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Author: Arezou Azad
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191510696
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
This book is about a sacred place called Balkh, known to the ancient Greeks as Bactra. Located in the north of today's Afghanistan, along the silk road, Balkh was holy to many. The Prophet Zoroaster is rumoured to have died here, and during late antiquity, Balkh was the home of the Naw Bahār, a famed Buddhist temple and monastery. By the tenth century, Balkh had become a critical centre of Islamic learning and early poetry in the New Persian language that grew after the Islamic conquests and continues to be spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia today. In this book, Arezou Azad provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, which continues to exemplify age-old sanctity in the Persian-speaking world and the eastern lands of Islam generally. Azad focuses on the five centuries from the Islamic conquests in the eighth century to just before the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the crucial period in the emergence of Perso-Islamic historiography and Islamic legal thought. The book traces the development of 'sacred landscape', the notion that a place has a sensory meaning, as distinct from a purely topographical space. This opens up new possibilities for our understanding of Islamisation in the eastern Islamic lands, and specifically the transition from Buddhism to Islam. Azad offers a new look at the medieval local history of Balkh, the Faḍā"il-i Balkh, and analyses its creation of a sacred landscape for Balkh. In doing so, she provides a compelling example of how the sacredness of a place is perpetuated through narratives, irrespective of the dominant religion or religious strand of the time.
Author: Arezou Azad
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191510696
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book
Book Description
This book is about a sacred place called Balkh, known to the ancient Greeks as Bactra. Located in the north of today's Afghanistan, along the silk road, Balkh was holy to many. The Prophet Zoroaster is rumoured to have died here, and during late antiquity, Balkh was the home of the Naw Bahār, a famed Buddhist temple and monastery. By the tenth century, Balkh had become a critical centre of Islamic learning and early poetry in the New Persian language that grew after the Islamic conquests and continues to be spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia today. In this book, Arezou Azad provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, which continues to exemplify age-old sanctity in the Persian-speaking world and the eastern lands of Islam generally. Azad focuses on the five centuries from the Islamic conquests in the eighth century to just before the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the crucial period in the emergence of Perso-Islamic historiography and Islamic legal thought. The book traces the development of 'sacred landscape', the notion that a place has a sensory meaning, as distinct from a purely topographical space. This opens up new possibilities for our understanding of Islamisation in the eastern Islamic lands, and specifically the transition from Buddhism to Islam. Azad offers a new look at the medieval local history of Balkh, the Faḍā"il-i Balkh, and analyses its creation of a sacred landscape for Balkh. In doing so, she provides a compelling example of how the sacredness of a place is perpetuated through narratives, irrespective of the dominant religion or religious strand of the time.
Author: Arezou Azad
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191766954
Category : Balkh (Afghanistan)
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
Afghanistan has played a crucial role in shaping the history of Islam. This book provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, in today's northern Afghanistan, in the five centuries from the Islamic conquests of the eighth century to the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
Author: Mimi Hanaoka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107127033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
An innovative exploration of the local histories of the Persianate world and its preoccupation with identity, authority, and legitimacy.
Author: Eric Nelson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317107195
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
This volume explores the conceptualization and construction of sacred space in a wide variety of faith traditions: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and the religions of Japan. It deploys the notion of "layered landscapes" in order to trace the accretions of praxis and belief, the tensions between old and new devotional patterns, and the imposition of new religious ideas and behaviors on pre-existing religious landscapes in a series of carefully chosen locales: Cuzco, Edo, Geneva, Granada, Herat, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kanchipuram, Paris, Philadelphia, Prague, and Rome. Some chapters hone in on the process of imposing novel religious beliefs, while others focus on how vestiges of displaced faiths endured. The intersection of sacred landscapes with political power, the world of ritual, and the expression of broader cultural and social identity are also examined. Crucially, the volume reveals that the creation of sacred space frequently involved more than religious buildings and was a work of historical imagination and textual expression. While a book of contrasts as much as comparisons, the volume demonstrates that vital questions about the location of the sacred and its reification in the landscape were posed by religious believers across the early-modern world.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900443433X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 501
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Book Description
Cities of Medieval Iran brings together studies in urban geography, archaeology, and history of medieval Iranian cities, covering the millennium from 500 to 1500 AD, with a focus on urban actors themselves.
Author: Nile Green
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520294130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
"This book provides the first ever overview of the history and development of Islam in Afghanistan. It covers every era from the conversion of Afghanistan through the medieval and early modern periods to the present day. Based on primary sources in Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Urdu and Uzbek, its depth and scope of coverage is unrivalled by any existing publication on Afghanistan. As well as state-sponsored religion, the chapters cover such issues as the rise of Sufism, Sharia, women's religiosity, transnational Islamism and the Taliban. Islam has been one of the most influential social and political forces in Afghan history. Providing idioms and organizations for both anti-state and anti-foreign mobilization, Islam has proven to be a vital socio-political resource in modern Afghanistan. Even as it has been deployed as the national cement of a multi-ethnic 'Emirate' and then 'Islamic Republic,' Islam has been no less a destabilizing force in dividing Afghan society. Yet despite the universal scholarly recognition of the centrality of Islam to Afghan history, its developmental trajectories have received relatively little sustained attention outside monographs and essays devoted to particular moments or movements. To help develop a more comprehensive, comparative and developmental picture of Afghanistan's Islam from the eighth century to the present, this edited volume brings together specialists on different periods, regions and languages. Each chapter forms a case study 'snapshot' of the Islamic beliefs, practices, institutions and authorities of a particular time and place in Afghanistan"--Provided by publishe
Author: Jonathan L. Lee
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 797
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Book Description
A colossal history of Afghanistan from its earliest organization into a coherent state up to its turbulent present. Located at the intersection of Asia and the Middle East, Afghanistan has been strategically important for thousands of years. Its ancient routes and strategic position between India, Inner Asia, China, Persia, and beyond has meant the region has been subject to frequent invasions, both peaceful and military. As a result, modern Afghanistan is a culturally and ethnically diverse country, but one divided by conflict, political instability, and by mass displacements of its people. In this magisterial illustrated history, Jonathan L. Lee tells the story of how a small tribal confederacy in a politically and culturally significant but volatile region became a modern nation-state. Drawing on more than forty years of study, Lee places the current conflict in Afghanistan in its historical context and challenges many of the West’s preconceived ideas about the country. Focusing particularly on the powerful Durrani monarchy, which united the country in 1747 and ruled for nearly two and a half centuries, Lee chronicles the origins of the dynasty as clients of Safavid Persia and Mughal India: the reign of each ruler and their efforts to balance tribal, ethnic, regional, and religious factions; the struggle for social and constitutional reform; and the rise of Islamic and Communist factions. Along the way, he offers new cultural and political insights from Persian histories, the memoirs of Afghan government officials, British government and India Office archives, and recently released CIA reports and Wikileaks documents. He also sheds new light on the country’s foreign relations, its internal power struggles, and the impact of foreign military interventions such as the “War on Terror.”
Author: David C. Thomas
Publisher: Sydney University Press
ISBN: 1743325428
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398
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Book Description
The iconic minaret of Jām stands in a remote mountain valley in central Afghanistan, the finest surviving monument of the enigmatic 12th-century Ghūrid dynasty. The re-discovery of the minaret half a century ago prompted renewed interest in the Ghūrids, and this has intensified since their summer capital at Jām became Afghanistan’s first World Heritage site in 2002. Two seasons of archaeological fieldwork at Jām, the detailed analysis of satellite images and the innovative use of Google Earth as a cultural heritage management tool have resulted in a wealth of new information about known Ghūrid sites, and the identification of hundreds of previously undocumented archaeological sites across Afghanistan. Drawing inspiration from the Annales School and the concept of an ‘archipelagic landscape’, Thomas has used these data to re-assess the Ghūrids and generate a more nuanced understanding of this significant Early Islamic polity. In addition to complementing the événements which form the focus of the urban-based historical sources, the new archaeological data are used by Thomas to reconsider the urban characteristics of the Ghūrids’ summer capital. Throughout The Ebb and Flow of the Ghūrid Empire, Thomas uses this to explore the issues of Ghūrid identity, ideology and the sustainability of their polity.
Author: A.C.S. Peacock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857729462
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
A.C.S. Peacock is Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews, and holds a PhD in Oriental Studies from Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is the author of Early Seljuq History: A New Interpretation (2010), and is the co-editor of The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East (I.B.Tauris, 2012) and Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art, Literature and Culture from Early Islam to Qajar Persia (I.B.Tauris, 2013).D.G. Tor is Assistant Professor of Medieval Middle Eastern History at the University of Notre Dame, and holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is the author of The Great Selkuq Sultanate and the Formation of Islamic Civilization: A Thematic History (forthcoming) and Violent Order: Religious Warfare, Chivalry and the 'Ayyar Phenomenon in the Medieval Islamic World (2007).
Author: Robert D. Crews
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067428609X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Rugged, remote, riven by tribal rivalries and religious violence, Afghanistan seems to many a forsaken country frozen in time. Robert Crews presents a bold challenge to this misperception. During their long history, Afghans have engaged and connected with a wider world, occupying a pivotal position in the Cold War and the decades that followed.
