CENTRAL ASIA, HISTORY OF

history of the area from prehistoric and ancient times to the present. In its historical application the term Central Asia designates an area that is considerably larger than the heartland of the Asian continent. Were it not for the awkwardness of the term, it would be better to speak of Central Eurasia, comprising all those parts of the huge Eurasian landmass that did not develop a distinctive sedentary civilization of their own. But the real boundaries of Central Asia are determined at any given time in history by the relationship between the civilized and the barbarianthe two opposed but complementary. The equation so often propoundedof the civilized with the sedentary and the barbarian with the nomadis misleading, however. The most significant distinction between the two groups in Eurasia lies probably in the successful attempt of the civilized to alter and command the physical environment, whereas the barbarian simply uses it, often in a masterly fashion, to gain an advantage. In its essence, the history of Central Asia is that of the barbarian, and its dominant feature is the sometimes latent, sometimes open conflict in which the barbarian clashes with the civilized. Two basic patterns of conquest are evident in the history of Central Asia: that of the barbarian, accomplished with arms and ephemeral in its results, and that of the civilizedslow, rather unspectacular, achieved through technological superiority and absorption. The principal difficulty for the historian of Central Asia lies in the paucity and relative lateness of indigenous written sources. The first aboriginal sourceswritten in a Turkic languagedate from the 8th century AD, and source material of similar value does not become available again until the 13th century. Most of the written sources dealing with Central Asia originate in the surrounding sedentary civilizations and are almost always strongly prejudiced against the barbarian; the most important among them are in Chinese, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Persian. Without a sufficient number of indigenous written sources, the language of a given Central Asian people is difficult to determine. It is, however, reasonable to suppose that many of them spoke a Uralic or an Altaic language, and it can be taken for certain that Paleo-Asiatic languages were in wider use in early times than they are now. While it seems likely that the principal languages of many great nomadic empires were Turkic or Mongol, the attribution of such languages to peoples about whose speech insufficient linguistic evidence existsas in the case of the Hsiung-nu or the Avarsis unwarranted; it is wiser to confess ignorance. Two of the natural vegetation zones of Central Asia have played a prominent part in history: the forest belt, 500 to 1,000 miles (800 to 1,600 kilometres) wide, and, south of it, the steppe, a vast grassland extending eastward from Hungary to Mongolia, facilitating communications and providing grass, the only raw material absolutely essential to the creation of the great nomad empires. The northern frozen marshes and the southern deserts played a minor role in Central Asian history. Within the broad concept of Central Asia as defined above, there is in terms of historical geography a more precisely delineated Central Asian heartland consisting of three adjacent regions, collectively referred to by 19th-century explorers and geographers as Russian and Chinese Turkestan. The first of these regions, known to the ancient Greeks as Transoxania and to the Arabs as Ma wara' an-Nahr (That Which Lies Beyond the River), consists of the area between the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of the Greeks and the Jayhun of the Arabs) and Syr Darya (the Jaxartes River of the Greeks and the Sayhun of the Arabs). It is an arid, semidesert country where, before the development of large-scale irrigation projects in the 20th century, the sedentary population maintained itself by intensive cultivation of the fertile tracts bordering the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya or by cultivation of the oases, in which were situated the major urban centres such as Bukhara and Samarkand. The second, predominantly steppe, region extends northward from the upper reaches of the Syr Darya to the valley of the Ili River and to the foothills of the ranges lying between the Altai Mountains and the Tien Shan. Bounded on the south by the line of the Tien Shan and to the north by Lake Balkhash, this area was known to the Turks as the Yeti Su, the Land of the Seven Rivers, hence its Russian name of Semirechye. The third region, centring on the Takla Makan Desert, is bounded on the north by the Tien Shan, on the west by the Pamirs, on the south by the Kunlun Mountains, and on the northeast by the Dzungarian (Jungarian) Basin. Often referred to as Kashgaria, from its principal urban centre, Kashgar (K'a-shih), the region is characterized by small oasis settlements lying between the desert and the surrounding ranges, such as Khotan (Ho-t'ien), Yarkand, Kashgar itself, and Aksu (A-k'o-su), which served as way stations on the famous Silk Road between China and the West. Additional reading Ren Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (1970; originally published in French, 1939), although dated, is still the most comprehensive and basically sound survey in English. Denis Sinor, Inner Asia: HistoryCivilizationLanguages, 2nd rev. ed. (1971), serves as a broad overview. Additional works on the region's history include Gavin Hambly (ed.), Central Asia (1969; originally published in German, 1966); Geoffrey Wheeler, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia (1964, reprinted 1975); and A.H. Dani et al. (eds.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia (1992 ). Various topics on Central Asia are treated in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. (1954 ). The best short sketch on the region's history is found in Eshan Yarshater (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 5, fascicles 23 (199091).Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990), is a detailed survey down to the 13th century. Archaeology and ancient history are discussed in Grgoire Frumkin, Archaeology in Soviet Central Asia (1970); and Philip L. Kohl (ed.), The Bronze Age Civilization in Central Asia: Recent Soviet Discoveries (1981). Richard N. Frye, The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East (1975), provides a fine introduction on the coming of the Arabs and Islam. A pioneer study is H.A.L. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (1923, reprinted 1970). Works on the Samanids and Karakhanids include Richard N. Frye, Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (1965); and W. Barthold (V.V. Bartold), Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 4th ed. (1977; originally published in Russian, 2 vol., 18981900).Excellent accounts of the age of Mongol domination include David Morgan, The Mongols (1986); and Bertold Spuler, The Mongols in History (1971; originally published in French, 1961), and History of the Mongols . . . (1972, reissued 1988; originally published in German, 1968). The culminating phase of Mongol rule is discussed in Thomas T. Allsen, Mongol Imperialism (1987). Much information relating to Central Asia in the Mongol and Timurid periods is found in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5 (1968), and vol. 6 (1986). Beatrice F. Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (1989), is essential reading on Central Asia during the lifetime of Timur. Information on the Chagataid and Timurid periods can be obtained from W. Barthold (V.V. Bartold), Four Studies on the History of Central Asia, 3 vol., trans. from Russian (195662). Audrey Burton, Bukharan Trade, 15581718 (1993), details foreign economic links during the Shaybanid and Ashtarkhanid periods. W.H. Abdi et al. (eds.), Interaction Between Indian and Central Asian Science and Technology in Medieval Times, 2 vol. (1990), discusses topics such as music, architecture, astronomy, and mathematics.The Russian conquest and colonization of Central Asia is fully described in Richard A. Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 18671917 (1960). Other useful works include Seymour Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 18651924 (1968); Edward Allworth (ed.), Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, 3rd ed. (1994); Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (1960); and Hlne Carrre D'encausse, Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia (1988; originally published in French, 1966). The Soviet period is treated in Michael Rywkin, Russia in Central Asia (1963); Elizabeth E. Bacon, Central Asians Under Russian Rule: A Study in Culture Change (1966, reissued 1980); and Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union, trans. from French (1967). Shireen T. Hunter, Central Asia Since Independence (1996), chronicles the evolving republics. Edward Allworth David Roger Smith Gavin R.G. Hambly Denis Sinor