Jo-Ann Gross - Böcker

Scholarship on the Muslim world has recently begun to pay increased attention to non-literary genres of documentation as sources for historical research. Genealogical writings are one form of such documentation that has demonstrated significant potential for addressing a wide range of research concerns, particularly for topics that receive little attention in historical chronicles and other state-centered narrative sources. However, while genealogical documentation has received some attention in scholarship on the Arab world, it remains mostly unstudied in scholarship on Persianate societies. The chapters in this book offer reflections on theoretical and methodological issues concerning the study of genealogical documentation, combined with case studies based primarily on previously unpublished, unstudied source materials. The topics explored span the full breadth of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia to the Gujarat region of India, utilizing sources dating from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. The book will be of significant interest to scholars and students of Islamic history and the Persianate ecumene as well as readers in other fields interested in comparative research demonstrating the use of genealogical documentation as historical sources.

Scholarship on the Muslim world has recently begun to pay increased attention to non-literary genres of documentation as sources for historical research. Genealogical writings are one form of such documentation that has demonstrated significant potential for addressing a wide range of research concerns, particularly for topics that receive little attention in historical chronicles and other state-centered narrative sources. However, while genealogical documentation has received some attention in scholarship on the Arab world, it remains mostly unstudied in scholarship on Persianate societies. The chapters in this book offer reflections on theoretical and methodological issues concerning the study of genealogical documentation, combined with case studies based primarily on previously unpublished, unstudied source materials. The topics explored span the full breadth of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia to the Gujarat region of India, utilizing sources dating from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. The book will be of significant interest to scholars and students of Islamic history and the Persianate ecumene as well as readers in other fields interested in comparative research demonstrating the use of genealogical documentation as historical sources.

Central Asia is distinctive in its role as a frontier region in which a unique diversity of cultural, religious, and political traditions exist. This collection of essays by expert scholars in a range of disciplines focuses on the formation of ethnic, religious, and national identities in Muslim societies of Central Asia, thus furthering our general understanding of the history and culture of this significant region.This study includes several geopolitical regions-Chinese Central Asia, Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan, Transoxiana and Khurasan-and covers historical periods from the fifteenth century to the present. Drawing on scholarship in anthropology, religion, history, literature, and language studies, Muslims in Central Asia argues for an interdisciplinary, inter-regional dialog in the development of new approaches to understanding the Muslim societies in Central Asia. The authors creatively examine the social construction of identities as expressed through literature, Islamic discourse, historical texts, ethnic labels, and genealogies, and explore how such identities are formed, changed, and adopted through time.Contributors. Hamid Algar, Muriel Atkin, Walter Feldman, Dru C. Gladney, Edward J. Lazzerini, Beatrice Forbes Manz, Christopher Murphy, Oliver Roy, Isenbike Togan