Overview

It has long been known that the origins of the early modern dynasties of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, Mongols, and Shibanids in the sixteenth century go back to ""Turco-Mongol"" or ""Turcophone"" war bands. However, too often has this connection been taken at face value, usually along the lines of ethno-linguistic continuity. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires argues that the connection between a mythologized ""Turkestani"" or ""Turco-Mongol"" origin and these dynasties was not simply and objectively present as fact. Rather, much creative energy was unleashed by courtiers and leaders from Bosnia to Bihar (with Bukhara and Badakhshan along the way) in order to manipulate and invent the ancestry of the founders of these dynasties. Through constructed genealogies, nascent empires founded on disorganized military and political events were reduced to clear and stable categories. With proper family trees in place and their power legitimized, leaders became far removed from their true identities as bands of armed men and transformed into warrior kings. This created a longstanding pattern of false histories created by the intellectuals of the day. Essentially, one can even say that Turco-Mongol progenitors did not beget the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Mongol, and Shibanid states. Quite the contrary, one can instead say that historians writing in these empires were the ancestors of the ""Turco-Mongol"" lineage of their founders. Using one or more specimens of Persian historiography, in a series of five case studies, each focusing on one of these early polities, Ali Anooshahr shows how ""Turkestan"", ""Central Asia"", or ""Turco-Mongol"" functioned as literary tropes in the political discourse of the time.

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9780190693565

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Reviews

the book demonstrates the same thorough expertise in the field of Persianate historical writing that characterizes his earlier work. He offers fresh readings of many of the texts he deals with, many well-known in the field, and demonstrates the value of such readings by providing new insights and drawing new information from these texts. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires is a readable and very thought-provoking study and Anooshahr makes a strong case for his argument. Furthermore, he demonstrates the immense potential of comparative research on Persianate historical writing, research that should be conducted far more frequently in the future. * Tilmann Trausch, Der Islam * This is an important book, offering new readings of relatively well-known Persian texts and readings for the first time of others. Anooshahr brings new insights and new arguments into the study of early modern Muslim empires, focusing in particular on intellectual history and the problem of legitimizing new regimes. It is a book which all those studying early modern Muslim empires will not be able to ignore. * Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London * In this closely argued study, Ali Anooshahr examines a wide range of Persian works composed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a time of massive socio-political upheaval from the Balkans to Delhi. As older political orders gave way to new ones, how did the literati producing these works position their political masters-reigning sovereigns, upstart warlords, would-be rulers-vis-a-vis their past? Since that past was itself unstable and contested, Anooshahr shows how it had to manipulated, or even 'invented,' by different chroniclers. This book will be of great interest to students of Islamic history, the Persianate world, historiography, rhetoric, and the history of memory. * Richard M. Eaton, University of Arizona * The book offers an extremely original and stimulating approach to the history of early modern Islamic empires, with a strong and convincing argument about the constructed nature of the official historiography of these empires. Anooshahr should be commended for the geographic and cultural breadth of this work, as well as the sophistication with which he explores a very difficult set of texts that, to my knowledge, have never before been put into conversation with one another. * Giancarlo Casale, University of Minnesota *

the book demonstrates the same thorough expertise in the field of Persianate historical writing that characterizes his earlier work. He offers fresh readings of many of the texts he deals with, many well-known in the field, and demonstrates the value of such readings by providing new insights and drawing new information from these texts. Turkestan and the Rise of Eurasian Empires is a readable and very thought-provoking study and Anooshahr makes a strong case for his argument. Furthermore, he demonstrates the immense potential of comparative research on Persianate historical writing, research that should be conducted far more frequently in the future. * Tilmann Trausch, Der Islam *

Author Information

Ali Anooshahr is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He is a scholar of Islamic Empires and focuses particularly on the transmissions of texts and individuals along networks that connected India, Iran, Central Asia, and the Ottoman Empire.

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