Anawrahta
Banned
The OTL Samanids declared: "here, in this region, the language is Persian, and the kings of this realm are Persian kings.". However they ruled over a rather non-persian land populated with speakers of the old east iranian languages such as Sogdian, Bactrian, and Khwarezmian. As such these three were extinct with the exception of Yaghnobi which is a remnant of Sogdian. So despite being of Bactrian, Sogdian extraction they patronized Persian which was foreign to that region. So what if descendants of Saman Khudah patronized Sogdian rather than New Persian? What if Ismail Samani proclaimed Sogdian as language of the Samanid lands?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanid_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanid_Empire