- published: 02 Jul 2015
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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 are several theories about the origin of the term. It may be derived from the Sanskrit "sarthavaha" (merchant, caravan leader), a term supposedly used by nomads to described settled townspeople.[citation needed]. Or it may be a corruption of the Sogdian ethnonym "Soghd."[citation needed]
The earliest known use of the term is in the Turkic text Kudatku Bilik ("Blessed Knowledge"), dated 1070, in which it refers to the settled population of Kashgaria[citation needed]. In that period the term apparently referred to all settled Muslims of Central Asia, regardless of language.
Rashid-al-Din Hamadani in the Jami' al-Tawarikh writes that Genghis Khan commanded that Arslan Khan, prince of the Muslim Turkic Karluks, be given the title "Sartaqtai", which he considered to be synonymous with "Tajik"[citation needed] (It is possible[original research?], 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).