Sart
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:''This article is about a group of [[Central Asia]]n people. For the nautical emergency transponder SART see [[Search and Rescue Transponder]]
[[Image:Sartscrop.jpg|Two Sart men and two Sart boys in [[Samarkand]] (present-day [[Uzbekistan]]), c. 1910|thumb]]
'''Sart''' is a name for the settled inhabitants of [[Central Asia]] which has had shifting meanings over the centuries. Sarts, known sometimes as ''Ak-Sart'' ("White Sart") in ancient times, did not have any particular ethnic identification, and were usually (though not always) town-dwellers. There is a suggestion that the name is etymologically derived from ''Sarı İt'' ("Yellow Dog" in [[Chagatai language|Turkic]]) as an insulting term for town dwellers by nomads, and it was this supposed root which led the Soviets to abolish the term as "derogatory" (see below); however, Barthold believes this derivation to be false, and there is no literary or philological evidence to support it.
==History==
===Origin===
"Sart" seems to have originated as a term used by nomads to describe settled people and town dwellers, from the Indic root ''Sarthavaha'' meaning a merchant or caravan-leader (related to the modern [[Hindi]] word ''Seth''). It probably entered [[Uyghur language|Uyghur]] from [[Sogdian language|Soghdian]] in the 8th or 9th centuries AD. Indeed the term can well be a corruption of the name, Soghd. The earliest known use of the term is in the Turkic book ''[[Kudatku Bilik]]'' ("Blessed Knowledge"), dated 1070, where it refers to the settled population of [[Kashgaria]], and in this period it apparently could be used to refer to all settled Muslims of Central Asia, Persian or Turkic-speaking. [[Rashid al-din]] in the ''[[Jami' al-Tawarikh]]'' writes that [[Genghis Khan]] commanded that [[Arslan Khan]], prince of the Muslim Turkic Karluks, be given the title "Sartaqtai", which he considered to be synonymous with "[[Tajiks|Tajik]]" (It is possible, however, that Rashid al-din, who was Persian, misunderstood the meaning of this, as "Sartaqtai" was the name of one of the Genghis Khan's sons).
===Alternative meanings===
In the post-Mongol period we find that [[Ali Sher Nawa'i]] refers to the Iranian people as "Sart Ulusi" (Sart Ulus, i.e. Sart province), and for him "Sart tili" (Sart language) was a synonym for the [[Persian language]]. Similarly, when [[Babur]] refers to the people of [[Margelan]] as "Sarts", it is in distinction to the people of [[Andijan]] who are Turks, and it is clear that by this he means Persian-speakers. He also refers to the population of the towns and villages of the ''vilayat'' of [[Kabul]] as "Sarts".
A further change of use seems to have occurred with the arrival in the oasis regions of [[Turkistan]] of the [[Uzbeks]] under [[Shaybani Khan]]. They distinguished between themselves as semi-nomadic speakers of a [[Kipchak]] dialect, and the settled Turkic-speaking populations already living in the oasis towns, most of whom spoke the [[Uyghur]] dialect. It is at this date that the distinction between the terms "Sart" and "[[Tajiks|Tajik]]" seems to have made itself felt, as previously they were often used interchangeably. Even after the Uzbeks switched to a settled way of life, they continued to maintain this distinction between Turkic-speakers who were members of one of the Uzbek tribes, and "Sarts" who were not.
===Modern meanings===
[[Vasily Bartold]] argues that by the 19th century those described as "Sarts" had become much more Turkicised than had previously been the case. In the literature of [[Imperial Russia]] in the 19th century the term was sometimes used to denote the Turkic-speaking peoples of [[Ferghana]], [[Tashkent]], [[Chimkent]] and the Southern [[Syr Darya|Syr Darya Province]], (also found in smaller numbers in [[Samarkand]] and [[Bukhara]]). "Sart" was also commonly employed by the Russians as a general term for all the settled natives of [[Turkestan]]. There was a great deal of debate over what this actually meant, and where the name came from. Barthold writes that "To the [[kazakhstan|Kazakh]] every member of a settled community was a Sart whether his language was [[Turkish language|Turkish]] or [[Iranian languages|Iranian]]". N.P. Ostroumov was firm in his conviction that it was not an ethnic definition but an occupational one, and he backed this up by quoting some (apparently common) local sayings: "A bad [[Kyrgyz|Kirghiz]] becomes a Sart, whilst a bad Sart becomes a Kirghiz". This confusion reached its peak in the 1897 [[Russian Empire Census]]: the [[Ferghana]] [[Province]] was held to have a very large Sart population, the neighbouring [[Samarkand]] Province very few but a great many Uzbeks. The distinction between the two was often far from clear. Although historically speaking the Uzbeks were descended from tribes which arrived in the region with [[Shaibani Khan]] in the 16th century, Sarts belonged to older settled groups. It seems that, in [[Khorezm]] at least, Sarts spoke a form of [[Persianisation|Persianised]] [[Oghuz languages|Oghuz]] Turkic while Uzbeks spoke a [[Kipchak]] dialect closer to [[Kazakh language|Kazakh]]. In Fergana the Sarts spoke a [[Karluk]] dialect that was very close to [[Uyghur language|Uyghur]] and is believed to be the earlier dialect of modern Uzbek. In 1924 the [[Soviet]] regime decreed that henceforth all settled [[Turkic peoples|Turks]] in Central Asia would be known as "Uzbeks", and that the term "Sart" was to be abolished as an insulting legacy of colonial rule{{Fact|date=June 2008}}. The language chosen for the new [[Uzbek SSR]] was not, however, Uzbek, but Sart.
It is thus very difficult to attach a single ethnic or even [[linguistic meaning]] to the term "Sart". Historically the various Turkic and Persian peoples of Central Asia were identified mostly by their lifestyle, rather than by any notional ethnic or even linguistic difference. The Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Turkmens were nomads, herding across steppes, mountains and sand deserts, respectively. The settled Turks and Tajiks, on the other hand, were Sarts, as they either lived in cities such as [[Khiva]], [[Bukhara]] or Samarkand, or they lived in rural agricultural communities.
===Use by the Dongxiang===
Interestingly, the Muslim, Mongol-speaking [[Dongxiang people]] of [[Northwestern China]] call themselves ''Sarta'' or ''Santa''. It is not clear if there is any connection between this term and the Sarts of Central Asia.
==References==
*{{ Citation
| last=Ostroumov
| first=Nikolaĭ Petrovich
| title=Значение Названия «Сарт»
| publisher=
| place=Tashkent
| year=1884
| url =
}}
*{{ Citation
| last=Ostroumov
| first=Nikolaĭ Petrovich
| title=Сарты – Этнографические Материалы
| publisher=
| place=Tashkent
| year=1890
| page = 7
}}
*{{ Citation
| last =Barthold
| first =V V
| author-link = V.V. Barthold
| year =
| date =1934
| publication-date =
| contribution =Sart
| contribution-url =
| editor-last =
| editor-first =
| editor-link =
| editor2-last =
| editor2-first =
| editor2-link =
| title =Encyclopaedia of Islam
| edition =
| series =
| place =
| publication-place =
| publisher =
| volume = 4 (S-Z)
| pages =175-176
| id =
| isbn =
| doi =
| oclc =
| url =
}}
*{{ Citation
| last =Barthold
| first =W
| author-link = V.V. Barthold
| last2 = Subtelny
| first2 =Maria Eva
| year =
| date =1997
| publication-date =
| contribution =Sart
| contribution-url =
| editor-last =
| editor-first =
| editor-link =
| editor2-last =
| editor2-first =
| editor2-link =
| title =Encyclopaedia of Islam
| edition =
| series =
| place =
| publication-place =
| publisher =
| volume = 9 (SAN-SZE)
| pages =66-68
| id =
| isbn =
| doi =
| oclc =
| url =
}}
*{{Citation
| last =Breel
| first =Yuri
| author-link =Yuri Bregel
| publication-date =1978
| date =
| year =
| title =The Sarts in the Khanate of Khiva
| periodical =Journal of Asian History
| series =
| publication-place =Wiesbaden
| place =
| publisher =O. Harrassowitz
| volume =12
| issue =
| pages =121-151
| url =
| issn =0021-910X
| doi =
| oclc =
| accessdate =
}}
*{{Citation
| last =Subtelny
| first =Maria Eva
| author-link =
| editor-last =Manz
| editor-first =Beatrice
| editor-link =
| publication-date =1994
| contribution =The Symbiosis of Turk and Tajik
| title =Central Asia in historical perspective
| publication-place =Boulder CO USA
| publisher =Westview Press
| series =The John M. Olin critical issues series
| isbn =0813388015
| doi =
| oclc =
| accessdate =
}}
* {{Citation
| last =Nava'i
| first =Ali Shir
| author-link =
| last2 =Devereaux
| first2 =Robert
| author2-link =
| publication-date =1966
| date =
| year =
| title =Muhakamat al-Lughatayn
| edition =
| volume =
| series =
| publication-place =Leiden
| place =
| publisher =Brill
| pages =
| page =
| id =
| isbn =
| doi =
| oclc =
| url =
| accessdate =
}}
*{{Citation
| last =Arat
| first =Reşit Rahmeti
| author-link =
| last2 =
| first2 =
| author2-link =
| publication-date =1947
| date =
| year =
| title =Kutadgu bilig
| edition =
| volume =87
| series = Türk Dil Kurumu
| publication-place =Istanbul
| place =
| publisher =Millî Eğitim Basımevi
| pages =
| page =571
| id =
| isbn =
| doi =
| oclc =
| url =
| accessdate =
}}
*{{Citation
| last =Thackston
| first =Wheeler
| author-link =Wheeler Thackston
| last2 =
| first2 =Babur
| author2-link =
| publication-date =2002
| date =
| year =
| title =The Baburnama : memoirs of Babur, prince and emperor
| edition =
| volume =
| series =
| publication-place =New York
| place =
| publisher =The Modern Library
| pages =5, 156
| page =
| id =
| isbn = 0375761373
| doi =
| oclc =
| url =
| accessdate =
}}
*{{Citation
| last = Ṭabīb
| first = Rashīd al-Dīn
| author-link =Rashid-al-Din Hamadani
| last2 =Thackston
| first2 =Wheeler
| author2-link =Wheeler Thackston
| publication-date =1978
| date =
| year =
| title = Rashiduddin Fazlullah’s Jamiʻuʾt-tawarikh = Compendium of chronicles
| edition =
| series =Sources of Oriental languages and literatures
| volume =4
| publication-place =Cambridge MA USA
| place =
| publisher =Harvard University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
| page =78
| id =
| isbn =
| doi =
| oclc =
| url =
| accessdate =
}}
==External links==
* [http://sart.another.by/ Sart.]
== See also ==
* [[Tajiks]]
[[Category:Iranian peoples]]
[[Category:Turkic peoples]]
[[kk:Сарттар]]
[[ja:サルト人]]
[[ru:Сарты]]