A Gradually Growing Area of Interest

Filling in the Blank Spaces on the Globe

I have discovered the most perfect way to get rid of someone who is boring you. Let’s say you are at a party and have been button-holed by an annoying guest. How do you politely escape? Tell this unwanted person that you have over the past few years become more and more interested in Central Asian history and culture. That will stop a conversation dead! Problem solved!

And yet, it is true. I have decided I won’t bore you in person. But I will write a post about my relatively new interest in a part of the world that was for most of my adult life was little more than a somewhat troubled spot on the map about which I knew nothing. (As an aside, I thought I had a good grasp on the world’s geography by the time I graduated from high school. But if I had to name the countries of Africa, or the ten largest cities in China, or, until recently, any of the major cities in Central Asia, I would be lost.) But a desire to fill in the “blank spaces” in my mental map of the world is how why I became interested in Central Asia.

How entrance into this particularly capacious rabbit hole was achieved is a little unclear. For some reason, about two years ago, I started watching a few YouTube history videos on Alexander the Great and his wars in Asia, and I became interested in the Greeks who moved into Bactria. When I hear about Bactria, I don’t think of a place. Bactria is about as real to me as Narnia. But it was a real place, roughly where Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan are today. Right in the middle of Central Asia.

Why did these obscure ancient Greeks interest me? I think it was because they ended up so far off the beaten path of the Hellenistic world. For one thing, they converted to Buddhism. And they expanded south into Pakistan and India to establish the Indo-Greek kingdom. But the Greeks were a thin film floating on top of an already existing population. Consequently, there is very little Greek influence left on Central Asia. And Alexander’s conquests of the area was just one among many.

Because Central Asia was on the silk road, facilitating trade between China and the Mediterranean world, it was invaded and conquered frequently over the millennia, populations migrated through the region, ideas were exchanged, especially religious ones. As well as waves of frenzied destruction—the Mongols, of course, but pretty much any horse army—the Seljuks, Tamerlane, Babur, Nader Shah, etc.

Possibly the nerdiest thing I could do would be to construct a bibliography of books that I’ve read about Central Asian history and culture. So buckle up! I’m arranging them in historical order (more or less). In my mind, there are two events that define Central Asia—the Arab invasion in the 7th century, which turned the mixed Zoroastrian/Buddhist region into a Muslim area, and the Mongol invasions starting in 1219.

General History

The first books on this list cover the entire time period (ancient history to the present).

Central Asia in World History by Peter B. Gordon. I found this a good overview and expansive in its outlook. It has considerable information about the Uighurs, for example—an ethnicity often neglected in other sources. It is very good in discussing various Turkish nomads (which often became nations—either on horseback or as settled people).

A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind by Michael Axworthy. This covers much of what the previous book did not. It seems that few consider Iran to be a part of Central Asia, but it was obviously the most influential civilization in the region. I had a vague mental outline of Iranian history before I read A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind, but this filled in a lot of blanks, especially about the 18th century and “the great game” between Britain and Russia.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. The Silk Roads is an attempt to write a history of the world in which Central Asia is the “hinge.” The thesis is not totally convincing, because once Europe “discovers” America, and once the overseas route to India becomes a major thing, Central Asia turned from hinge around which the entire world revolved, and started becoming a backwater to be colonized by Russia.

Ancient history

There is history in Central Asia that happened before the big players entered the scene. Very early in human history, there was a civilization there known by the catchy name Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. We have archeological evidence for them—they were excellent artists—but no writing yet. Persia entered the scene and Bactria became one of its provinces. Then along came the Greeks.

The Greek Experience of India: From Alexander to the Indo-Greeks by Richard Stoneman. It turns out that Greeks and Indians had all kinds of contact. After Alexander breezed through part of India, there was a conflict between Chandragupta (founder of the Mauryan dynasty) and Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals who ended up ruling most of Persia (including Bactria). They made a peace treaty (Chandragupta gave Seleucus a bunch of war elephants, and Seleucus gave Chandragupta one of his daughters for a dynastic marriage), and as part of that treaty, a Greek diplomat named Megasthenes went to live in the Mauryan capital. Megasthenes wrote and account of his time in India called Indica, which has unfortunately been lost. The history of Greek and Indian contact is really a history of gaps in our knowledge.

The Kushan Empire: The History and Legacy of the Powerful Ancient Kingdom in South Asia by Charles River Editors. I have no idea who the “Charles River Editors” are, but the seem to be in the business of churning out quasi-academic online books on obscure subjects, like the Kushan Empire. We just don’t know a lot about the Kushan empire (I am so spoiled by Greeks and Romans who delighted in writing histories about themselves that I resent civilizations like the Kushans who didn’t write this shit down.) Most of what we know is from outside observers—Chinese and Greek—and from the Kushan’s coinage, which at least gives us the names of kings. This book also relates the history of British and Russian archeologists learning about the Kushans as a part of the “Great Game.” It helps demonstrate that even a science like archeology is a tool of imperialism.

The Kushan empire fell to Sassanian Persia, which fell to the Arabs in the 7th century. Persia had its own script and literature, but that script declined after the Arab conquest. It was replaced by the Arabic alphabet, but the Persians added a few letters because Arabic script couldn’t reproduce all the Persian sounds correctly. Weirdly enough, Persia became illiterate under the Arabs, but eventually rediscovered the written word, and added greatly to the world’s literary treasury.

Islamic Central Asia

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane by Frederick S. Starr. We often hear of the Islamic Golden Age, but what Starr shows is that much of this Golden Age came out of cities of Central Asia. Some of these intellectual masterpieces are listed below.

Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. For example, Shahnameh was written mostly in the Samanid dynasty, located in the Northeastern part of modern day Iran. The Samanids were all about a Persian revival, and Ferdowsi’s book is a series of stories of all of Persia’s pre-Islamic kings (mythical and historical). It is the national epic of Iran.

The Conference of the Birds by Attar. Attar was a Sufi poet who wrote this allegory of enlightenment, in which a group of birds join together to find the Simurgh, a mythical Persian bird. Along the way, the hoopoe bird, tells them a series of Sufi fables. This is fascinating tale, and Attar tragically was a victim of the Mongol invasions. He was murdered in 1221.

Islamic Central Asia: An Anthology of Historical Sources by Scott C. Levi and Ron Sela. This book is packed with important documents from the area, a few of which I had already encountered, but most of which were completely new to me. Some are literary, but most are historical. What I found particularly interesting were reports of Russian and British travelers of not-yet-colonized places like Bukhara and Khiva. All of these places would be colonized by Russia, but neither Russia nor Britain would be successful in colonizing Afghanistan.

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna): A Very Short Introduction by Peter Adamson. The “A Very Short Introduction” series is what you read when you want to know the bare minimum about a subject. Very basic knowledge of Ibn Sina was acquired. Now I want to read more of his original writing.

From Genghis Khan to Tamerlane: The Reawakening of Mongol Asia by Peter Jackson. This is a book I am reading now. I was curious what happened between the initial Mongol invasions and the rise of Tamerlane. The answer is that Mongols turned out not to be skilled governors. All the Mongol successor states quickly devolved. But Chingissid descendants still ruled in a weaker and more scattered way. This is a difficult book—the reader is inundated with Mongolian and Turkic names, vying for power. And Tamerlane will in the end be the one who survives.

Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403-1406 by Ruy González de Clavijo. This was one of the books I read when I became fascinated by the Central Asian warlord, Timur.

Tamerlane: The Life of the Great Amir by Ahmad ibn Arabshah, Another volume that fed my obsession with Timur. ibn Arabshah’s biography was one of the most terrifying books I ever read.

Tamburlane parts 1 and 2 by Christopher Marlowe. How did the bloody conquests of Timur affect England? Mainly by inspiring these two plays by Shakespeare’s greatest competitor, Christopher Marlowe.

You made it this far? I would have given up by now. Weirdly enough, as I was finishing this post, I was listening to a story called “Tricks” by Alice Munro, from her short story collection, Runaway. In it, a young woman named Robin rather randomly meets a man. This man is an immigrant from Montenegro. The story takes place while Yugoslavia (and hence Montenegro) is still Communist, before the dreadful civil war of the 1990s. Because there is a delay in the two meeting again, she sublimates by trying to learn everything she can about Montenegro. As I listened to this section of the story, I felt seen. But my obsession with Central Asia is not about a thwarted love affair. I can’t really explain it.

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