The Eastern frontier : limits of empire in late antique and early medieval Central Asia

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Bibliographic Information

The Eastern frontier : limits of empire in late antique and early medieval Central Asia

Robert Haug

(The early and medieval Islamic world)

I.B. Tauris, 2021, c2019

  • : pbk

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Note

"Paperback edition first published 2021" -- T.p. verso

Bibliography: p. [259]-281

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 - THE GATE OF IRON: CONCEPTUALIZING THE EASTERN FRONTIER IN MEDIEVAL GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE Chapter 2 - SHAPING THE EASTERN FRONTIER: THE SASANIAN EMPIRE AND ITS EASTERN NEIGHBORS Chapter 3 - THE ARAB-MUSLIM CONQUESTS AND THE LATE ANTIQUE IMPERIAL SHATTERZONE Chapter 4 - THE FRONTIER BEYOND THE CALIPHATE: KHURASAN AND THE SECOND FITNA Chapter 5 - EXTENDING THE FRONTIER: THE UMAYYADS IN SOGDIANA AND BEYOND Chapter 6 - THE UNSETTLED FRONTIER: THE ABBASID AND OTHER REVOLUTIONS AND THE EASTERN FRONTIER Chapter 7 - UNIFYING THE FRONTIER: THE FORMATION OF GREATER KHURASAN CONCLUSION: AT THE END OF THE FRONTIER

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