Sogdiana

American  

[sog-dee-ey-nuh, -an-uh] / ˌsɒg diˈeɪ nə, -ˈæn ə /

noun

1. a province of the ancient Persian Empire between the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers: now in Uzbekistan. Samarkand.

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Sogdiana British  

/ ˌsɒɡdɪˈɑːnə /

noun

1. a region of ancient central Asia. Its chief city was Samarkand

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Example Sentences

It had once comprised Sogdiana and parts of Transoxania; it had been a point of confluence between Iran and Turan, the line between Persianate and Turkic cultures; the famous regions of Khorasan and Khwarezm were all part of what the land had known.

From New York Times

In the 4th century, Alexander the Great defeated the Achaemenids and invaded Sogdiana, taking the Sogdian princess Roxana as his bride.

From Slate

For centuries, that isolation allowed the Yaghnobi to preserve a culture with roots in ancient Sogdiana, a province of the 6th century B.C.

From Slate

From the Greek invasion until the 8th-cenutry Arab conquest, Sogdiana was passed from empire to empire, a remote province of the Greco-Bactrian, Kushan, and Sasanian empires.

From Slate

According to the Avesta, the primary collection of sacred texts for the Zoroastrian faith practiced under the Achaemenid Emperor Cyrus the Great, Sogdiana was the second-finest land made by the deity Ahura Mazda, preceded only by Iran-Vej, likely in the eastern part of modern Iran, where the prophet Zoroaster himself was born.

From Slate