http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2009/11/07#central-asia <P>Contacts with Europeans in ancient times; the Greco-Bactrians; Bronze Age and earlier cities, their culture and commerce; the Silk Road; nomadism, relations of current nomads to those of Herodotus, cycles of nomadic invasion (one of my pet theories is that <a href="ussr.html">Lenin was the last great Central Asian conqueror</a>); "lost cities of desert Cathay"; Paul or Pavel Nazaroff; Sir Aurel Stein; current politics, especially in Kyrgyz Republic; cultural history; cultural exports; <a href="shamanism.html">shamanism</a>; pagan survivals under Islam. Ladakh. Sinkiang under Chinese rule. Above all, <a href="afghanistan.html">Afghanistan.</a> <P>Someday, I'd like to spend a year or so wandering about the middle of Asia on a yak; but neither the local conditions nor my career make this very likely. In the meanwhile, I read about people who did. <ul>Recommended, historical and scholarly: <li>S. A. M. Adshead, <cite>Central Asia in World History</cite> [Comments in <a href="world-history.html">World History</a>] <li>Elizabeth Wayland Barber, <cite>The Mummies of &Uuml;r&uuml;mchi</cite> <li>Christohper I. Beckwith, <cite>The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages</cite> [<a href="http://dannyreviews.com/h/Tibetan_Empire.html">Review by Danny Yee</a>] <li>Mark Dickens, <a href="http://www.wlc.com/oxus/tocharia.htm">Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Tocharian, But Were Afraid to Ask</a> <li>Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, <cite>Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia</cite> [<a href="http://www.tournamentofshadows.com/">Authors' website, with reviews</a>] <li>Jeannette Mirsky, <cite>Sir Aurel Stein: Archaeological Explorer</cite> [<a href="../reviews/lives-of-aurel-stein/">Review: The Lives of Aurel Stein, or, the Road to Balkh</a>] <li>Paul Nazaroff, <cite>Hunted Through Central Asia: On the Run From Lenin's Secret Police</cite> <li>Eric Newby, <cite>A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush</cite> <li>Frederic Prokosch, <cite>The Seven Who Fled</cite> [Or rather, half a recommendation and a warning. <a href="../reviews/seven-who-fled/">Review: Where Every Prospect Pleases, and Every Man Is Foul</a>] <li>S. Robert Ramsey, <cite>The Languages of China</cite> [Including the parts of Central Asia currently ruled from Beijing. <a href="../reviews/languages-of-china.html">Review</a>] <li>Sir Aurel Stein, <cite>On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks</cite> [<a href="../reviews/on-ancient-central-asian-tracks/">Review: The Slow Road to Cathay</a>] <li>Annabel Walker, <cite>Aurel Stein: Pioneer of the Silk Road</cite> [<a href="../reviews/lives-of-aurel-stein/">The Lives of Aurel Stein, or, the Road to Balkh</a>] </ul> <ul>Recommended, contemporary travel writing and photography: <li>Roland and Sabrina Michaud <ul> <li><cite>Caravans to Tartary</cite> <li><cite>The Horsemen of Afghanistan</cite> <li><cite>Mirror of the Orient</cite> </ul> <li>Katie Orenstein, <a href="http://www.feedmag.com/html/feature/98.05orenstein/98.05orenstein_master.html">The Road to Kashgar</a> <li>Manolis Priniotakis [All in <cite>The American Prospect,</cite> 2001] <ul> <li><a href="http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/webfeatures/2001/10/priniotakis-m-10-12.html">The Road to Osh: Central Asia needs more than a war on terror</a> <li><a href="http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/10/priniotakis-m-10-19.html">China's Designated Terrorists: China is using the war on terrorism to brand the Uyghurs of Xinjiang</a> </ul> </ul> <ul>Curiosa: <li>Langston Hughes, <cite>A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia</cite> [The product of Hughes's officially-sponsored tour through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in 1934. Not his best writing, and in many places achingly naive about the Soviets, but in many ways a fascinating document. Reprinted in 2006 by David Mikosz in Bishkek, annotated with Hughes's hand-written corrections (almost all of them improvements, to my mind); I'm not sure if Mr. Mikosz is still selling them. See also <a href="http://bactra.org/weblog/000119.html">From Harlem to Samarkand</a>.] </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Chingiz Aitmatov [novelist] <ul> <li><cite>A Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years</cite> <li><cite>Place of the Skull</cite> </ul> <li>Akchurin, <cite>Red Odyssey</cite> <li>Nozar Alaolmoiki, <cite>Life After the Soviet Union: The Newly Independent Republics of Transcaucasus and Central Asia</cite> <li>Thomas T. Allsen <ul> <li><cite>Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia</cite> <li><cite>Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles</cite> </ul> <li>Jon Anderson, <cite>Kyrgyzstan: Central Asia's Island of Democracy?</cite> <li>Elizabeth E. Bacon, <cite>Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study of Culture Change</cite> [Written in the 1960s by a Soviet sympathizer] <li>Frederick Bailey, <citE>Mission to Tashkent</cite> <li>Eric Balkan, <cite>City of Tears</cite> [historical novel] <li>Thomas Barfield, <cite>The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China</cite> [In a series titled "Studies in Social Discontinuity", which sounds intriguing] <li>Aleksandr Markovich Belenitskii, <cite>Central Asia</cite> [archaeology] <li>Michal Biran, <cite>The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World</cite> [<a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521842263">Blurb</a>] <li>Tom Bissell, <cite>Chasing the Sea: Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia</cite> <li>Black, <cite>Modernization of Inner Asia</cite> <li>Carole Blackwell, <cite>Tradition and Society in Turkmenistan: Gender, Oral Culture and Song</cite> <li>Wilfird Blunt, <cite>The Golden Road to Samarkand</cite> <li>Katie Boyle, Colin Renfrew and Marsha Levine (eds.), <citE>Ancient Interactions: East and West in Eurasia</cite> <li>Uradyn E. Bulag, <cite>Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia</cite> [<a href="http://www.oup-usa.org/docs/0198233574.html">Blurb</A>] <li>Frederick Burnaby, <cite>A Ride to Khiva</cite> <li>Audrey Burton, <cite>The Bukharans: A Dynastic, Diplomatic, and Commercial History, 1550-1702</cite> <li><cite>Through Jade Gate and Central Asia; an Account of Journeys in Kansu, Turkestan and the Gobi Desert, by Mildred Cable and Francesca French, with an introduction by Rev. John Stuart Holden. --- London, Constable &amp; Co., ltd., 1927.</cite> <li>Mildred Cable with Francesca French, <cite>The Gobi Desert</cite> <li><cite>Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route</cite> <li>David Christian, <cite>A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia</cite>, volume I: <cite>Inner Eurassia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire</cite> <li>Alex Cooley, <cite>Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States and Military Occupations</cite> [<a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4378">Blurb</a>. Supposely includes detailed case studies of the post-Soviet republics.] <li>Nicola Di Cosmo (no relation), <cite>Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History</cite> <li>Robert D. Crews, <cite>For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia</cite> [<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/CREPRO.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds.), <cite>Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus</cite> <li>D. Devahuti (ed.), <cite>The Unknown Hsuan-Tsang</cite> [<a href="http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0195643720.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Adrienne Lynn Edgar, <cite> Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan</cite> [<a href="http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7858.html">Blurb, intro</a>] <li><a href="http://eurasianews.com/erc/0main.htm">Eurasia Research Center</a> <li>Robert Ferguson, <cite>The Devil and the Disappearing Sea: A True Story about the Aral Sea Catastrophe</cite> <li>Richard C. Foltz, <cite>Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century</cite> <li>Michael D. Frachetti, <cite>Pastoralist Landscapes and Social Interaction in Bronze Age Eurasia</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10832.php">blurb</a>] <li>Sarah Fraser et al., <cite>Dunhuang: A Centenial Celebration of the Discovery of the Cave Library</cite> <li>Frye, <cite>Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion</cite> <li>Bobodzhan Gafurovich Gafurov, <cite>The Kushans and World Civilization</cite> <li>Charles Gallenkamp, <citE>Dragon Hunter: Roy Champan Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions</cite> <li>Geyer, <cite>Waiting for Winter to End</cite> [Travels in the 1990s] <li>Gippenreiter, <cite>Fabled Cities of Central Asia: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva</cite> <li>Philip Glazebrook, <cite>Journey to Khiva: A Writer's Search for Central Asia</cite> <li>Peter B. Golden, <citE>Nomads and Sedentary Societies in Medieval Eurasia</cite> <li>Charles Graves, <cite>Proto-Religions in Central Asia</cite> [Looks completely crackpot] <li>Jo-Ann Gross (ed.), <cite>Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change</cite> <li>Ren&eacute; Grousset, <citE>Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia</cite> <li>David Gullette, "Theories of Central Asian Factionalism: The Debate in Political Science and Its Wider Implications", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02634930701702589"><cite>Central Asian Survery</cite> <strong>26</strong> (2007): 373--387</a> <li>Henze, <cite>Whither Turkestan?</cite> <li>Hildinger, <cite>Warriors of the Steppe</cite> <li>Dilip Hiro, <cite>Between Marx and Muhammad: The Changing Face of Central Asia</cite> <li>Hopkirk <ul> <li><cite>Foreign Devils on the Silk Road</cite> <li><cite>Setting the East Ablaze</cite> </ul> <li>Hunter, <cite>Central Asia Since Independence</cite> <li>Shafqat Hussain, "Small players in the great game: Marginality and representation on the northern frontiers of nineteenth-century colonial India", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856400600809955"><cite>South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies</cite> <strong>29</strong> (2006): 235--253</a> <li>Takashi Inoguchi and Zen-u Lucian Hotta, "Quantifying Social Capital in Central and South Asia: Are There Democratic, Developmental, and Regionalizing Potentials?", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S146810990600226X"><cite>Japanese Journal of Political Science</cite> <strong>7</strong> (2006): 195--220</a> [Survey results from "Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekista" in 2003. Even before reading, I'm a little leery of the idea of treating, say, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan">Uzbekistan</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives">the Maldives</a> as comparable cases...] <li>Yasushi Inoue, <cite>Tun-huang: A Novel</cite> <li>Gunnar Jarring, <cite>Return to Kashgar: Central Asian Memoirs in the Present</cite> <li>Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner (eds.), <cite>Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China</cite> <li>Adeeb Khalid, <cite>The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia</cite> [<a href="http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8g5008rv/">online</a>] <li>Anatoly Khazanov, <cite>Nomads and the Outside World</cite> <li>Kho, <cite>Koreans in Soviet Central Asia</cite> <li>Lutz Kleveman, <cite>The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia</cite> <li>Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, <cite>Gnosis on the Silk Road</cite> <li>Edgar Knobloch, <cite>Monuments of Central Asia: A Guide to the Archaeology, Art and Architecture of Turkestan</cite> <li>E. E. Kuzmina (ed. Victor H. Mair), <cite>The Prehistory of the Silk Road</cite> [<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14383.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Ljalja Kuznetsova, <cite> Shaking the Dust of Ages: Gypsies and Wanderers of the Central Asian Steppe</cite> [Photo book] <li>Eleanor Lattimore (wife of Owen), <cite>Turkestan Reunion</cite> <li>Owen Lattimore (husband of Eleanor) <ul> <li><cite>High Tartary</cite> <li><cite>Inner Asian Frontiers of China</cite> </ul> <li>David Lewis, <cite>The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia</cite> <li>John Lewton, <cite>Smarkand and Bukhara</cite> <li>Pauline Jones Luong, <cite>Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521801095">Blurb</a>] <li>Ella Maillart, <cite>Turkestan Solo: One Woman's Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum</cite> <li>Victor H. Mair, <cite>Tun-huang Popular Narratives</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521039833">Blurb</a>] <li>Erica Marat, <cite>The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After</cite> <li>Vadim Mikhailovich Masson and Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, <cite>Central Asia: Turkemnia before the Achaemenids</cite> <li>Mayhew, Plunkett and Richmond, <cite>Lonely Planet Guide to Central Asia</cite> <li>Neil Melvin, <cite>Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road</cite> <li>Karl E. Meyer, <cite>The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland</cite> <li>Paula A. Michaels, <cite>Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin's Central Asia</cite> <li>Geoffrey Moorhouse, <cite>Apples in the Snow</cite> [Travels in ex-Soviet Central Asia] <li>Mote, <cite>Imperial China, 900--1900</cite> [Emphasis on Central Asian contacts] <li>Pavel (Paul) Nazarov (Nazaroff), <cite>Kapchigai Defile</cite> <li>Nazaroff, <cite>Move on!</cite> <li>Paul Kocot Nietupski, <cite>Labrang: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery at the Crossroads of Four Civilizations</cite> <li>Douglas Northrop, <cite>Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia</cite> <li>Martha Brill Olcott, <cite>Central Asia's Second Chance</cite> [<a href="http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=16649&prog=zru">Blurb, link to first chapter</a>] <li>Donald Ostrowski, <cite>Musocvy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on the Steppe Frontier, 1304--1589</cite> <li>Hasan B. Paksoy, <cite><a href="http://www.euronet.nl/users/turkfed/erk.html">Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule</a></cite> <li>Peter C. Perdue, <cite>China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia</cite> <li>Hugh Pope, <cite>Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World</cite> [<a href="http://cceia.org/viewMedia.php/prmTemplateID/8/prmID/5163">Talk by Pope</a> about the book] <li><a href="http://web.mit.edu/polisci/students/sradnitz/sradnitz.html">Scott Radnitz</a> [Studies <a href="networks-of-political-actors.html">political networks</a> and mobilization in post-Soviet Central Asia; various papers look interesting] <li>Robert Rand, <cite>Tamerlane's Children: Dispatches from Contemporary Uzbekistan</cite> <li>Ahmed Rashid <ul> <li><cite>Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia</citE> <li><citE>Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia</cite> </ul> <li>Rawicz, <cite>The Long Walk</cite> [<em>Walking</em> out of a Siberian gulag to India!] <li>Karl Reichl, <cite>Signing the Past: Turkic and Medieval Heroic Poetry</cite> [<a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornellpress/cup3_catalog.taf?_function=detail&Title_ID=3372&_UserReference=6D4EA289C2CF9D61BC442EFF">Blurb</a>] <li>Tamara Talbot Rice, <cite>Ancient Arts of Central Asia</cite> <li>Rod Richard, <cite>Calling from Kashgar: A Journey through Tibet</cite> <li>Janet Rizvi <ul> <li><cite>Ladakh, Crossroads of High Asia</cite> <li><cite>Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh</cite> [<a href="http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0195648552.html">Blurb</a>] </ul> <li>Gabriel Ronay, <cite>The Tartar Khan's Englishman</cite> <li>Oliver Roy, <cite>The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations</cite> <li>Rudelson, <Cite>Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism Along China's Silk Road</citE> <li>M. Holt Ruffin, <cite>Civil Society in Central Asia</cite> <li>J. J. Saunders, <cite>The History of the Mongol Conquests</cite> <li>Edward H. Schafer, <cite>The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics</cite> <li>Ron Sela, "The 'Heavenly Stone' (K&ouml;k Tash) of Samarqand: A Rebels' Narrative Transformed", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1356186306006535"><cite>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</cite> <strong>17<s/trong> (2007): 21--32</a> <li>Tatiana Shaumian, <cite>The Great Game and Tsarist Russia</cite> [<a href="http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/0195650565.html">Blurb</a>] <li>Jennifer Siegel, <cite>Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia</cite> <li>Denis Sinor, <citE>The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia</cite> <li>C. P. Skrine, <cite>Macartney at Kashgar: new light on British, Chinese and Russian activities in Sinkiang, 1890-1918</cite> <li>Yuri Slezkine, <cite>Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North</cite> [Really, I need a Siberia notebook] <li>Svat Soucek, <cite>A Hikstory of Inner Asia</cite> [<a href=" http://dannyreviews.com/h/Inner_Asia.html">Review by Danny Yee</a>] <li>Sir Aurel Stein, <cite>Lost Cities of Desert Cathay</cite> &c. <li>R. A. Stein [no relation], <cite>Tibetan Civilization</cite> <li>Rowan Stewart and Susie Weldon, <cite>Kyrgyzstan</cite> <li>Stevens, <cite>Night Train to Turkistan</cite> <li>Richard Tapper and K. S. McLachlan, <Cite>Technology, Tradition and Survival: Material Cultures in the Middle East and Central Asia</cite> <li>Jeffrey Tayler, <cite>Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing</cite> <li>Thubron, <cite>Lost Heart of Asia</cite> <li>Emil Trinkler, <cite>The Stormswept Roof of Asia; by Yak, Camel &amp; Sheep Caravan in Tibet, Chinese Turkistan &amp; over the Kara-Koram</cite> [Is that the ultimate travel title or what?] <li>University of Kansas, <a href="http://www.ukans.edu/carrie/archives_main.html">Carrie</a> [Full-text books on-line, mostly about Central Asia at the moment] <li>Willem Van schendel and Erik J. Zurcher (eds.), <cite>Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century</cite> <li>Lynne Visson, <citE>The Art of Uzbek Cooking</cite> <li>Erika Weinthal, <cite>State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic and International Politics in Central Asia</cite> <li>Wei-Chuan Weng, <cite>Bazaars of Chinese Turkestan</cite> <li>Roderick Whitfield, Susan Whitfield and Neville Agnew, with photos by Lois Conner and Wu Jian, <cite>Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road</cite> <li>Susan Whitfield <ul> <li><cite>Life along the Silk Road</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9076.html">Blurb</a>] <li><cite>Aurel Stein on the Silk Road</cite> </ul> <li>Monica Whitlock, <cite>Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia</cite> <li>Giles Whittell</strong>, <cite>Extreme Continental: Blowing Hot and Cold through Central Asia</cite> <li>Kenneth Wimmel and Ella Maillart, <cite>Alluring Target: In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia</cite> <li>Fances Wood, <cite>The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia</cite> [<a href="http://www.powells.com/review/2003_11_09.html">Review in <cite>Times Literary Supplement</cite></a>] <li>A. Wu, <cite>Turkestan Tumult</cite> </ul>