Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires

Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires PDF Author: Ali Anooshahr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190693568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
"This book studies how fifteenth and sixteenth century chroniclers grappled with the Turkestani or Turco-Mongol origin stories of their patrons in the newly forming states of the Ottomans, Safavids, Shibanids, Moghuls, and Mughals"--

Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires

Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires PDF Author: Ali Anooshahr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190693568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
"This book studies how fifteenth and sixteenth century chroniclers grappled with the Turkestani or Turco-Mongol origin stories of their patrons in the newly forming states of the Ottomans, Safavids, Shibanids, Moghuls, and Mughals"--

Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives

Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives PDF Author: Maaike van Berkel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004315713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity PDF Author: Nicola Di Cosmo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108547001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1284

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Book Description
Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.

Eurasian Crossroads

Eurasian Crossroads PDF Author: James A. Millward
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231139243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Presents a comprehensive study of the central Asian region of Xinjiang's history and people from antiquity to the present. Discusses Xinjiang's rich environmental, cultural and ethno-political heritage.

Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Hyun Jin Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110719041X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
A comparative and interdisciplinary study of ancient and medieval Eurasian empires using historical, philological and archaeological evidence.

Empires of Ancient Eurasia

Empires of Ancient Eurasia PDF Author: Craig Benjamin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107114969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Introduces a crucial period of world history when the vast exchange network of the Silk Roads connected most of Eurasia.

Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires

Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires PDF Author: Ali Anooshahr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190693576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
It has long been known that the origins of the early modern dynasties of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, Mongols, and Shibanids in the sixteenth century go back to "Turco-Mongol" or "Turcophone" war bands. However, too often has this connection been taken at face value, usually along the lines of ethno-linguistic continuity. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires argues that the connection between a mythologized "Turkestani" or "Turco-Mongol" origin and these dynasties was not simply and objectively present as fact. Rather, much creative energy was unleashed by courtiers and leaders from Bosnia to Bihar (with Bukhara and Badakhshan along the way) in order to manipulate and invent the ancestry of the founders of these dynasties. Through constructed genealogies, nascent empires founded on disorganized military and political events were reduced to clear and stable categories. With proper family trees in place and their power legitimized, leaders became far removed from their true identities as bands of armed men and transformed into warrior kings. This created a longstanding pattern of false histories created by the intellectuals of the day. Essentially, one can even say that Turco-Mongol progenitors did not beget the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Mongol, and Shibanid states. Quite the contrary, one can instead say that historians writing in these empires were the ancestors of the "Turco-Mongol" lineage of their founders. Using one or more specimens of Persian historiography, in a series of five case studies, each focusing on one of these early polities, Ali Anooshahr shows how "Turkestan", "Central Asia", or "Turco-Mongol" functioned as literary tropes in the political discourse of the time.

The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History

The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History PDF Author: Thomas T. Allsen
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812201078
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
From antiquity to the nineteenth century, the royal hunt was a vital component of the political cultures of the Middle East, India, Central Asia, and China. Besides marking elite status, royal hunts functioned as inspection tours and imperial progresses, a means of asserting kingly authority over the countryside. The hunt was, in fact, the "court out-of-doors," an open-air theater for displays of majesty, the entertainment of guests, and the bestowal of favor on subjects. In the conduct of interstate relations, great hunts were used to train armies, show the flag, and send diplomatic signals. Wars sometimes began as hunts and ended as celebratory chases. Often understood as a kind of covert military training, the royal hunt was subject to the same strict discipline as that applied in war and was also a source of innovation in military organization and tactics. Just as human subjects were to recognize royal power, so was the natural kingdom brought within the power structure by means of the royal hunt. Hunting parks were centers of botanical exchange, military depots, early conservation reserves, and important links in local ecologies. The mastery of the king over nature served an important purpose in official renderings: as a manifestation of his possession of heavenly good fortune he could tame the natural world and keep his kingdom safe from marauding threats, human or animal. The exchanges of hunting partners—cheetahs, elephants, and even birds—became diplomatic tools as well as serving to create an elite hunting culture that transcended political allegiances and ecological frontiers. This sweeping comparative work ranges from ancient Egypt to India under the Raj. With a magisterial command of contemporary sources, literature, material culture, and archaeology, Thomas T. Allsen chronicles the vast range of traditions surrounding this fabled royal occupation.

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West PDF Author: Daniel G. König
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191057010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West provides an insight into how the Arabic-Islamic world perceived medieval Western Europe in an age that is usually associated with the rise and expansion of Islam, the Spanish Reconquista, and the Crusades. Previous scholarship has maintained that the Arabic-Islamic world regarded Western Europe as a cultural backwater at the periphery of civilization that clung to a superseded religion. It holds mental barriers imposed by Islam responsible for the Muslim world's arrogant and ignorant attitude towards its northern neighbours. This study refutes this view by focussing on the mechanisms of transmission and reception that characterized the flow of information between both cultural spheres. By explaining how Arabic-Islamic scholars acquired and processed data on medieval Western Europe, it traces the two-fold 'emergence' of Latin-Christian Europe — a sphere that increasingly encroached upon the Mediterranean and therefore became more and more important in Arabic-Islamic scholarly literature. Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords 'ignorance', 'indifference', and 'arrogance'. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian sphere reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.

Universal Empire

Universal Empire PDF Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139560956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
The claim by certain rulers to universal empire has a long history stretching as far back as the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires. This book traces its various manifestations in classical antiquity, the Islamic world, Asia and Central America as well as considering seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European discussions of international order. As such it is an exercise in comparative world history combining a multiplicity of approaches, from ancient history, to literary and philosophical studies, to the history of art and international relations and historical sociology. The notion of universal, imperial rule is presented as an elusive and much coveted prize among monarchs in history, around which developed forms of kingship and political culture. Different facets of the phenomenon are explored under three, broadly conceived, headings: symbolism, ceremony and diplomatic relations; universal or cosmopolitan literary high-cultures; and, finally, the inclination to present universal imperial rule as an expression of cosmic order.