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Transoxania, Khurasan, and Tukharistan - which comprise large parts
of today's Central Asia - have long been an important frontier
zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region
was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic
empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary
farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the
history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been
shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book,
Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete
identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the
far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From
this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a
900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the
Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the
Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of
literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the
unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to
imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their
greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working
on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as
those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.
Transoxania, Khurasan, and ?ukharistan - which comprise large parts
of today's Central Asia - have long been an important frontier
zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region
was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic
empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary
farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the
history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been
shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book,
Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete
identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the
far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From
this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a
900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the
Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the
Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of
literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the
unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to
imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their
greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working
on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as
those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.
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