Samarkand

A Chinese visitor to Samarkand in the century before the Arab invasion wrote in his notes the following observation on young people there: “All the inhabitants [of Samarkand] are brought up to be traders. When a young boy reaches the age of five they begin to teach him to read, and when he is able to read they make him study business.”1 Another Chinese visitor, equally astonished, observed that young Central Asian men were not allowed to participate in trading trips abroad until they were twenty, prior to which time they were expected to be absorbed in study and training.2

These observant contemporaries enable us to understand something very important about the lost world of Central Asia before the Arab conquest: the high level of literacy that prevailed there. The mass destruction of books and documents carried out by the Arabs leaves us particularly dependent on the reports of outsiders like these.

Starr, S. Frederick. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane (p. 62). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

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