SOGDIANA, or Sogdiane, in Old Persian Sughuda, a province of the Achaemenian empire, the eighteenth in the list in the Behistun inscription of Darius (i. 16), corresponded to the modern districts of Samarkand and Bokhara; that is, it lay north of Bactriana between the Oxus and the Jaxartes and embraced the fertile valley of the Polytimetus or Zarafshan. Under the Greeks Sogdiana was united in one satrapy with Bactria, and subsequently it formed part of the Bactrian Greek kingdom till the “Scythians” (the Yue-chi) occupied it in the middle of the 2d century b.c. (comp. vol. xviii. pp. 586 sq., 592 sqj). The valley of the Zarafshan about Samarkand retained even in the Middle Ages the name of the Soghd of Samarkand. Arabic geographers reckon it as one of the four fairest spots in the world.