1. My #SamarkandSummit orientalist🧵on its toponym and etymology. Incorrect is #Wikipedia's #Samarkand etymon entry and false analogy to #Tashkent. Both #Samarkand, like neighbouring #Bukhara, remain extensively debated in eastern #MiddleIranian #philology.
2. #Samarkand, contra #Wikipedia, is not 'stone city'. The first element /sm’r/ remains unexplained. On #Sogdian sm’rknδh [Ancient Letters], cf. Chin. Samojian 颯秣建 Gr. Μαρακάνδοι, scholarly consensus exists only on second compound, #Sogdian 'town, city'.
3. #Sogdian knδh 'town, city' > #Christian #Sogdian qθ; /sm’r/ element unmentioned in Gharib 1995 [Sogdian #Dictionary], @iranicaonline, or EI2 [Enc. of #Islam) entries. See @Brill_ME_Africa EI2, VIII/1995: 1031-032, s.v. #Samarkand Schaeder (rev. Bosworth). 
4. #Sogdian snk 'stone', #Manichaean, #Christian, #Buddhist Sogdian sng < *asanga-; Av. asәnga. @avzaagzonunaada rightly points out I-Ir. 'stone, sky' semantic range, Skt. aśman-, Av. asman-, and that #Sogdian sm’r cannot render 'stone'. Caveat lector.
5. #Samarkand, origins and locale, spawned several speculations in popular #historical accounts over the early medieval period. Correctly, 'north of Scythia' in that #Hereford #MappaMundi prepared by Richard of Haldingham ca. 1290, as 'Samarcan'.
6. We owe to the #Letter of #PresterJohn, that fictive, #Indian, #Christian #king, and those varied, apocryphal accounts circulated by #Nestorians of this #prelate, the first #western, literary mention of #Samarkand independent of ancient, oriental sources.
7. In #PresterJohn's #Letter is recorded the prothopapa Sarmogeneum, a reference to the #Nestorian #archbishop's #Samarkand #residence. Untenable is #Samarkand 'fat village', translated by Annette Beveridge in Bābur Nāma, that first #Mughal's #autobiography.
8. #Medieval #Arabic accounts frequently posit the #Yemeni roots of #Tibetans, who are described as #Turks, and that legendary link also mentions #Samarkand, Akasoy 2016: 24. @EmCoteam @invisible_east @iaunrc @CentralAsianDia @SilkRoadTalk @PicsSilkRoad
9. @threadreaderapp unroll
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