Barakatullo Ashurov Harvard University

Inner Asian and Altaic Studies Lecture

Ol’ga Smirnova one of the eminent Russian Orientalist and specialist of Sogdian history and numismatics in one of her studies published in 1957 has highlighted two groups of Sogdian coins one of which had special iconographic difference. She has rightfully identified that this newly observed iconography was a cross and might have association with the Byzantine and hence Christianity. However, given the paucity of data at that time she has not returned to the further investigation of these coins. However, in the past decades multiple specimens of such coins have been discovered and registered. Equally, there has been a number of studies devoted to the Christian iconography in coins undertaken that allows in-depth comparative art-historical research in order to understand the emergence, evolution and denotation of the cross on coinage.

The focus of this talk is to present a short analysis of a group of Sogdian coins depicting the sign of the cross in their wider historical context, namely the development of this sign in Byzantine and Persian (Sassanid) coinage and spread of Christianity in Persia and Central Asia. The Sogdian coins under discussion here represent those from Bukhara oasis as well as Panjikent and Osrušana.