Third Lecture Series on the History and Culture of Central Asia (winter semester 2021/22)
During the winter semester 2021/22, the third
Lecture Series on the History and Culture of Central Asia.
will take place regularly at the first Tuesday of a month from 1-3 p.m. CET/ 4-6 p.m. Tashkent time via Zoom. This semester's speakers include Devin deWeese, Anwar Atakhodjaev, and Yuri Karev.
To join the Zoom meeting, use the following information:
Meeting ID: 525 843 6902
Passcode: 12345
Feb. 22th, 2022 – Yuri Karev (CNRS PSL, Paris), 1 pm (German time)
"Beyond Āmū Daryā River: The Place of Māwarā’annahr in the Caliphate’s Eastern Provinces (7th-9th c.)."
Yury Karev, is researcher at the UMR 8546 AOROC Archéologie & Philologie d’Orient et d’Occident - CNRS PSL, Paris.
Abstract:
Māwarā’annahr, the territories beyond the Āmū Daryā river constitute a “natural” extension of Khurāsān during the period of the Umayyad conquest in the first half of the eight century. It was governed directly from the capital city of Marw by the amīr of Khurāsān who delegated power to the state functionaries in the cities such as Bukhara and Samarqand. The lecture aims to follow the main phases in the evolution of the system of political and administrative control over Māwarā’annahr during Umayyad and Abbasid period and to show what made of this region a distinctive geopolitical unit within the Caliphate.
Feb. 8th, 2022 - Professor Dr. Farkhod Maksudov, Institute of Archaeology, Uzbekistan
"Early Islamization of Central Asian Nomads"
On Feb. 8, 2022 at 1 pm (GET-German Time)
Abstract:
Dr. Farkhod Maksudov is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Tashkent Branch.
The conversion to Islam is studied under various aspects: the changing use of natural resources, the cultural transitions, the socio-economic organization, the urbanization and also the relationship of nomadic pastoralists with the settled farmers in the medieval mountainous area of Ustrushana. These particular conditions contributed to a specific nomadic culture that developed in the mountainous regions of Central Asia.
Jan. 25th, 2022 - Professor Aleksandr Naymark Hofstra University
"Byzantine Elements in Sogdian Art: Modes of Transmission and Reception"
6PM MEZ, 25 January 2022
Abstract:
Professor Naymark has authored over a hundred publications on Central Asian archaeology, art and numismatics. He has been a guest lecturer at Humboldt University, Berlin, and Columbia University, New York, and has made research visits to Oxford University on four occasions as a Shama Fellow. He is a co-grantee of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications. Current work includes an archaeological project on Yer-Kurgan, the location of the capital of the Sogdian principality of Nakhshab, in modern Uzbekistan.
Register here
meet.google.com/wvc-edve-vkc
Dec. 7th, 2021 – Dr. Anvar Atakhodjaev (Samarkand Institute of Archaeology)
"Political History of Maverannahr/Transoxiana in the 10th Century in the Light of Numismatic Data."
Dr. Atakhodjaev Anvar is currently director of the Department ‘Ancient and Medieval Periods’ at the Samarkand Institute of Archaeology at the National Center of Archaeology at the Uzbek Academy of Sciences.
Abstract:
A survey of 10th century Central Asian copper coinage mirrors very precisely the political events in the history of the region and adds considerably to the information given by the literary sources. The Samanid consolidated their power in Maverannahr at the beginning of the 9th century. This process becomes particular apparent in the numismatic data. The Samanid dynasty was the first Muslim politically independent dynasty from the Caliphate. For the 10th century, the coin protocols document the process of the regionalization, the rise of the local rulers, who were either vassal to the Samanids with a long noble lineage, or tribal leaders or persons who had received significant political privileges in exchange for their service to the central government.
Nov. 02, 2021 - Devin DeWeese (University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA)
"Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and his Legacy in the Riyāż al-awliyā: A Retrospective on the Kubravī silsila from 16th-Century Central Asia"
Abstract:
The later phases of the Kubravī Sufi tradition in Central Asia were dominated by the figure of Ḥusayn Khwārazmī (d. 958/1551) and his disciples, who left, in addition to their initiatic legacies, a substantial corpus of hagiographical literature that almost matches, in sheer volume, the production of various Naqshbandī circles in the mid- to late-16th century. This ‘branch’ of the Kubravīya did not mark the only representation of the Kubravī tradition in Central Asia, however; several Kubravī lineages traced through other disciples of Ḥusayn Khwārazmī’s own master, Ḥājjī Muḥammad Khabūshānī (d. 937/1530-31) are also known through other sources, and one of these lineages produced a valuable but little-studied hagiographical work that, unlike most of the works focused directly on Ḥusayn Khwārazmī, includes a ‘retrospective’ review of the entire Kubravī silsila. That work, entitled Riyāż al-awliyā, is preserved in a single known manuscript in Kolkata; its rich material on the Kubravī tradition—ranging from otherwise unknown traditions about the immediate disciples of Najm al-Dīn Kubrā to original accounts of more recent figures in the author’s lineage—will be the subject of this presentation.