Indeepent work from the subject of english

Han dynasty

According to the Han dynasty Records of the Grand Historian or Shiji, based on the travels of Zhang Qian and published around 126 BC, the region of Fergana is presented as the country of the Dayuan ( Ta-Yuan ), possibly descendants of Greeks colonists ( Dayuan may be a transliteration of ,, Great lonians’’ ). The area was renowned for its Heavenly Horses, which the Chinese tried to obtain from the Dayuan with little success until they waged war against them in 104 BC.

The Dayuan were indentified by the Chinese as unusual in features, with a sophisticated urban civilization, similar to that of the Bactrians and Parthians: ,, The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Fergana ( Dayuan ) and the possessions of Bactria and Parthia are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China ’’ ( Book of the Later Han ).

Agricultural activities of the Dayuan reported by Zhang Qian included cultivation of grain and grapes for wine-making. The area of Fergana was thus the theater of the first major interaction between an urbanized culture speaking Indo-European languages and the Chinese civilization, which led to the opening up the Silk Road from the 1^st century BC onwards.

The Han later captured Dayuan in the Han-Dayuan war, installing a Chinese regime there. Later the Han set up the Protectorate of the Western Regions.
The Kushan Empire formed from the same Yuezhi who had conquered the Hellenistic Fergana. The Kushan spread out in the 1^st century AD from the Yuezhi confederation in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the middle course of the Oxus River or Amu Darya in what is now northern Afghanistan, and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Kushan conquered most of what is now northern India and Pakistan, driving east through Fergana. Kushan power also consolidated long distance trade, linking Central asia to both Han Dynasty China and the Roman Empire in Europe.

Sassanid ( 3^rd – 5^th centuries )

The Kushans ruled the area as part of their larger empire until the 3^rd century AD, when the Zoroastrian Persian Sassanid Empire invaded Kushan territory from the southwest. Fergana remained under shifting local and Transoxian rulers thereafter. For periods in the 4^th and 5^th centuries, the Sassanid Empire directly controlled Transoxiana and Fergana, led by the conquests of Shapur II and Khosrau I against the Kushans and the Hephthalite Empire.