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This volume examines the major cultural, religious, political, and urban changes that took place in the Iranian world of Inner and Central Asia in the transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic periods.
One of the major civilizations of the first millennium was that of the Iranian linguistic and cultural world, which stretched from today’s Iraq to what is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No other region of the world underwent such radical transformation, which fundamentally altered the course of world history, as this area did during the centuries of transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period. This transformation included the religious victory of Islam over Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and the other religions of the area; the military and political wresting of Inner Asia from the Chinese to the Islamic sphere of primary cultural influence; and the shifting of Central Asia from a culturally and demographically Iranian civilization to a Turkic one. This book contains essays by many of the preeminent scholars working in the fields of archeology, history, linguistics, and literature of both the pre-Islamic and the Islamic-era Iranian world, shedding light on some of the most significant aspects of the major changes that this important portion of the Asian continent underwent during this tumultuous era in its history. This collection of cutting-edge research will be read by scholars of Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Iranian, and Islamic studies and archaeology.
Contributors: D. G. Tor, Frantz Grenet, Nicholas Sims-Williams, Etsuko Kageyama, Yutaka Yoshida, Michael Shenkar, Minoru Inaba, Rocco Rante, Arezou Azad, Sören Stark, Louise Marlow, Gabrielle van den Berg, and Dilnoza Duturaeva.
"The contributions to this volume are uniformly of high quality, representing commendable international collaboration between Asian, European, and American scholars based in six different countries. Anybody pursuing the history of Central Asia in the first millennium CE will find material of interest in this volume."—Journal of the American Oriental Society
“The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia makes substantial new contributions to our understanding of a transitionary period.” —Jamsheed K. Choksy, author of Conflict and Cooperation
"This collection of studies, many of which make public recent discoveries, proposes paradigm shifts with regard to previous scholarship. It should prove to be an indispensable reference for a wide range of scholars of Iranian and Central Asian studies, including archaeologists, histo- rians, philologists, and historians of literature, religions, and medieval (east) Islamic studies." —Speculum
D. G. Tor is associate professor of medieval Middle Eastern history at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including The ‘Abbasid and Carolingian Empires: Comparative Studies in Civilizational Formation.
Minoru Inaba is professor of history at Kyoto University. He is the author and editor of Coins, Art and Chronology II: The First Millennium C.E. in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands.
Acknowledgments
1. D.G. Tor, Introduction: The Enduring Significance of the Iranian World in the First Millennium CE: Transformation and Continuity
I. Iranian Central Asia in Late Antiquity
2. Frantz Grenet, “Types of town planning in ancient Iranian cities: new considerations”
3. Nicholas Sims-Williams, “The proto-Sogdian inscriptions of Kultobe: New fragments and new reconstructions”
4. Etsuko Kageyama, "Xian Temples of the Sogdian Colonies in China"
5. Yutaka Yoshida, “Three scenarios for the historical background of the Xi’an Sino-Pahlavi inscription — Post Sasanian Zoroastrian traders?”
II. From the Pre-Islamic to the Islamic
6. Michael Shenkar, “The Arab Conquest and the Collapse of the Sogdian Civilization”
7. Minoru Inaba, “Wukong’s itinerary towards India: Central Asia in the mid-eighth century”
8. Rocco Rante, “Evolution of the habitat in Paykend”
9. Arezou Azad, “Notes on Islamisation Narratives in the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh”
III. The Transformation of the Pre-Islamic Past
10. Sören Stark, “The New Garden of the Amir: Samanid Land-Development at the Borders of the Bukhara Oasis”
11. Louise Marlow “Al-Thaʿālibī’s Iranian Past: Assimilation and Aesthetics”
12. Gabrielle van den Berg, “Representations of the Pre-Islamic Past in Early Persian Court Poetry”
13. Dilnoza Duturaeva “From Turkistan to Tibet: The Qarakhanids and the Tsongkha Tribal Confederation”