Land Beyond the River

Land Beyond the River PDF Author: Monica Whitlock
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 146687239X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Along the banks of the river once called Oxus lie the heartlands of Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Catapulted into the news by events in Afghanistan, just across the water, these strategically important, intriguing and beautiful countries remain almost completely unknown to the outside world. In this book, Monica Whitlock goes far beyond the headlines. Using eyewitness accounts, unpublished letters and firsthand reporting, she enters into the lives of the Central Asians and reveals a dramatic and moving human story unfolding over three generations. There is Muhammadjan, called 'Hindustani', a diligent seminary student in the holy city of Bukhara until the 1917 revolution tore up the old order. Exiled to Siberia as a shepherd and then conscripted into the Red Army, he survived to become the inspiration for a new generation of clerics. Henrika was one of tens of thousands of Poles who walked and rode through Central Asia on their way to a new life in Iran, where she lives to this day. Then there were the proud Pioneer children who grew up in the certainty that the Soviet Union would last forever, only to find themselves in a new world that they had never imagined. In Central Asia, the extraordinary is commonplace and there is not a family without a remarkable story to tell. Land Beyond the River is both a chronicle of a century and a clear-eyed, authoritative view of contemporary events.

Land Beyond the River

Land Beyond the River PDF Author: Monica Whitlock
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 146687239X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Get Book Here

Book Description
Along the banks of the river once called Oxus lie the heartlands of Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Catapulted into the news by events in Afghanistan, just across the water, these strategically important, intriguing and beautiful countries remain almost completely unknown to the outside world. In this book, Monica Whitlock goes far beyond the headlines. Using eyewitness accounts, unpublished letters and firsthand reporting, she enters into the lives of the Central Asians and reveals a dramatic and moving human story unfolding over three generations. There is Muhammadjan, called 'Hindustani', a diligent seminary student in the holy city of Bukhara until the 1917 revolution tore up the old order. Exiled to Siberia as a shepherd and then conscripted into the Red Army, he survived to become the inspiration for a new generation of clerics. Henrika was one of tens of thousands of Poles who walked and rode through Central Asia on their way to a new life in Iran, where she lives to this day. Then there were the proud Pioneer children who grew up in the certainty that the Soviet Union would last forever, only to find themselves in a new world that they had never imagined. In Central Asia, the extraordinary is commonplace and there is not a family without a remarkable story to tell. Land Beyond the River is both a chronicle of a century and a clear-eyed, authoritative view of contemporary events.

Beyond the Oxus

Beyond the Oxus PDF Author: Monica Whitlock
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780719564130
Category : Tajikistan
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Along the banks of the river once called Oxus lie the heartlands of Central Asia: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Catapulted into the news by events in Afghanistan, just across the water, these strategically important, intriguing and beautiful countries remain almost completely unknown to the outside world. One diligent seminary student in the holy city of Bukhara was exhiled to Siberia as a shepherd in the 1917 revolution and then conscripted into the Red Army. Tens of thousands of Poles walked and rode through Central Asia on their way to a new life in Iran. In this region, the extraordinary is commonplace and there is not a family without a remarkable story to tell. Here Monica Whitlock goes far beyond the headlines. Using eyewitness accounts, unpublished letters and first-hand reporting, she enteres into the lives of the Central Asians and reveals a dramatic and moving story unfolding over three generations. Beyond the Oxus is both a chronicle of a century and a clear-eyed, authoritative view of contemporary events, taking us beyond the common cliches and prejudices about both the Soviet Union and the Muslim world.

Beyond the Oxus: Archaeology, Art & Architecture of Central Asia

Beyond the Oxus: Archaeology, Art & Architecture of Central Asia PDF Author: Edgar Knobloch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This Is A Full Account Of The Historical And Cultural Development Of Western Turkestan, An Intriguing Crossroads Of Civilisation, A Land Roughly Between Amu Darya And Syr Darya Rivers, Bounded On The West By The Aral Sea And On The South-East By The Pamir Mountains. Number Of Maps, Plans And Illustrations, Condition Good.

Hidden Caliphate

Hidden Caliphate PDF Author: Waleed Ziad
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674248813
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Sufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual, and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world. In a pathbreaking work combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Waleed Ziad examines the development across Asia of Muslim revivalist networks from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At the center of the story are the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis, who inspired major reformist movements and articulated effective social responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power amid European colonialism. In a time of political upheaval, the Mujaddidis fused Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Indic literary traditions, mystical virtuosity, popular religious practices, and urban scholasticism in a unified yet flexible expression of Islam. The Mujaddidi ÒHidden Caliphate,Ó as it was known, brought cohesion to diverse Muslim communities from Delhi through Peshawar to the steppes of Central Asia. And the legacy of Mujaddidi Sufis continues to shape the Muslim world, as their institutional structures, pedagogies, and critiques have worked their way into leading social movements from Turkey to Indonesia, and among the Muslims of China. By shifting attention away from court politics, colonial actors, and the standard narrative of the ÒGreat Game,Ó Ziad offers a new vision of Islamic sovereignty. At the same time, he demonstrates the pivotal place of the Afghan Empire in sustaining this vast inter-Asian web of scholastic and economic exchange. Based on extensive fieldwork across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan at madrasas, Sufi monasteries, private libraries, and archives, Hidden Caliphate reveals the long-term influence of Mujaddidi reform and revival in the eastern Muslim world, bringing together seemingly disparate social, political, and intellectual currents from the Indian Ocean to Siberia.

The World of the Oxus Civilization

The World of the Oxus Civilization PDF Author: Bertille Lyonnet
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351757822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 967

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Book Description
This collection of essays presents a synthesis of current research on the Oxus Civilization, which rose and developed at the turn of the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC in Central Asia. First discovered in the 1970s, the Oxus Civilization, or the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), has engendered many different interpretations, which are explored in this volume by an international group of archaeologists and researchers. Contributors cover all aspects of this fascinating Bronze Age culture: architecture; material culture; grave goods; religion; migrations; and trade and interactions with neighboring civilizations, from Mesopotamia to the Indus, and the Gulf to the northern steppes. Chapters also examine the Oxus Civilization’s roots in previous local cultures, explore its environmental and chronological context, or the possibly coveted metal sources, and look into the reasons for its decline. The World of the Oxus Civilization offers a broad and fascinating examination of this society, and provides an invaluable updated resource for anyone working on the culture, history, and archaeology of this region and on the multiple interactions at work at that time in the ancient Near East.

The Road to Oxiana

The Road to Oxiana PDF Author: Robert Byron
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Begin a voyage through Persia and Afghanistan with renowned explorer Robert Byron in 'The Road to Oxiana'.This travelog recounts Byron's ten-month adventure, immersing readers in the rich tapestry of the Middle East, from Venice to Peshawar. As Byron travels through vibrant landscapes and encounters diverse cultures, he showcases his extensive knowledge of the region's architectural wonders. From the awe-inspiring Mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah to the majestic ruins of Persepolis, his vivid descriptions transport readers to these timeless sites.

Polymaths of Islam

Polymaths of Islam PDF Author: James Pickett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501750259
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Polymaths of Islam analyzes the social and intellectual power of religious leaders who created a shared culture that integrated Central Asia, Iran, and India from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth. James Pickett demonstrates that Islamic scholars were simultaneously mystics and administrators, judges and occultists, physicians and poets. This integrated understanding of the world of Islamic scholarship unlocks a different way of thinking about transregional exchange networks. Pickett reveals a Persian-language cultural sphere that transcended state boundaries and integrated a spectacularly vibrant Eurasia that is invisible from published sources alone. Through a high cultural complex that he terms the "Persian cosmopolis" or "Persianate sphere," Pickett argues that an intersection of diverse disciplines shaped geographical trajectories across and between political states. In Polymaths of Islam he paints a comprehensive, colorful, and often contradictory portrait of mosque and state in the age of empire.

Mapping the Middle East

Mapping the Middle East PDF Author: Zayde Antrim
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780239548
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Mapping the Middle East explores the many ways people have visualized the vast area lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Oxus and Indus River Valleys over the past millennium. By analyzing maps produced from the eleventh century on, Zayde Antrim emphasizes the deep roots of mapping in a region too often considered unexamined and unchanging before the modern period. As Antrim argues, better-known maps from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—a period coinciding with European colonialism and the rise of the nation-state—not only obscure this rich past, but also constrain visions for the region’s future. Organized chronologically, Mapping the Middle East addresses the medieval “Realm of Islam;” the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire; French and British colonialism through World War I; nationalism in modern Turkey, Iran, and Israel/Palestine; and alternative geographies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Vivid color illustrations throughout allow readers to compare the maps themselves with Antrim’s analysis. Much more than a conventional history of cartography, Mapping the Middle East is an incisive critique of the changing relationship between maps and belonging in a dynamic world region over the past thousand years.

The Khyber Pass

The Khyber Pass PDF Author: Paddy Docherty
Publisher: Union Square Press
ISBN: 1402756968
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Thirty miles long, and in places no more than sixteen meters wide, the Pass is the principal route through the great mountain borderlands between India and Central Asia -- and the path of invasion for generations of conquerors. In this ground-breaking book, Paddy Docherty charts its remarkable story -- one which involves so many of the world's great leaders and civilizations, from the influential Persian kings to Alexander the Great, from the White Huns to Genghis Khan, not to mention the Ancient Greeks and countless tribes of nomads and barbarians. He paints an illuminating picture of mountain warriors and religious visionaries, artists, poets and scientists as well as describing how around the Pass emerged three of the great world religions -- Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam. He also depicts the Pass' more modern significance as a lawless region of gunsmiths, drug markets and as a terrorist hideout. Just a few years after the Soviet Union was defeated by the Afghan Mujahideen, many thousands of soldiers from the United States, Britain and other nations are struggling to control Afghanistan. Through his own travels in this true frontier region Paddy Docherty brings this epic history into the twenty-first century.

The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate

The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate PDF Author: G. Le Strange
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107600146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 597

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Book Description
Meticulously researched, this volume examines the Mesopotamia and Persia along with the nearer parts of central Asia.