An Iranian campaign in social media against the US Secretary of State has strained diplomatic ties between Tehran and Tashkent by claiming Samarkand’s monuments as part of Persian heritage.
In mid-October, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the Uzbek city of Samarkand as part of a regional tour that also took him to India. In Uzbekistan, the high-ranking US official met with his Central Asian counterparts in the latest C5+1 ministerial meeting.
Days after Rubio’s trip, X accounts belonging to Iranian diplomatic missions started posting about his visit to Samarkand. Among those who posted where the Iranian embassies in Armenia, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, South Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as its representation at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. They all mocked Rubio for posing in front of Samarkand’s historical monuments which they referred to as “Persian architectural legacy”, “ancient heritage of Persia” or “Iranian civilization.
Since the start of the US war on Iran, it has become commonplace for the Iranian regime to troll the US in social media, including through ingenious Lego-style videos. But the comments on Samarkand and its history, which presented the city as part of Persian civilization, didn’t go down well in Uzbekistan.
On October 23rd, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Iranian ambassador in the country and handed him a note of protest. Tashkent reminded the Iranian side that materials published on the official resources of diplomatic missions “must comply with the principles of mutual respect and trust and not lead to the politicization of historical and cultural issues,” and requested the posts to be deleted [note: at the time of writing the article only the posts from the embassies in Armenia and Bulgaria had been deleted].
This diplomatic faux pas appears to have been a miscalculation. While having a go at Rubio, the relevant authorities, whether through carelessness or ignorance, also offended a country with which Iran has been improving ties in the past years, as the 2023 visit of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Tehran shows. An unwise move by the sharped-tongued Iranian social media strategists that has created a contained diplomatic crisis while also triggering a broader debate among internet users.
Samarkand, Uzbek or Persian?
The Iranian posts in X have been followed by a flurry of comments, both for and against the claims, from Iranian and Uzbek nationalists. The result has been a sterile debate.
It is a mistake to refer to Samarkand, and its Timurid and Janid monuments, as Persian. They were built centuries ago, when the labels we use today mattered little, if they were used at all. Amir Timur (Tamerlane) forcibly removed artisans from Persia, as from other territories he conquered, and employed them in the construction of his monuments. Does that make them solely Persian? Timurid architecture was influenced by architectural traditions in Persia, while it later influenced Safavid architecture in Persia. It was a two-way street.
Similarly, it is also inaccurate to brush aside Persian influence and refer to Samarkand’s monument as purely Uzbek. They were commissioned by the ruling Turco-Mongol and later Uzbek elites, but as mentioned above, they were influenced by existing buildings in Persia. Transoxiana (modern-day Uzbekistan) was part of the Persianate world, notwithstanding its Turkic population. Both elements are not mutually exclusively. Cultures, people and languages coexisted and mixed, created some of the most dazzling architecture and works of art of their time.
Applying rigid 20th and 21st nationality labels to centuries-old history, culture or architecture is an error that exalts and serves narrow-minded nationalists. Competing national claims end up distorting a shared and interconnected history. Why not stay away from artificial identity politics and simply enjoy the historical masterpieces that have stood the test of time in Samarkand?