Chapter 3 contextualizes Aghā-yi Buzurg and her community within the Sufi milieu of sixteenth-century Central Asia by highlighting a particular aspect of this community, ṭarīqa-yi nā-maslūk (the untraveled path), one of the most frequently used designations to refer to the community in the Maẓhar al-ʿajāʾib. This chapter emphasizes the complex nature of “the untraveled path” by exploring the association of Aghā-yi Buzurg and her followers with the Khwājagān–Naqshbandī Sufi tradition. Aghā-yi Buzurg’s community was unique among Sufi groups: first, because it was guided by a woman, and second, because this woman had not been trained by a living master but instead had received her spiritual training from the enigmatic saintly figure of Khiżr, believed to be endowed with immortal life.

An Indocentric lens shaped the early interpretation of the cultural heritage of Chinese Turkestan at sites such as Khotan and Dunhuang. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Buddhist studies, the discovery of Gandhara, and the German, French and Raj-sponsored archaeological explorations along the ancient Silk Roads opened a new perspective on the spread of Indic art, culture and religions beyond the Himalayas. The recovery of this Buddhist past, and the art historical interpretation of the finds, were closely linked to debates on Gandhara’s cultural heritage and the importance of the ‘Greek factor’ in Indic/Asiatic art, a question which preoccupied Indian and European experts such as the French art historian Alfred Foucher. This chapter explains how ‘Indic’ gradually replaced ‘Greek’ as the superior classicism and civilizing impulse traced in Central Asia and shows how Aurel Stein’s notion of ‘Serindia’ was incorporated in the interwar Greater India imagination. GIS-members reframed the Far Eastern odyssey of Buddhist doctrine and art as a glorious saga of Indian civilizational diffusion, and a crucial chapter in the formation of an ancient Indian cultural empire.

Patronage is a broad concept that can be used to describe such practices as clientelism and corruption. More specifically, this chapter considers party patronage where political parties ‘appoint individuals to (non-elective) positions in the public and semi-public sector’ (Kopecký et al, 2016). The research builds on the widening global database that measures the scope and depth of party patronage by examining public sector appointments in Central Asian countries. Of specific interest is why authoritarian states engage in patronage appointment practices when the dominant parties are already inextricably linked to the political elite. The study uses Kazakhstan as the site of enquiry and, through proxy indicators, extends the geography to consider Central Asia as a whole. We find the scope and depth of party patronage crosses all key policy sectors and reaches from the top to the lower tiers of governance. Looking at the trends for Central Asian countries since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, party patronage shows no signs of abating.

This chapter outlines the history of Mongol Central Asia, known as the Chaghadaid Khanate, the least documented but most enduring of the Mongol successor states. Squeezed between the Chinggisid polities, lacking a strong sedentary basis, and home to two competing uluses, the Middle Mongolian Ulus, as the Mongols in Central Asia called themselves, was often plagued by warfare and suffered from “brain drain.” Yet it not only played a leading role in the dissolution of the Mongol Empire, but also introduced a political culture that impacted Central Asia up to the nineteenth century; contributed to the Islamization of eastern Central Asia; was the root of two of the most influential early modern empires, the Timurids and Mughals; and gave its name, Chaghatay, to the Eastern Turkic language. The chapter discusses its political history during the Mongol moment, and briefly reviews its postimperial history and aspects of economy, administration, and culture.

The archaeological study of Chaghadaid material culture began in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the annexation of Central Asia to the Russian Empire. The main archaeological sites on the territory of the Chaghadaid Ulus consisted of settlements. Judging by the numismatic data, the largest cities of the ulus were Almaliq (China), Pulad (China), Samarqand (Uzbekistan), Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Otrar (Kazakhstan), Shash (Uzbekistan), Taraz or Talas (Kazakhstan), Khujand (Tajikistan), Andijan (Uzbekistan), and Tirmidh or Termez (Uzbekistan). Archaeologists have studied the nomadic burials of the Chaghadaid period in Kazakhstan. Features of the funeral rites indicate the preservation of pagan traditions in the nomadic environment (for instance the ritual of burning corpses, sepulchral mounds, the remains of funeral food, horse harnesses). The erection of mausoleums reflects the Islamization process of the Chaghadaid Ulus. Among the Chaghadaid-period epigraphic monuments, Christian tombstones are the most apparent.

This chapter introduces the structure of the book, its focus and uniqueness. It then discusses the methodological obstacles embedded in the defintion of a “community” and “Jews” and goes on to present the ten main questions and lines of investigation that guide the book. In its final part, this chapter presents the book’s five sections, along with the history of each major region in Asia, its Jewish communities and a short summary of the relevant chapters.

This chapter is concerned with the history and historiography of the traditional (native) communities of Jews in (Soviet) Central Asia. Most scholarly and popular literature, it argues, portrays these communities as distinct, secluded Jewish ethnic groups, disconnected from each other and from the wider Jewish world. However, a better understanding of their intertwined histories requires the placement of these Jewish groups in a wider cultural and geographical context.

This concluding chapter examines the underlying commonalities, demographic features and distinctive characteristics of the Jewish settlement in modern Asia as they appear in this volume and analyzes them along the ten lines of investigation presented in the Introduction. This chapter provides also estimates for the size of the various communities since 1850 and offers illuminating insights into the contribution of the Jewish communities to Asia on the one hand and the place of Asia in modern Jewish history on the other hand.

This chapter deals with the large-scale evacuation of Ashkenazi Jews, perhaps as many as 1 million, to Central Asia following the German onslaught in 1941. It examines the encounter between the newcomers and this seemingly alien Asian region along with its native inhabitants, including the Bukharan Jews. This chapter also analyzes the cultural repercussions of the evacuation and its literary responses, especially the postwar writings of Grigory Kanovich and Dina Rubina.

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.