Letter No.1 of the Sogdian Documents of Mount Mogh

In 1932 a collection of documents was found in Mount Mogh in northwestern Tajikistan, most of which were economical. Some of these documents are letters and belong to the archives of Dēvāshtich, the ruler of Panjikent in the eighth century AD. These letters are important in several ways, linguistically for the history of the evolution of the Sogdian language, for styles of writing letters, political, historical and cultural issues, and other aspects. In this study, the aim is to examine the language and the style of "Letter No. 1" from the collection of Mogh documents. In this regard, first, the historical background of this letter was examined and then, its content was considered in terms of the etymology of words and some linguistic structures. In some cases, the style of letter writing was compared with other similar letters in Sogdian. Analysis of this letter showed that some phrases related to the style of writing letters were written only in this letter and were not found in other documents of Mount Mogh. Examples of compound verbs and the potentialis structure in this letter were also examined. The influence of the Arabic language is also evident at the beginning of this letter.