The extant writings of the late Tang chief minister Li Deyu form the basis for Michael Drompp's reconstruction of the Tang dynasty's response to a threatening event, viz. the collapse of the Uighur steppe empire in 840 C.E., and the subsequent fleeing of large numbers of Uighur refugees to China's northern frontier. Through a translation of seventy relevant documents the author analyzes the rhetoric of the crisis, as well as its aftermath. The extant writings of Li Deyu uniquely allow an in-depth look into Chinese-Inner Asian relations, very unusual for such an early period. This volume...

This volume is about the long-neglected, but decisive influence of Uygur patrons on Dunhuang art in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Through an insightful introduction to the hitherto little-known early history and art of the Uygurs, the author explains the social and political forces that shaped the taste of Uygur patrons. The cultural and political effects of Sino-Uygur political marriages are examined in the larger context of the role of high-ranking women in medieval art patronage. Careful study of the iconography, technique and style sheds new light on important paintings in the...

This groundbreaking study sheds light on the mechanisms of Chinese nation and state making. Closely examining the remaking of Qing Inner Asia as Chinese provincial territory in the late Qing and Republican periods, the author focuses on the efforts of warlords and local Chinese elites in creating the new Inner Mongolian province of Suiyuan. Based on a wide reading of rarely-accessed sources, the book explores land reclamation, the growth of counties and other ways by which Suiyuan gained provincial substance. It also carefully traces the emergence of a new national discourse on Northwestern...

Drawing primarily on Qing archival sources, this study charts the changes in Qing policy that characterized the empire's relations with the Central Asian khanate of Khoqand, from the Qianlong era to the mid-19th century. It explores how the development of Khoqand as a regional power and its involvement with the khoja-cause impacted on Qing policy towards Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) and the consolidation of the north-western frontier. Focussing on the Altishahr region, it illustrates how, a notion of border defined by geography, politics and military logistics began to replace the earlier...

This political and diplomatic history of late nineteenth-century Afghanistan and its major ethnic groups lays bare how the ground was laid for the emergence of Afghanistan as a nation-state as well as for the implementation of schemes of modernization. It describes how Amir Sher 'Ali Khan and, more fully, Amir 'Abd al-Rahman Khan for the first time consolidated the authority of the central government at the expense of the traditional autonomous local magnates, and thus managed to organize a centralized monarchical state and extend its direct rule thoughout Afghanistan. They did so in the days...

South Asian religious art became codified during the Kuṣāṇa Period (ca. beginning of the 2nd to the mid 3rd century). Yet, to date, neither the chronology nor nature of Kuṣāṇa Art, marked by great diversity, is well understood. The Kuṣāṇa Empire was huge, stretching from Uzbekistan through northern India, and its multicultural artistic expressions became the fountainhead for much of South Asian Art. The premise of this book is that Kuṣāṇa Art achieves greater clarity through analyses of the arts and cultures of the Pre-...

In an original and compelling examination of traditional mathematics, this comprehensive study of the anonymous Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination (published by A. Mostaert in 1969) takes on the fundamental problem of the post-enlightenment categorization of knowledge, in particular the inherently problematic realms of religion and science, as well as their subsets, medicine, ritual, and magic. In the process of elucidating the rhetoric and logic shaping this manual the author reveals not only the intertwined intellectual history of Eurasia from Greece to China but also...

An important contribution to the discussion about Christian Syriac influence on Koran and Early Muslim Tradition, this volume studies Eastern Christian and Islamic views on the Biblical and Koranic Gog and Magog. Connected with this theme is the quest for Alexandera (TM)s wall.

Volume Three of Igor de Rachewiltz's annotated translation of the Secret History of the Mongols (Brill 2004, 2006), now regarded as the standard English version of this epic biography of Činggis Qan, is both a complement and a supplement to the first two volumes. On the one hand it revises and updates the work to the end of 2012, and on the other it introduces new interpretations and ideas about both the identity of its anonymous author and the date of its composition. It is, therefore, an indispensable companion volume for all readers and users of the earliest Mongolian literary...

In Bukhara and the Muslims of Russia Allen Frank examines the relationship of Tatars and Bashkirs with the city of Bukhara during the Russian Imperial era. For Muslims in Russia Bukhara's prestige was manifested in genealogies, fashion, and in the elevated legal status of Bukharan communities in Russia. The historical relationship of Russia's Muslim communities with Bukhara was founded above all on Bukhara's reputation as a holy city of Islam, an abode of great Sufis, and a center of Islamic scholarship. The emergence of Islamic reformism critiquing Bukhara's sacred status, led by...