Central Eurasian Reader

No detailed description available for "Central Eurasian Reader".

No detailed description available for "Central Eurasian Reader".

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian empires, including those of the Scythians, Attila the Hun, the Turks and Tibetans, and Genghis Khan and the Mongols. In addition, he explains why the heartland of Central Eurasia led the world economically, scientifically, and artistically for many centuries despite invasions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Chinese, and others. In retelling the story of the Old World from the perspective of Central Eurasia, Beckwith provides a new understanding of the internal and external dynamics of the Central Eurasian states and shows how their people repeatedly revolutionized Eurasian civilization. Beckwith recounts the Indo-Europeans' migration out of Central Eurasia, their mixture with local peoples, and the resulting development of the Graeco-Roman, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; he details the basis for the thriving economy of premodern Central Eurasia, the economy's disintegration following the region's partition by the Chinese and Russians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the damaging of Central Eurasian culture by Modernism; and he discusses the significance for world history of the partial reemergence of Central Eurasian nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Empires of the Silk Road places Central Eurasia within a world historical framework and demonstrates why the region is central to understanding the history of civilization.

This volume offers perspectives from the general public in post-Soviet Central Asia and reconsiders the meaning and the legacy of Soviet administration in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. This study emphasizes that the way in which people in Central Asia reconcile their Soviet past to a great extent refers to the three-fold process of recollecting their everyday experiences, reflecting on their past from the perspective of their post-Soviet present, and re-imagining. These three elements influence memories and lead to selectivity in memory construction. This process also emphasizes the aspects of the Soviet era people choose to recall in positive and negative lights. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how Soviet life has influenced the identity and understanding of self among the population in post-Soviet Central Asian states.

The Chaghatay language was used across Central Asia from the 1400s through the 1950s. Chroniclers, clerks, and poets in modern-day Afghanistan, Xinjiang, Uzbekistan, and beyond wrote countless volumes of text in Chaghatay, from the famed Baburnama to the documents of everyday life. However, even more and more material in Chaghatay is becoming available to scholars, few are able to read the language with ease. An Introduction to Chaghatay is the first textbook in over a century to introduce this language to English-speaking students. This book is designed to build a foundation in reading Chaghatay without assuming any background knowledge on the part of the reader. These graded, cumulative lessons include common vocabulary, accessible grammar explanations, and examples of Chaghatay manuscripts. Authentic texts introduce the student to different genres, including hagiographies, documents, "stories of the prophets," and newspapers while introducing critical skills in paleography. Eric Schluessel is Assistant Professor of Chinese History and Politics at the University of Montana. He holds a PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University, an MA in Linguistics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and an MA in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University. He is the author of several articles on the history of Chinese Central Asia and is currently preparing a critical edition and translation of Mullah Musa Sayrami's Tarikh-i Hamidi, a chronicle of Xinjiang in the nineteenth century.

Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies analyses the role of religion in past and present understandings of Asia. Religion, and the history of its study in the modern academy, has exercised massive influence over Asian Studies fields in the past century. Asian Studies has in turn affected, and is increasingly shaping, the study of religion. Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies looks into this symbiotic relationship – both in current practice, and in the modern histories of both Orientalism and Area Studies. Each chapter of the book deals with one regional sub-discipline in Asian Studies, covering Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, South Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and Central Eurasian Studies. The chapters are integrated by shared themes that run through the past and present practice of Asian Studies, covering the role of state actors in originating Area Studies, the role of local scholarship in defining and developing it, the interaction between humanities and social science approaches, debates over the dominance of Western and/or modern categories and frameworks, the interaction of past and present and the role of religious actors and religious sensibilities in shaping Asian Studies.

Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Turkvölker was founded in 1980 by the Hungarian Turkologist György Hazai. The series deals with all aspects of Turkic language, culture and history, and has a broad temporal and regional scope. It welcomes manuscripts on Central, Northern, Western and Eastern Asia as well as parts of Europe, and allows for a wide time span from the first mention in the 6th century to modernity and present.