Download PDF | Lost Enlightenment Central Asia's Golden Age From The Arab Conquest To Tamerlane, Princeton University Press ( 2013).
686 Pages
Preface
This book was written not because I knew the answers to the questions it poses, or even because I had any particular knowledge of the many subjects and fields it touches upon, but because I myself wanted to read such a book. It is a book I would have preferred someone else to have written so I could enjoy reading it without the work of authorship. But no one else took up the assignment. Central Asia as yet has no chronicler comparable to Joseph Needham, the great historian from Clare College, Cambridge, whose magisterial, twenty-seven-volume Science and Civilization in China has no equal for any other people or world region. And so I backed into the task, in the hope that my work might inspire some future Needham from the region or from among scholars abroad.
The questions raised in this book became my constant companions for nearly two decades and over several scores of trips through every corner of the region—trips that included scorching treks in the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan and being snowbound for nearly a week in the Pamirs at minus 40 degrees. Enormous, predigital piles of notes made entrance to my office a challenge that few chose to face. Now, with the volume done, I find myself saying, with Edward Gibbon in the preface to his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that “I have ventured, perhaps too hastily, to commit to the press a work which in every sense of the word deserves the epithet of imperfect.’! And, by the way, I know all too well that Iam no Gibbon.
It would be more than a stretch to say that I am qualified to have undertaken this book. But at least I can claim a long-term interest in the subject. The Persian world first opened to me when, at age eighteen, I met my freshman roommate at Yale, Hooshang Nasr, whose father was mayor of Tehran under the shah. “Hoosh” went on to become a dedicated medical doctor who loyally served his country. My first contact with the Turkic world began through archaeological work at Gordium in Turkey, where Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot, and eventually extended over several seasons spent mapping ancient roads in Anatolia. Neither of these links qualified me as an expert on anything, but from these early contacts to the present it has been natural for me to view both the Persian and the Turkish worlds as places inhabited by exceptionally interesting people, among whom are many good friends of mine.
The number of scholars and experts who have plowed the separate furrows of this book is staggering. It is fashionable in some quarters to fault Western and Russian scholars of the past two centuries for their “orientalism.” But without their painstaking research, the larger story of the intellectual effervescence of the Islamic East would never have become known to the world. This has been a thoroughly an international effort. Among the many participants are French savants like Jean Pierre Abel-Remusat, Farid Jabre, Etienne de la Vaissiére, and Frantz Grenet, not to mention the many authors of the publications, since 1922, of the Délégation archéologique frangaise en Afghanistan. In Germany Heinrich Suter, Adam Mez, and others founded a tradition that continues today in the likes of Josef van Ess, Gotthard Strohmaier, and a host of younger scholars from both the former East and West, while the Czech Republic claims the great literary scholar Jan Ripka.
Across the English Channel, adventurers Armenius Vambery and Sir Aurel Stein, both of them immigrants from Hungary, sparked the imagination of the English-speaking world and of all Europe with the accounts of their explorations in Greater Central Asia. Then came linguists like Edward Granville Browne and translator Edward Fitzgerald, who together did much to bring the treasures of regional literature to broader notice. In the twentieth century the awesomely prolific Clifford Edmund Bosworth from Manchester wrote with insight on scores of topics essential to a book like this, while Georgina Herrmann and her colleagues extended this tradition into archaeology.
Patricia Crone and other British scholars have advanced the study of many philosophers from the region, while E. S. Kennedy did authoritative work on the scientists. American scholars should also be noted, especially Richard N. Frye and Richard W. Bulliet, whose research on Nishapur, Bukhara, and the broader region inspired a generation of historians. Such gifted linguists and translators as Robert Dankoff and Dick Davis have opened windows on unknown or underappreciated masterpieces. Dimitri Gutas and other distinguished scholars have analyzed the writings of Farabi and other Central Asian thinkers who wrote in Arabic.
Raphael Pumpelly and Fredrik Hiebert should also be saluted for their pioneering archaeological research that traced the first grain for bread to a site in what is now Turkmenistan. In addition to all these, a host of younger scholars, especially in Europe and the United States, are on the lip of transforming our understanding of the region and time.
Iranian scholarship also continues to make important contributions. Tehran scholars have undertaken the monumental task of locating, editing, and publishing the complete works of Ibn Sina and several other major thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. They are also conducting important research on the various traditions of Sufism. Persian scholarship also thrives in emigration, where it has given rise to such valuable productions as the New York-based Encyclopedia Iranica, not to mention distinguished luminaries like Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University, also in the United States.
The Indian subcontinent, with its deep cultural ties with Central Asia, has produced important editions and English translations from the Arabic works of Central Asian authors and has given rise to valuable studies on specific figures, notably Biruni, who spent time in Kashmir. Japanese scholars, meanwhile, have developed a strong base in language and linguistic studies and have been among the world leaders in the extent and depth of their recent research on Buddhism in Central Asia.
Russian research did not begin with Vasilii Bartold (Wilhelm Barthold), but he brought it to a high level from which it has only rarely descended since. A superior linguist with a passion for detailed chronology, the austere and tireless Bartold spent a lifetime poring through forgotten texts in medieval Arabic and Persian and reconstructing the outlines of a lost history. His research remains today the gold standard for the region. After his death in 1930 his students not only carried on his work but extended it into new areas, notably archaeology and the history of science.
Few mourn the passing of the Soviet Union, but a monument should nonetheless be raised to the research on Central Asia that its Academy of Sciences supported. The special strengths of this research lay in the history of science, literature, and archaeology. Multiyear projects collected neglected manuscripts, surveyed whole regions for archaeological remains, and reconstructed the outlines of the lives and work of great figures from the past. Names like Mikhail E. Masson, Galina A. Pugachenkova, P. G. Bulgakov, and lurii A. Zavadovskii are prominent among those Soviet scholars who rescued Central Asia from oblivion. Their successors within the region continue to advance important research on many fronts. Ashraf Akhmedov, B. A. Abdukhalimov, Edvard Rtveladze, and Otanazar Matyakubov in Uzbekistan; Gurtnyyaz Hanmyradov in Turkmenistan, and K. Olimov and N. N. Negmatov in Tajikistan all carry on this tradition of high scholarship and, increasingly, make its fruits available in the languages of the region.
Thanks to them, and to many others, a younger generation of highly qualified scholars is emerging across the region. Trained by leaders of the last Soviet generation of scholars and in regular contact with their counterparts in Europe, America, Iran, and the Middle East, these talented young researchers are raising fresh questions and arriving at unexpected answers. Doubtless, the story that follows will look very different as it is deepened and corrected by the fruits of their investigations over the coming decades.
This book has benefited from comments and assistance from a number of colleagues and friends. Among these are Anna Akasoy of RuhrUniversitat, Bochum; Christopher Beckwith of Indiana University; Jed Z. Buchwald of California Institute of Technology; Farhad Daftary and Hakim Elnazarov of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London; Gurtnyyaz Hanmyradov, rector of Turkmenistan’s National University; Deborah Klimburg-Salter of the Universitat Wien; Azim Nanji of Stanford University; Morris Rossabi of Columbia University; Edvard Rtveladze of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan; Pulat Shozimov of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan; Nathan Camillo Sidoli of Waseda University in Japan; and Sassan Tababatai of Boston University. Each of these people offered generous personal advice and assistance, often taking time to instruct me on matters I should have known about in the first place. In many cases their keen-eyed reading of the manuscript led to the correction of errors of fact and interpretation. Many others doubtless remain, but these are solely my responsibility as author, not theirs.
This list could be infinitely extended, but the point is clear: that whatever strengths this book may possess trace to the research of scores of dedicated scholars in many countries. Together they have been my professors, and I am profoundly grateful to them.
The history of American publishing at its best is a history of great editors. Among the genuine stars of that firmament is Peter Dougherty of Princeton University Press, who gently but firmly encouraged this project beginning in 2006. His colleague and my editor, Rob Tempio, brought a priceless combination of creative imagination and high professionalism to the final revision, design, and production of the book. He turned what could have been a chore into a thoroughly pleasant process. Marja Oksajarvi Snyder, a professional bibliographer specializing on Inner Asia, handled with skill and a good eye the time-consuming task of locating or commissioning, selecting, and assembling images for the illustrations and gaining the necessary reproduction rights. Anita O’Brien undertook the copyediting with patience, tenacity, and precision.
Very few of the works on which this books draws are available electronically. Thanks are therefore due to the staff of the library at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, especially Barbara Prophet and Kate Picard of the Inter-Library Loan department, who found and assembled hundreds of sources from all over the world. Over many years the staff of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, notably Katarina Lesandric and Paulette Fung, provided timely support to the project.
Above all, my wife Christina, children Anna and Elizabeth, their spouses Patrick Townsend and Holger Scharfenberg, and their children—my grandchildren—patiently tolerated the entire undertaking for longer than anyone should have had to do. This book is dedicated to them all, with deep love and gratitude.
A NOTE ON NAMES, SPELLINGS, AND TRANSLITERATIONS
This book is rooted, in the first instance, in the Persian, Turkic, and Arabic worlds. All three languages present challenges for anyone wishing to render their proper names and specific terms into English. This is vastly complicated by the fact that many relevant names and terms have become known mainly through the works of scholars writing in English, French, German, or Russian, who have standardized them in accordance with the particular rules of their own languages, in the process often distorting the originals.
Thus, to take just one example, is the region of northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and western Afghanistan to be called Khwarism, Khwarizm, or Khwarasm, after Persian usage, or Khorezm, as transliterated from Russian? Any of the first three will be useful when scouring the indexes of books by Persianists, while Khorezm must be used for Russian indexes. Since sources in regional languages or by scholars using regional languages are increasingly important, I have chosen the form Khwarazm. And should we refer to the Prophet's grandson as Hosain, Hossein, Husain, Husayin, Husein, Huseyin, Hussain, Hussayin, Huseyn, Hussein, Husseyin, or Husseyn? In this and other cases, I have sought to use whatever version is most familiar to an English-speaking audience.
Personal names like this pose a particular problem. ‘The great St. Petersburg orientalist was baptized Wilhelm Barthold, the name used in the English translations of his works, but he spent his career in a Russian environment and signed his works Vasilii Bartold. I have chosen to use Bartold, except when citing English editions that use the original German spelling of his name. The name of the dread Mongol khan and conqueror appears variously in the literature as Gengis, Genghis, Genghiz, Gengiz, Chinggis, and Chingiz. An informal poll of experts left me with Chinggis. For nearly every language there exists an accepted system for transliterating into English, but these often result in spellings that only a linguist could decipher. I have solved all these diverse problems in favor of whatever is most familiar to an English-speaking audience.
Arabic and Persian names pose a particular challenge. By the time he has been identified in terms of his father, his son, and his place of origin (nisba), a man can end up with a name with six or more elements. Thus we encounter Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina, and Ghiyath al-Din Abu’l-Fath ‘Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nishapuri al-Khayyami. But contemporary nonspecialist readers of English demand shortened names, which leaves the reader with Ibn Sina, and Omar Khayyam. Similarly, contemporaries doubtless referred to the author of the famed Algebra as Muhammad ibn Musa, but for several hundred years scholars have chosen to refer to him by his nisba, hence “Khwarazmi”; I have followed their practice. Latin versions of names are cited but not widely used in the text. When referring to figures who are well-known around the world, I have followed common English usage, hence Ibn Sina and not Ibn Sino.
Whole books can be, and have been, written about the transliteration or transcription of Arabic or Persian proper nouns. Even though the formal systems of transliteration to various languages devised by linguists would produce results that would satisfy most scholars, they force general readers to confront letters, markings, and spellings that are all but incomprehensible to them. Hence Romanization is here achieved through simple transcription, which has been modified as necessary to conform to the rules of English orthography or conventional English usage. Thus the reader will encounter the thinker Omar Khayyam but not Umar Hayyam or Omar Chajjam.
Linguists and other specialists will doubtless rue the absence of diacritical markings on most words and names throughout the text. Such markings as the breve, accent mark, circumflex, hacek, and diaeresis can be useful aids to pronunciation. But they can also put off readers while giving little or no benefit in return. And so diacritical markings have been deleted for Central Asian names. Those readers who long for them are free to add them by hand, as a medieval copyist might have done.
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