“Amanat: Women’s Writing From Kazakhstan”, edited by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Though death looms in Amanat: Women’s Writing From Kazakhstan, the collection sounds a celebratory note.
“The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia: From the Pre-Islamic to the Islamic Period”, edited by DG Tor and Minoru Inaba
Of the three empires that dominated late antiquity, Rome, China and Iran, it is the last whose legacy we understand least. “Proportionally to its historical significance, Iranian Inner Asia in this period is probably the least known and most grossly understudied time and place in world history,” writes Minoru Inaba in the introductory essay to…
“Qarakhanid Roads to China A History of Sino-Turkic Relations” by Dilnoza Duturaeva
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Dilnoza Duturaeva, an Uzbek historian at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales challenges the conventional narrative that the Silk Road declined following the collapse of the Tang dynasty in 907, and remained in eclipse until the establishment of the Mongol empire 250 years later. While…
“The Stone Tower: Ptolemy, the Silk Road, and a 2,000-year-old Riddle” by Riaz Dean
“One might ask,” begins Riaz Dean in the introduction to his new book The Stone Tower: Ptolemy, the Silk Road, and a 2,000-year-old Riddle, “how this book is different from the many others about the Silk Road.”
“Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb” by Togzhan Kassenova
Kazakhstan, like Ukraine and Belarus, temporarily became a potential nuclear weapons power after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviets had deployed 104 SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) containing more than 1400 nuclear warheads in the Kazakh steppe. These were the largest and most threatening land-based Soviet nuclear weapons, and their future…
“Mapping the Great Game” by Riaz Dean
The “Great Game” is the name commonly assigned to the 19th-century’s strategic rivalry between Great Britain and Russia for predominance in Central Asia. It was a geopolitical clash between two expansionist empires–the world’s greatest sea power versus its largest land power. Riaz Dean’s Mapping the Great Game is about one aspect of that struggle: the…
“The Lost Fragrance of Infinity” by Moin Mir
Qaraar Ali is a young craftsman in love with the beautiful Abeerah, cherished daughter of a General in the Mughal army. A wanderer, he seeks the company of poets and spends his time visiting the shrines of 18th century Delhi. Trouble is brewing as Persia’s Nadir Shah is gathering a large army and heading towards…
“Eurasia without Borders: The Dream of a Leftist Literary Commons, 1919–1943” by Katerina Clark
Writers did a lot of shouting during the establishment of the Soviet Union. The literary salons being empty, they had to harangue the people, be heard over the crowd, and, as Katerina Clark wryly points out in Eurasia Without Borders, they had to shout because their public could not always understand the language they spoke.
“Recollection of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants” by Lucy Atkinson
To appreciate Lucy Atkinson as the most intrepid of all Victorian women explorers one only has to read her discreet allusion to giving birth after 150 kms of horseback riding across a waterless steppe: “I was in expectation of a little stranger, whom I thought might arrive about the end of December or the beginning…
Podcast with Edmund Richardson, author of “Alexandria, the Quest for the Lost City”
The story of Alexander the Great has inspired conquerors and would-be conquerors throughout history. Alexander’s sweep through the Middle East and Central Asia left behind evidence of his mark on history—namely, in the several cities that he founded, and that sprung up to govern the kingdoms he left behind.
Podcast with Jagjeet Lally, author of “India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World”
When we think about modern trade, we tend to think about the sea: port cities and large ships carrying goods back and forth. It’s a story that tends to put Europe at the center, as the pinnacle of shipping and maritime technology. Jagjeet Lally’s India and the Silk Roads: The History of a Trading World…
Podcast with Marie Favereau, author of “The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World”
Most of our understanding of the Mongol Empire begins and ends with Chinggis Khan and his sweep across Asia. His name is now included among conquerors whose efforts burn bright and burn out quick: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and so on.
“Alexandria, the Quest for the Lost City” by Edmund Richardson
In the 11th-century Persian classic Book of Alexander, the great world conqueror goes to the farthest reaches of the world, only to have a wiseman show him what he was looking for, in a mirror—self-awareness. But as Edmund Richardson shows here in his powerful retelling of the life of Charles Masson, we do not live…
“Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present” by Adeeb Khalid
The cover of Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present, with its photo of the massive walls of the Ark Fortress in Bukhara, is something of a bait and switch. The book flies through that period implied by picture: the “imperial conquests” of the subtitle are not those of Genghis…
“The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World” by Marie Favereau
There is an aphorism, reported to have been spoken by minister Yelu Chucai to Ogodei Khan, Chinggis Khan’s first successor: “You can conquer an empire on horseback, but you cannot govern it on horseback.” Writers on the Mongols are fond of this line, usually inserted when Mongols begin to set up administrations in the settled…
