneously, from a remote hinterland of a relatively peripheral oasis into a strategic node of fundamental importance for the connection between the two banks of the Amudaryo, as well as a crucial stop along the route to Marakanda, and it is all too easy to imagine similar dynamics taking place in the environment of Nuratepe, given the absolute necessity for the satrapal administration to establish a bridgehead with the steppe worldbeyondits actual political and military reach in Sogdiana.

As Sebastian Stride has persuasively argued, from the point of view of the local élites, an active collaboration with the satrapal administration was a highly remunerativeinvestmentsince it was nothing else but the satrapal administration itself (with central, imperial backing) that political – and economic – entity which ensured the settlement’s prosperity in relation to the surrounding regions,its increased importance in the context of the whole of Surxondaryo, and its very existence as a site of supra-regional importance, while at the same time securing for itself much coveted resources and manpower from the broader steppe world.101Cf.Stride 2005, vol.I, 425–427; vol.III, no.131 (Termiz); and Wu 2018, 211, for an attempt at reconstructing the road network in Baktria and Sogdiana during the Achaemenid Empire, to be read now against the broader imperial framework discussed in Henkelman and Jacobs 2021.

A similar pattern can be reconstructed, although not as clearly, in other Central Asian contexts, starting from the oasis of Bactra to eastern Afġānistān (the Dašt -i Qal‘a plain), in the oasis of Sherabāddaryo, and, as both the findings of Baštepa and the account by Naršaḫi suggest, in the hinterland of Buxārā or even further northwest into the Kyzylkum.102Stride 2005, vol.I, 189–200.On broadly the same area surveyed by Stride (the Surxondaryo valley and Southern Uzbekistān), see now Stančo 2020.

Taken as a whole, the information thus collected allows – among other things – to make (better) sense of the apparently chaotic political landscape of Central Asia described by Alexander’s historians (including Strabo) from significantly new premises since it makes possible to explain, from a social,ecological, and economic “emic” background (meaninginternal, and thus not depending on imperial mental maps and political agendas of self-representation),both the power exercised, as plenipotentiaries of the imperial political mandate,by individuals such as Bessos, as well as the status – and the consequent,remarkable, wealth – of figures only apparently subordinate to the former in the context of the local hierarchies (from Spitamenes to Arimazes and Dataphernes),who in fact continued to give the Graeco-Makedonian intruders a hard time long after the elimination of the Baktrian satrap.103It should not be forgotten that a relatively marginal (in comparison with Bessos or Spitamenes,and perhaps as well with regards to Arimazes) figure in the local power hierarchy such as Chorienes according to Arr.Anab.4.21.10 nevertheless disposed of abundant stocks of food supplies (from salted meat to grain and wine, the latter a potentially revealing clue about his status, as we shall explore later in the next section).Following Briant 2020, 38, Arrian’s account clearly suggests that he was in possession of extensive terrains devoted to agriculture and of no smaller pastures, which perfectly fit the model of mixed economy such as that of the Vaxš valley studied by Teichmann 2016 based on ethnographic evidence provided by both Soviet administrators and American diarists.

Such men, it could be contended, might in fact be fruitfully described as the 4th century BC counterpart of the 6th century BC élites settled in the territory of Termiz (and the possibility remains open that a similar line of reasoning also concerns historical personalities such as Dādêṛšiš and Vivāna, the two warlords who proved instrumental in securing Darius’ hold over Baktria and Arachosia as he was fighting his way to the throne), whose territories offered crucial affordances for the expansion(istic) strategy implemented in Central Asia by the satrapal administration, which seems to have decided to invest heavily in their development, and consequently in the recruitment of the most prominent figures within them as “imperial collaborators.”104Düring and Stek 2018a for a discussion of the role of “imperial collaborators” in securing the functioning of ancient empires.

Consequently, settlements such as Kyzyltepe Altin Dilyar, Koktepe (and indeed, perhaps most notably, Kyropolis itself) could be interpreted as milestones advertising – both physically and ideologically – the presence of imperial authority within a spatial context otherwise entirely removed from satrapal control (the example of Ṭawāwīs is again illuminating in this regard).

Accordingly, the main purpose of such sites should be recognized in their function as spatial nodes enabling the agents of Persian (and in the following centuries of other imperial) might tonegotiatethe conditions oftheir ownpredominance withothersocial actors active on the local stage andnotonly (or even mainly), as a bulwark of political power meant to police a perilous border,as Strabo’s remarks, and following him many modern commentators, imply.105On this issue (the process of construction, consolidation, and expansion, through negotiation) of a topography of power, see, most recently, Canepa 2020 with earlier literature.

However, as clearly illustrated by both the case of Ṭawāwīs and – although in a context in many respects (but, remarkably,notin that of concern here)considerably different – by that of the vast forested areas of the Indian subcontinent, the coercive capacity of the imperial authority rarely extended beyond the territory of such settlements.This is a further indication that, in a context so profoundly shaped by mobility phenomena on multiple scales as that of Baktria and Sogdianaandof their steppe frontier, the equation of the expansion of Persian settlements like Kyropolis with acorrespondingexpansion of territorial control by the Empire is extremely misleading since it is based on a model of socio-territorial entrenchment of infrastructural power that doesnotadequately take into account the multiplicity and diversity (includinginternaldiversity)of local actors (not to mention the variety of strategies for exploiting a given landscape).106Cf.on this point Scott 2009, 216–218 and 2017, 137 for an insightful discussion of the conscious nature (what he calls a “positionality”) of “barbarian” subsistence strategies such as the slash and burn agriculture and even pastoralism itself, which makes them particularly interesting as it comes to the Central Asian case study and the relationship that the coexistence of those communities with the expanding empire under Kyros is likely to have fostered.

In Baktria, Sogdiana, and Chorasmia, the landscape is, in fact, characterized by micro-regions, between which it is extremely difficult to establish reliable communication routes without the intervention of the local populations, whoknow, and not infrequentlycontrol, the areas of obligatory passage (from mountain passes to river fords: hence theneed, for Kyros’ administrators, to get hold of a site such as Nuratepe), which puts these communities in a very advantageous negotiating position when it comes to settlingtheirstatus within the new geopolitical framework that a pre-modern empire seeks to draw on the map of territories over which it claims the Weberian monopoly of the legitimate use of force – and consequently the control over its resources.107From this viewpoint it is all but surprising that Strabo (17.1.45) devotes a particularly inspired praise of Roman roads, for they are in fact understood as the main instrument of (imperial)“normalization” of the landscape, and this particularly in those spaces (such as the Egyptian desert(s),Anatolia, or Armenia) which can be classified as possessing an (from an imperial perspective alarming) high rate of “state-evasion” (van Schendel 2002).See, however, the (much more sober)picture drawn by Plin.NH 6.26.103 on that very same context.

From this point of view, the case of the so-called (improperly, since this definition is completely foreign to ancient Chinese literature and implies more than one prejudice regarding the possibilities of use of the space in question)“corridor” located in the Héxī (Gānsù) region provides an enlightening parallel.108Similar remarks could be made with regards to another famous “corridor” of Central Asia,namely, that of the Wāḫān (واخان, in Taǧik rendered as Baxoн), located at the northeastern outskirts of Afġānistān: cf.Lerner 2016.

Recently, and providing very compelling arguments, Kathrin Leese-Messing has in fact shown that the much-celebrated function of connecting hub between the Hàn Empire, the Tarim communities, and Central Asia was only one (and moreover rathersecondary) reason for the extreme interest of the imperial administration based in Cháng’ān in this area.Indeed, decades after the conquest and the (massive) colonization of the Héxī, the forms of economic exploitation of this area seem to have remained extremely varied, nor does the role of the locals within the territory appear to have diminished in any way, let alone disappeared.And this, notably, even though historiographic sources insistently claim that the region was “deserted” (kōng空, literally “empty”) before its supposed civilization by the emperor (without however, and quite paradoxically, being able to avoid mentioning the presence of clearlynon-Hàn communities present and active,for example, in horse or pig breeding, in the decades and centuries following the Chinese conquest, which probably aimed not least at gaining possession of such an important resource in the context of the Empire’s confrontation with the Хiōngnú).109See, on the one hand, the (grossly simplifying) remarks in Benjamin 2018, 35 and, on the other,the insightful study by Kathrin Leese-Messing in Weaverdyck et al.2021, 322–328, from which the following references are taken.According to the Account on the Xiōngnú (Xiōngnú lièzhuàn 匈奴列傳) of the Shǐjì 110.2912, imperial troops active in the Gānsù around 112 BC “did not come across a single Хiōngnú” (不見匈奴一人), while the Account on the Qiāng (Qiāng lièzhuàn 羌列傳, also known as Nán Xiōngnú lièzhuàn 南匈奴列傳, literally Account on the southern Xiōngnú) preserved in the (later) Hòu Hànshū (87.2877) without neither any trace of shame nor, clearly, any fear of being exposed as patently lying, reports that “the land to the west of the Yellow River [Huáng Hé 黃河]were empty (河西地空).” I am indebted to Kathrin Leese-Messing for both the references and the translations, which I have adopted here.

The parallels with the framework in which Achaemenid forces must have moved as they tried to establish imperial rule in the territory of the would-be Kyropolis are too numerous to be overlooked.

In such environments, no empire could afford to ignore the demands of local communities (and of their respective élites), if not at the price of the perennial risk of potentially devastating revolts: the history of Čaġīnīgān (چغانیان↱, a region located on the right bank of the Amudaryo and also characterized by the coexistence of pastoral communities alongside agricultural settlement, very much resembling the environment of Kyropolis) between the 10th and 19th centuries AD provides another eloquent example in this regard.The observable pattern is in fact that of a multifunctional economy structured around thedifferentbut oftencomplementaryneeds of numerous communities, symbiotically linked by the sharing of both the same geographical space and a common pool of resources, thus forming a system capable of functioning profitably as a single complex unit, and whose subdivision along social (ethnic, for example) or economic lines couldnottake place without encountering fierce resistance onbothsides of the supposed political border.110See the discussion in Potts 2014, 89, as well as Honeychurch and Makarewicz 2016, 343.

According to these considerations, therefore, it seems possible to conclude that,along the Central Asian northeastern frontier(s) of the Achaemenid domains, the degree of success of the policy of territorial rooting on the part of a given empire can be assessed, on the one hand, in the capacity of the latter to effectivelynegotiate(and not, indeed never,impose) its participation – albeit from a position of pre-eminence – within the regional networks that constitute the connective tissue of that space without upsetting what Düring and Stek have effectively defined the practical situation(s) on the ground; on the other, in the ability to offer a few, carefullyselected, members of the local élites sufficiently attractive conditions to make them willing to participate (in their own interest, of course) in the process of (1) consolidation and (2) further expansion of the infrastructural,economic, symbolic (to name but a few examples) power of the empire itself.111Düring and Stek 2018, 10.

The fact that this explanatory scenario retains its heuristic capacity even when applied to periods and socio-political contexts significantly different from the Achaemenid one (e.g., the Central Asian empires following the conquests of Genghiz Ḫān) suggests that we are in the presence ofstructural, and not contingent, features of the mechanisms governing both the genesis and the preservation of imperial power within the Central Asian space.112See, moreover, the case of the Hephtalites discussed in Meier 2020, 731–742.Barfield 2020 has recently provided an assessment of both the geography and the geopolitics (which he considers as an outcome of the former) of what with Payne and King 2020 we might call the land of the Afġāns (which implies embracing a broader, and more complex, territory than that of Afġānistān proper) from a Braudelian longue-durée perspective.Against this background, a reading of Strabo’s passage against the grain of Naršaḫi is not only justifiable, but heuristically profitable.

We know, for example, that Tīmūr had at least two monumental palaces(at Samarqand and Šahr-e Sabz), and the sources do not fail to describe the magnificence of its gardens and parks, perhaps reminiscent of similar symbols of imperial majesty in Persian times (what in Greek sources is called a παράδεισoς).113On Persian royal gardens and their cultural meaning within the Achaemenid and the broader Eurasian context, see, most recently, Tuplin 2018.Nevertheless, the “Iron Amīr” seems to have been extremely aware of the importance, for the maintenance of his power, of the extra-urban realities of his domains: also for this reason – and not only, as the Spanish diplomat Clavijo suggests, because of the power of the ancestral heritage or, as one might assume on the basis of a more astute sociological analysis, for reasons of social distinction signaled by the display of “nomadic” features by the new ruling élite – the itinerant court was never abolished and, indeed, not infrequently important local or foreign dignitaries were received in a distinctlynon-urban context (a yurt camp), and a similar argument can be made about the successors of the Tīmūrids in Central Asia.

In fact, when in the 16th century the UzbekqağanMuḥammad Šāȳbānī took possession of the great oases of Central Asia, including the Zarafšān valley,despite the dominant role of Buxārā in the sociopolitical organization chart of his newly founded Ḫānate, both he himself and the members of the Šāȳbānīd élite were particularly careful not to affect the sensibilities (which means: not to harm theinterests) of local potentates strongly rooted within a culture and society that Wolfgang Holzwarth has described as nomadic and segmentary.114Embassy to Tamerlane 7.On the showcasing of (emphasized) “barbarian” features as a mean of social distinction by a conquering élite, see Meier 2020, 707–714 (on post-Roman Africa under the Vandals).The evidence coming from Šāȳbānīd period is discussed in Holzwarth 2006, 331–350.

The takeaway of those parallels is that, even after the establishment of a solid political power, negotiated access to frontier zones such as the steppes proved instrumental in granting not only political stability, but also, if not first and foremost, economic wealth to Central Asian Empires.Those are structural constraints which the founder of Kyropolis, busy as he was in the years of his great northeastern conquest, could not afford to ignore.

On a more general level, it seems therefore possible to distinguish the following characteristic elements, whose affinities with the scenario elaborated in this paper to explain the genesis of Achaemenid imperial power along its northeastern fringes should not be overlooked.

1.Conquest of one or more areas with great agricultural potential (the oasis of Baktra, the plain of Āï Хānum, the surrounding of Kyropolis, with the other – at least – seven settlements destroyed by Alexander: this provided the new power with the most immediate source of tax revenue) without this entailingper sethe implementation of an urban plan of any significance, paying instead minute attention to the mechanisms of land exploitation, from irrigation to the upkeeping of the networks fostering local pastoralism.As the case of Ṭawāwīs demonstrates, especially the latter could provide the imperial administration with a remarkable source of income.

2.The control of these resources makes it possible to start the process of expansion beyond the territorial core of the oases, inserting imperial administration within the social and economic networks of the surrounding areas through processes of redistribution – of goods as well as offices and the related prestige – aimed at ensuring the cooperation ofsomerepresentatives of the local élites to the advantage of other (lower ranking) power brokers – in turn endowed with their own connections –, in this way guaranteeing access tofurtherresources at the lowest cost, which consequentially can be redistributed to repeat the process of recruiting further “imperial collaborators” in areas increasingly distant from the epicenter(s) of the military conquest (in the case of Kyros most likely Baktra and its oasis, Marakanda and,beyondthe reach of direct satrapal control, Kyropolis and its broader environment, with the powerholders settled there providing the first “selectorate” of the Empire in northeastern Central Asia).115Kiser and Levi 2015 for a definition of “selectorate,” by which it is meant the pool of local powerholders out of which an empire aims at recruiting the new members of its ruling élites in the provinces.

In this context, particular attention seems to have been paid to those frontier zones, and to the “barbarian” peoples living therein, that written sources – not only Greek and Roman – stigmatize as being at the antipodes of any form of civilization.

Far from representing “sworn” enemies of the oasis communities (and of the empires that had become their masters), peoples such as the Dahai or the numerous members of the Massagetic societies (confederations?), on the contrary,should be considered – not least because of the animals they owned (especially horses and camels, a constant target of imperial desires) – as interlocutors of central importance to a satrapal administration, whose fundamental interests should include access, at the lowest possible cost – for example, in military and logistical terms – to a wide range of natural resources whose control and extraction, as the parallel cases of the Héxī “corridor,” the Deccan forests, or the eastern Egyptian desert show, were the characteristic prerogative of human groups that had been active since ancient times in areas.

Among them, in the case of Central Asia a role of absolute prominence should be assigned to the communities inhabiting areas such as the slopes of the Köpetdağ, the steppes surrounding the Murġ-āb delta or the oases of Baktra and Buxārā up to Farġānẹ, and the area chosen by Kyros for the foundation of Kyropolis – whose description in terms of “periphery” or “frontier” is much more the result of the perspective distortion caused by the sources that refer to these regions in their accounts than of the actual role of these regions themselves(and of the populations settled there) within the socio-political and economic dynamics at work on the ground.116Potts 2014, 119.Cf.the similar situation attested by Arr.Anab.3.7.1 and Ptol.Geogr.15.3.4 within an “internal” borderland in the region of Fārs, namely, considerable payments in kind(horses, sheep, and goats) demanded by the imperial administration to the “Uxians of the mountain.”Comparable taxes were imposed century later on other semi-settled people by the Qāǧār (قاجار)Dynasty, whose members ruled Īrān from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century.

Put another way, in Central Asia imperial power is synonymous with flexibility and adaptive capacity, not just, or not so much, with control, extraction, and warfare (as an entire historiographic tradition, starting with Herodotos’ account of Kyros’, death is usually all too keen to assume).117See the evidence discussed in King 2020 (on Early Medieval Bactrian society faced with its (selfproclaimed) Sāsānid, Türkic, and Arab masters).

Considerations of this kind contribute to highlight one of the main characteristics of Lori Khatchadourian’s “satrapal condition,” which is to say, following Michael Mann, the mainstructurallimitation to the transformation of the infrastructural power of all pre-modern empires into a despotic one.118On infrastructural and despotic power, see Mann 1984 and now Ando 2017.The main reason for such constrain(s) has to be identified in the Empire’sdependenceon actors (the – multiple – local élites) who are in contrast onlypartiallydependent on the imperial apparatus itself for the control of the most important among the resources available for effective territorial domination, namely, as Scott has repeatedly pointed out, the population inhabiting (and exploiting) a given landscape.119See, most recently and insightfully, Meier 2020, 763–764 on the entire array of agreements reached by Byzantine imperial authority with the representatives of the communities dwelling in the Arabian Peninsula, some of whom even obtained extremely prestigious titles (among which special mention is due to those of patricius and ϕύλαρχoς).Notably, such (external, imperial) titles turned out to be crucial within the intra-élitarian competition carried out by those individuals on a purely local level.Arguably the most sensational case is the story of a certain Al-Ḥāriṯ ibn Ǧabālah (الحارثبن جبلة↱), known to Greek-speaking sources as [Φλάβιoς] Ἀρέθας and one of the most influential representatives of a very powerful group known as the Ǧāfnids (الجافنته) and strategically crucial allies of Byzantium against the Sāsānids.Between AD 529 and 569, this man was able to obtain from no one less than emperor Justinian the “royal dignity” (άξίωμα βασιλέως), a clearly courtly title on which exact meaning scholars have not yet reached an agreement.According to Meier (2020, 763)we are most likely dealing with the acknowledgement, on the part of Justinian, of a local title (perhaps that of “king” or מלך, mêlek, in Arabic malik - ملك).The consequence of such an event must have been for Al-Ḥāriṯ a crucial strategic advantage against his peers in the struggle for local supremacy.Against such a body of evidence, one is compelled to rethink the process of formation of the imperial Achaemenid élite in Central Asia in a thoroughly different way than the traditional “adversarial”paradigm developed, e.g., in Wu 2014.

In fact, in the areas such as the Central Asian borderlands of the Achaemenid Empire, the locals have always had at their disposal a weapon that is as rudimentary as it is effective in evading the controlling ambitions of the imperial administration: very simply put, the flight.

It is by no means the outcome of chance, as Scott has stressed in many of his works, that there is a copious tradition of governmental wisdom, ranging from the biblicalBook of Proverbsto Chinese state manuals down to royal mockery in 17th-century Siam (สยาม, modern Thailand), which emphasizes that, for the purposes of the establishment and preservation ofanyimperial power, it is the number of subjects capable of being mobilized (and not the surface area) that is truly decisive in assessing the effective power of a (presumptive) king – as well as, one might addconsequentially, a source of constant concern for the guardians of orderwithinthe borders of the empire itself.120Scott 2017, 150–151: Prov.14.28, for example, argues that the honour of the king depends on the abundance of his people, but in the lack thereof hides the king’s demise.Centuries later and thousands of kilometers away, royal worries are the same, as it is shown by the clever answer given in 1680 by the king of Golconda (located near the modern Hyderābād, حیدرآباد in Urdū, హైదరాబాదు in Tèlugu), in the Indian federal state of Telangana (تلنگانہ, తెలంగాణ), to a Thai envoy who, with badly disguised malice, incidentally, noted that the territory of his king was considerably broader than that of the Indian ruler.This was the latter’s answer.“It is true, I admit, that [the Thai ruler] has a much larger kingdom than I do, but you must in turn admit that the king of Golconda [i.e., the speaker] rules over men, while the king of Siam rules over forests and mosquitoes.” See Scott 2009, 64–77 as well as King 2021, 12, who notes that the Achaemenids sought to govern people before territories, for indeed,following the king of Golconda, who controlled the former and dominated the latter.

Drawing on considerations developed by both Owen Lattimore and Payne,one might therefore conclude that the conspicuousabsence, in the Achaemenid context, of demographic-spatial containment measures (not only and not so much of the “invaders”ofbut much more of would-be fugitivesfromthe Empire)such as those evident in both the Sāsānid Empire and China can be interpreted as a blueprint of the success of the sociopolitical negotiations undertaken by the representatives of Persian power – perhaps starting with Kyros himself during his Central Asian stays prior to the fateful Scythian campaign – against the forerunners of individuals such as Spitamenes, Arimazes, or Bessos himself.

From this perspective, therefore, the foundation of Kyropolis shouldnotbe understood (following Strabo), as a handbook example of the affirmative action of the Achaemenid conquerors intoSakāterritory, but on the contrary as the outcome of a carefully planned negotiation which provided the framework for a win-win situation for all (or at the very least the highest possible numbers) of actors involved.121Rollinger and Degen 2021a, 200 for a comparable case concerning the alleged subjection of Cyprus by the Assyrian ruler Sargon II.

The main reason for this ought to be found in the acknowledgement that local élites alone were truly able to secure and provide, with their (obviously by no means disinterested) collaboration to the imperial enterprise, those resources indispensable to guarantee the Achaemenid ruling class – which promoted this (again, very much interested) undertaking in the first place – a significant economic profit.

At the same time, the outcome of such negotiations ensured an acceptable level of social and political order, the latter being an indispensable premise for the prosperity of the territories (dahạyāva, a term which, perhaps not by chance,maintains a significant ambiguity between its spatial and anthropic referents)which, as Darius boasted in the Bīsutūn inscription, “became mine.”122See Manning 2021, 136–139, who points out (ibid., 137) that in the Babylonian version of the Bīsutūn text, “in many cases a uqu, a land, and a people seem to be more or less the same thing” and,moreover, “many of these uqū belong to a particular land.” Emphasis in the original.And this irrespective both of the will of Ahuramazdā and of the narrative in terms of warfare, haughtiness and eventual ruin (first individual, later on imperialtout court), which Herodotos first promoted and which can still be recognized between the lines of Strabo’s account of Kyropolis’ foundation.

6.La frontière épaisse? Attempting a conclusion

This contribution has sought, based on a systematic comparison of a famous passage from Strabo’sGeographywith evidence from both thelongue duréeof Central Asian history and the most up-to-date research on the world of the steppes,to provide a new interpretative framework in the light of which to conceptualize the dynamics that presided over the formation of the Achaemenid frontier zones in Central Asia during the founding phase of the Empire by Kyros II.123Kuhrt 2021.

Contrary to an opinion still deeply rooted in historiography, according to which the relations between the Achaemenid Empire and the populations of the Central Asian satrapies – and especially with regards to the pastoral communities at their(alleged) political borders – are described in terms of violence, insubordination,and predatory ambitions (on the part of the “nomads” while leaving aside any reflection on imperial ambitions towards and claims over those spacesandpeople), the evidence discussed in the previous pages suggests a much more complex scenario.Its main features, which have been discussed at length in the sections above, could be summarized in the following formula: far from representing (only, or even mainly) a threat to imperial stability, both local élites andSakācommunities should be understood as having played a major role in the very process of empire (and mental mapping) building in Central Asia.124See, on the one hand, Wu Хin’s several contributions supporting the model of “adversarial relationship” (2005, 40–100; 2010; 2014) and, on the other hand, Rollinger 2021, Rollinger and Degen 2021a/c, and Rollinger 2023 for a different approach, which has been followed and further expanded in the present paper.The assessment of the relationship between Rome and China on the one hand, and their respective “enemies” on the other by Meier (e.g., 2020, 764–766) and Di Cosmo(paradigmatically 2002, 127–205 and 2018) provides further comparative evidence which should not be overlooked by historians of the (Achaemenid) empire in Central Asia.

From a methodological point of view, in the previous pages, an attempt has been made to demonstrate how an adequate understanding of the sociopolitical mechanisms characteristic of the imperial dynamics in the Central Asian territories (and in the steppes bordering them, and of the dialectical relations between the two) cannot disregard a comparative perspective that aims to exploit sources from the entire long history of the region.This is necessary because, apart from their sporadic nature, the classical sources, based on which the history of pre-Islamic Central Asia continues to be written, present a picture of the region, its inhabitants, and the relations between them and the empires that claimed hegemony over both, doubly tainted, by their own understanding of territories and people beyond their direct experiential horizon and the spaces at the limits of (what they described as) the inhabited world and by that of the Achaemenid rulers, starting at least with Darius.125A thorough discussion on the representation of the Central Asian space in classical historiography is provided by the scholarship of Claude Rapin: cf.at the very least Rapin 2001; 2005; 2014; 2018b.Rollinger and Bichler 2017 and Rollinger and Degen 2021a for further insight on the development of Achaemenid mental mapping against the background of the Empire’s Sakā experience in Central Asia.

The case of Ṭawāwīs, in particular, suggests that, similarly to what Di Cosmo has shown regarding the evolution of the Hàn frontier in Inner Asia,an assessment – to borrow John Haldon’s terms – of the political economy of the Persian Empire in the Central Asian steppes would greatly benefit from the abandonment of the oppositional model in favour of a theoretical perspective that turns instead more assiduously towards those micro-relations, constantly (re-)negotiated at alocallevel bybothimperial representativeandlocal powerholders which, as this paper sought to demonstrate, shed an entirely new light on “what happened in Baktria” – as Darius has it – starting from the second half of the 6th century BC, the years, as the Greeks remembered it, in which “the Mede came.”126Cf.the famous fragment DK 21[11] 22: “By the fire in winter, these are the sort of conversations you have to have when you are lying full on a soft couch, enjoying sweet wine and munching on chickpeas: ‘Who are you, and what country are you from? What is your age, my friend? How old were you when the Mede came?’” Haldon 2021 for the most recent discussion on imperial “political economies” in a comparative and world-historical perspective.

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Maps

Map 1: Who are the Dahạyāva which King Darius held? The Achaemenid Far East.© Peter Palm.

Map 2: The plough that broke the Steppe: Achaemenid settlements and eco-logical control in Southern Baktria.© Peter Palm.