Appendix 11 - Chorasmia

Summary

The name Chorasmia is never given by any Greek writer, but only a people Chorasmii. It is always assumed that this people lived in Chorasmia, i.e. Kwarizm, Khiva, the fertile country south of the Aral on the lower Oxus. It may be well to test this assumption and see whither that leads us.

The Chorasmii are first mentioned by Hecataeus as living in a land, partly plain partly mountain, eastward of the Parthava; this land is not Kwarizm, where there are no real mountains and which was not eastward of the Parthava. In Herodotus also the land of the Chorasmii is partly plain partly mountain, their neighbours being Hyrcanians and Parthians (Parthava), but in his day they had lost the plain to the Persian kings; they were subject to the Persians, and in Xerxes' army list they are brigaded with the Parthava and with no other people. Herodotus then agrees with Hecataeus, except that the Chorasmii had lost the best of their land. He puts them in the 16th satrapy with the Parthava, Arians, and Sogdians; the passages cited above show that this is correct for the Chorasmii, even though ‘Sogdians’ here are impossible. Darius' three lists of lands give no help, as the eastern lands are not in any geographical order and moreover the position of the Chorasmii differs in the Behistun and Naks-i-Rustam lists; but in the inscription relating to the building of the Apadāna at Susa Darius obtained some substance from Chorasmia which, if the translation ‘turquoise’ be correct, agrees with Hecataeus and Herodotus, for turquoise could not come from anywhere but the famous mines in Khorasan; but as there are other translations this cannot be stressed.