Ancient Panjakent was divided into several key parts. At the center of the city surrounded by a large wall was the shakhristan. Translated from the Iranian, “shakhr” means “a town” and “stan” is “a place, which is a territory of the early feudal city in Central Asia” - essentially the center of any large settlement; sometimes there was a citadel placed inside..
The Panjakent Shakhristan was protected by a fortress wall with towers and gates; and The shakhristan was the location of Panjakent's government offices, barracks, shops, artisan workshops, hotels, and many private dwellings. Temples also occupied a prominent place in the urban development. Outside the walls of the shakhristan were trade-and-craft suburbs (rabad), cemeteries, caravanserais, and farmsteads.
Each shakhristan was divided into town districts called "makhalla", populated by people practicing a certain type of craft. Each mahalla had its own water reservoirs and a district mosque, and residents adopted a certain self-autonomy in regulating their own affairs.
In many towns, the shakhristan walls took the shape of a regular quadrangle with narrow streets. The main shopping street, covered with the trading domes, ran across the town. To manage the pedestrian traffic on these central streets, squares were built on the sides to relieve congestion. The width of these town highways was typically 3 to 5 meters, with streets planned to either run parallel to each other or merge at intersections.
The area of the shakhristan in ancient Panjakent reached 19 hectares, and the circumference was 1750 m. The walls were straight only in the north and east, in other places they had a stepped contour following the terrain.
On the street sides within the walled city were blocks of residential, economic, trade and artisan buildings. Each block consisted of dozens of architectural complexes, the total of which included over a hundred rooms.Each complexes consisted of rooms on the first floor and a ramp leading to the second floor, with a large hall was the center of each complex.
Each individual architectural complex in the building had rooms for the owner and his family members, separate rooms for servants, and utility rooms for storage. There was also a ceremonial hall that may have been partially used as a "mehmankhana", a dwelling for rich Tajiks of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Along with such complexes these buildings included other areas without ceremonial halls, dwellings smaller in size and much more modest or even poor, that belonged to the ordinary urban population of the settlement.
Recently it has become possible to determine the purpose of some isolated rooms around these complexes. Some of them had ancient furnaces, pieces of blast iron, firepits with smoked walls and other evidence of industrial production. There were comparatively large stashes of coins in all these rooms, and it can be safely said that the rooms were likely used as workshops and shops, or both at the same time.
Inside one of the large halls, archaeologists discovered magnificent wall murals - a scene of a game with a board and dice - and 100 actual dice buried in situ. It is impossible to conclude with certainty that this was a kind of gambling hall, but the public purpose of the complex is beyond doubt.
The very richest complexes had an entrance designed in the form of an iwan - a vaulted entrance. The first floor had rooms with a high ceiling (up to 5 meters) and there were benches called “sufa” along the walls. From here, ramps and the stairs led to the second floor. While the bottom-floor rooms were dark with poor lighting, the second floors were much brighter. It is possible that these areas were adapted for summer housing. In this period the home of every wealthy citizen featured a ceremonial hall with wood-carved bas-reliefs and frescoes made from a glue paint over a dry plaster. In Sogdian art of this period, you may find features incorporated from the Indian, Iranian and Byzantine traditions; however, Sogdian art still maintained its own unique style. The content of the art pieces allow us to understand what the rituals and traditions of the Sogdians were - today it might be the only source of information about these ancient people.
