Author: R. D. McChesney Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400861969 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 379
Book Description
Waqfs, or religious endowments, have long been at the very center of daily Islamic life, establishing religious, cultural, and welfare institutions and serving as a legal means to keep family property intact through several generations. In this book R. D. McChesney focuses on the major Muslim shrine at Balkh--once a flourishing city on an ancient trade route in what is now northern Afghanistan--and provides a detailed study of the political, economic, and social conditions that influenced, and were influenced by, the development of a single religious endowment. From its founding in 1480 until 1889, when the Afghan government took control of it, the waqf at Balkh was a formidable economic force in a financially dynamic region, particularly during those times when the endowment's sacred character and the tax privileges it acquired gave its managers considerable financial security. This study sheds new light on the legal institution of waqf within Muslim society and on how political conditions affected the development of socio-religious institutions throughout Central Asia over a period of four hundred years. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: R. D. McChesney Publisher: Darwin Books ISBN: Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 248
Book Description
Since the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Central Asia has been undergoing considerable political, social, and economic change. In a Leon B. Poullada Memorial Lecture delivered at Princeton University in 1993, R. D. McChesney examined the historical roots of a number of the issues confronting the region today. Here, in a revised version of the lectures, he presents some of Central Asia's enduring realities and the institutions that have been found to best address them. There are four overlapping contexts: geographical/spatial, economic, social, and political. He discusses the way in which problems and issues within these four contexts have been perceived and articulated and how different, particularly "Central Asian," ways of coping with those issues have evolved.
Author: Albrecht Classen Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 3110223899 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 769
Book Description
Although the city as a central entity did not simply disappear with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the development of urban space at least since the twelfth century played a major role in the history of medieval and early modern mentality within a social-economic and religious framework. Whereas some poets projected urban space as a new utopia, others simply reflected the new significance of the urban environment as a stage where their characters operate very successfully. As today, the premodern city was the locus where different social groups and classes got together, sometimes peacefully, sometimes in hostile terms. The historical development of the relationship between Christians and Jews, for instance, was deeply determined by the living conditions within a city. By the late Middle Ages, nobility and bourgeoisie began to intermingle within the urban space, which set the stage for dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social and economic make-up of society. Legal-historical aspects also find as much consideration as practical questions concerning water supply and sewer systems. Moreover, the early modern city within the Ottoman and Middle Eastern world likewise finds consideration. Finally, as some contributors observe, the urban space provided considerable opportunities for women to carve out a niche for themselves in economic terms.
Author: Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004373071 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 358
Book Description
Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries brings together ten original studies on historical aspects of Sufism in this region. A central question, of ongoing significance, underlies each contribution: what is the relationship between Sufism as it was manifested in this region prior to the Russian conquest and the Soviet era, on the one hand, and the features of Islamic religious life in the region during the Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras on the other? The authors address multiple aspects of Central Asian religious life rooted in Sufism, examining interpretative strategies, realignments in Sufi communities and sources from the Russian to the post-Soviet period, and social, political and economic perspectives on Sufi communities. Contributors include: Shahzad Bashir, Devin DeWeese, Allen Frank, Jo-Ann Gross, Kawahara Yayoi, Robert McChesney, Ashirbek Muminov, Maria Subtelny, Eren Tasar, and Waleed Ziad.
Author: Bethany Walker Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199987882 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 793
Book Description
Born from the fields of Islamic art and architectural history, the archaeological study of the Islamic societies is a relatively young discipline. With its roots in the colonial periods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its rapid development since the 1980s warrants a reevaluation of where the field stands today. This Handbook represents for the first time a survey of Islamic archaeology on a global scale, describing its disciplinary development and offering candid critiques of the state of the field today in the Central Islamic Lands, the Islamic West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The international contributors to the volume address such themes as the timing and process of Islamization, the problems of periodization and regionalism in material culture, cities and countryside, cultural hybridity, cultural and religious diversity, natural resource management, international trade in the later historical periods, and migration. Critical assessments of the ways in which archaeologists today engage with Islamic cultural heritage and local communities closes the volume, highlighting the ethical issues related to studying living cultures and religions. Richly illustrated, with extensive citations, it is the reference work on the debates that drive the field today.
Author: Richard Van Leeuwen Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004660151 Category : Architecture Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
This study presents a new approach to the phenomenon of Muslim pious foundations, or waqfs, focussing on the evolution of the institution in the urban context and the elaboration of the legal framework to accommodate the urban system of control. Taking Damascus as an example, it is shown how the waqf-institution determined the shape and character of Muslim cities.
Author: Jo-Ann Gross Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004492429 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 564
Book Description
This English edition of the correspondence of Khwāja 'Ubayd Allāh Aḥrār, the fifteenth-century Central Asian Naqshbandī Sufi shaykh, and his associates provides surprising new insights into the sociopolitical and economic history of premodern Central Asia and the influential roles of Sufi leaders of the time. It contains the extraordinary collection of autograph letters from the Majmū'a-yi murāsalāt, a unique manuscript housed at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with petitions to the Timurid court at Herat. The letters cover such topics as internecine conflict, peacemaking, taxation, property and endowments, trade, migration, Islamic piety and law, material support of shaykhs and students, and relief from oppression. Three introductory chapters discuss the Central Asian Naqshbandīya, Khwāja 'Ubayd Allāh Aḥrār, the social, historical, economic and political significance of the letters, and the manuscript and its authors. With the Persian transcription and a complete facsimile of the manuscript letters reproduced at the end of the work.
Author: Adeeb Khalid Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691235198 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 576
Book Description
A major history of Central Asia and how it has been shaped by modern world events Central Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history. Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in fact stands at the crossroads of world events. Adeeb Khalid provides the first comprehensive history of Central Asia from the mid-eighteenth century to today, shedding light on the historical forces that have shaped the region under imperial and Communist rule. Predominantly Muslim with both nomadic and settled populations, the peoples of Central Asia came under Russian and Chinese rule after the 1700s. Khalid shows how foreign conquest knit Central Asians into global exchanges of goods and ideas and forged greater connections to the wider world. He explores how the Qing and Tsarist empires dealt with ethnic heterogeneity, and compares Soviet and Chinese Communist attempts at managing national and cultural difference. He highlights the deep interconnections between the "Russian" and "Chinese" parts of Central Asia that endure to this day, and demonstrates how Xinjiang remains an integral part of Central Asia despite its fraught and traumatic relationship with contemporary China. The essential history of one of the most diverse and culturally vibrant regions on the planet, this panoramic book reveals how Central Asia has been profoundly shaped by the forces of modernity, from colonialism and social revolution to nationalism, state-led modernization, and social engineering.
Author: Maria Subtelny Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9047421604 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 438
Book Description
How did the the descendants of Tamerlane, collectively known as the Timurids, make the transition from a nomadic empire to a sedentary polity based on the Perso-Islamic model , and what effect did the process of transition have on their Turko-Mongolian customs and identity? This volume seeks to answer these questions by utilizing the Weberian concepts of the “routinization” of charismatic authority and the patrimonial household state. Focusing on the period of the last Timurid ruler, Sulṭān-Ḥusain Bayqara (1469–1506), the author examines the impact of the introduction of Persian modes of bureaucratic administration on the evolution of Timurid government and describes the development of the agrarian economy of the eastern Iranian province of Khorasan through the Islamic institution of the pious endowment. Based on an exceptionally broad range of sources in Persian, Arabic, and Turkic languages, the book provides a new paradigm for understanding the Timurids within the framework of post-Mongol history and offers fresh insights into Turko-Persian relations and the problem of acculturation in medieval Iran.
Author: Sergei P. Poliakov Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315490196 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 154
Book Description
With a rapidly growing population, deteriorating economic and environmental conditions, and an unstable imperial centre, Soviet Central Asia would seem destined to become one of the world's trouble spots. Why then the apparent political quiet? This book argues that this perception is, in itself, a reflection of our ignorance of the region. Instead, argues the author, Islamic traditionalism has not only survived but has flourished and is resurgent in Central Asia. This book includes chapters on marital customs, the care of children, communal decision making, social prestige and values, and the "second" economy in Central Asia. Poliakov demonstrates the resilience of an "un-Soviet" way of life which is supported by underground institutions, fostered by "unofficial" clergy, and protected by the infiltration and subordination of government and party organs.
Author: R. D. McChesney
Author: R. D. McChesney
Author: Albrecht Classen
Author: 
Author: Bethany Walker
Author: Richard Van Leeuwen
Author: Jo-Ann Gross
Author: Adeeb Khalid
Author: Maria Subtelny
Author: Sergei P. Poliakov