WI: Sogdian became official language of Samanid Empire?

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
 

Anawrahta

Banned
Any takers? For example the muslim turkic khanate patronized turkic languages rather than Persian and Arabic, so it is possible to have a sogdian muslim state.
 
I am not sure that the Samanids were actually Sogdian. It is something that they claimed, but doubtfully took serious. What is more likely the case, the Samanids had some ancestry that was Perso-Arabic and adopted Persian as a medium of language alongisde Arabic, similar to the Saffarids, which preceded them or other Arab states in the region. The last Sogdian state was the state ruled by al-Afshin and his family, there would be no other Sogdian state in any real sense after this. In fact, after al-Afshin, we know that Sogdian identity was purposefully destroyed for its supposed deep polytheism and danger. Arabs and Islamized Persians traveled there and settled and destroyed the local temples and idols.
 
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