The ancient province of Sogdiana (or Suguda to the Persians) lay largely within the easternmost quarter of modern Uzbekistan, along with western Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The River Tanais (otherwise known as the Jaxartes/Iaxartes or Syr Darya), traditionally formed the boundary between Sogdiana and Scythia. In fact, Sogdiana and its western neighbour, Chorasmia, formed the northern edge of civilisation in the ancient world.

Beyond them was the sweeping steppeland and marauding tribes of barbarians.
This ancient region had also formed the northern border in Transoxiana for one of the oldest series of states in Central Asia, the indigenous Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, or Oxus Civilisation, and Indo-European tribes had soon integrated into it around the start of the second millennium BC. Forming an Indo-Iranian group of tribes in later centuries, it is these very same people who, within half a millennium, were to be found entering India. Those who remained behind appear to enter the historical record around the sixth century BC, when they came up against their western cousins of the rapidly-expanding Persian empire.

The earliest-known rulers for the region are placed in the 600s BC, with clear links being shown between them and the earliest rulers of Persia (possibly before the latter had fully settled in Persia). In fact, the resemblance between Old Persian and Sogdian languages is one of the supporting pillars for the theory of Persian migration into Iran from Central Asia. The Persians themselves were of Indo-Iranian stock, and it is probably the case that the Sogdian tribes shared that same origin. The large and warlike tribe or confederation of the Massagetae were recorded as bordering the area to the north in 530 BC, less closely-related cousins of the Sogdians and their ilk.

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