Sogdian

Sogdian was an Eastern Iranian language spoken mainly in Sogdia, a Central Asian region whose chief cities included Samarkand, Panjakent, Fergana, Khujand and Bukhara and which lies in modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Some Sogdian immigrant communities also spoke it in ancient China. It is counted among the most important Middle Iranian languages, along with Bactrian, Khotanese Saka, Middle Persian and Parthian, and it has a large literary corpus. Sogdian was the most important lingua franca of Mongolia, China and Inner Asia, one of the official languages of the First Turkic Khanate and also a lingua franca in the Uyghur Khanate. It is usually assigned to a Northeastern group of the Iranian languages, and the modern Eastern Iranian language Yaghnobi descends from a dialect of it.