Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan
Revisiting the Faḍā"il-i Balkh
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:12th Dec '13
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This book is about a sacred place called Balkh, known to the ancient Greeks as Bactra. Located in the north of today's Afghanistan, along the silk road, Balkh was holy to many. The Prophet Zoroaster is rumoured to have died here, and during late antiquity, Balkh was the home of the Naw Bahār, a famed Buddhist temple and monastery. By the tenth century, Balkh had become a critical centre of Islamic learning and early poetry in the New Persian language that grew after the Islamic conquests and continues to be spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia today. In this book, Arezou Azad provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, which continues to exemplify age-old sanctity in the Persian-speaking world and the eastern lands of Islam generally. Azad focuses on the five centuries from the Islamic conquests in the eighth century to just before the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the crucial period in the emergence of Perso-Islamic historiography and Islamic legal thought. The book traces the development of 'sacred landscape', the notion that a place has a sensory meaning, as distinct from a purely topographical space. This opens up new possibilities for our understanding of Islamisation in the eastern Islamic lands, and specifically the transition from Buddhism to Islam. Azad offers a new look at the medieval local history of Balkh, the Faḍā"il-i Balkh, and analyses its creation of a sacred landscape for Balkh. In doing so, she provides a compelling example of how the sacredness of a place is perpetuated through narratives, irrespective of the dominant religion or religious strand of the time.
Arezou Azad has produced a splendid, focused, and well-written monograph on a text that has attracted little attention beyond a small coterie of Iranologists ... Though a number of scholars have made use of Faḍā?il-i Balkh for the history of Sufism, Islamic law, and religious history, Azad's book is by far the most substantial treatment of the text ... This book should be read widely by students and scholars of pre-modern Islam. * Ahmad Khan, DER ISLAM *
a thoroughly well-researched study that will bring significant new light to an area of Central Asia, which has been neglected in modern scholarship and will provide further impetus to the study of medieval Perso-Islamic historical writing. * Alex Mallett, American Historical Review *
This is a work of major importance for scholars ... The achievement of the author is in her meticulous analysis. * R. D. McChesney, Speculum *
a richly documented, penetrating study of aspects of religious and cultural life in one of the great cities of the Islamic East. * C Edmund Bosworth, British Institute of Persian Studies *
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan integrates an erudite textual analysis with a multilayered history of urban space and the people who endowed it with meaning. In Azad's hands, the city of Balkh comes alive, as do the concerns of its medieval inhabitants ... One finishes [the book] with an appreciation for Balkh as place, a site endowed with layers of meaning that have inspired pride and pilgrimage for centuries. * Zayde Antrim, International Journal of Middle East Studies *
an important contribution to our understanding of the history of medieval Balkh. * Robert J. Haug, Journal of Near Eastern Studies *
ISBN: 9780199687053
Dimensions: 222mm x 144mm x 23mm
Weight: 458g
240 pages