Memory and Commemoration across Central Asia: Texts, Traditions and Practices, 10th-21st Centuries(17 Leiden Studies in Islam and Society)

Memory and Commemoration across Central Asia: Texts, Traditions and Practices, 10th-21st Centuries is a collection of fourteen studies by a group of scholars active in the field of Central Asian Studies, presenting new research into various aspects of the rich cultural heritage of Central Asia (including Afghanistan). By mapping and exploring the interaction between political, ideological, literary and artistic production in Central Asia, the contributors offer a wide range of perspectives on the practice and usage of historical and religious commemoration in different contexts and timeframes. Making use of different approaches – historical, literary, anthropological, or critical heritage studies, the contributors show how memory functions as a fundamental constituent of identity formation in both past and present, and how this has informed perceptions in and outside Central Asia today.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Transliteration Introduction  Elena Paskaleva, with Gabrielle van den Berg Part 1 Historiographic Narratives 1 Perceptions of History in Persian Chronicles of the Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries in Central Asia  Charles Melville 2 Remembering Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Bukhara  Florian Schwarz Part 2 Epic Heroes and Literary Legacies 3 Turk amongst Tajiks The Turkic Shāhnāma Translation Located in Tajikistan and Manuscript Production during the Abuʾl-Khayrid Annexation of Khurasan (1588–1598)  Jaimee Comstock-Skipp 4 The Epic Hero Manas as the Archetype of Autonomy—Nostalgia and Futurities in Kyrgyz Spiritual and Ethno-Nationalist Discourses  Nienke van der Heide 5 Literary Souvenirs from Ṣadr al-Dīn ʿAynī and Sotim Uluġzoda in the Leiden University Library A Closer Look at ʿAynī’s Jodgorī (1935) and Uluġzoda’s Saëhati Buxoro Bo Hamrohii Aĭnī (1950)  Gabrielle van den Berg Part 3 Memory, Religious and Social Practices 6 Editing Sufism: Contemporary Negotiations on Memory and Religious Practice in Afghanistan  Annika Schmeding 7 Ethnographic Writing on Bukharan Jews: From Lost Tribes to Community Scholarship  Maira Kaye 8 Dynamics of Perpetuity: “Traditional” Horse Games in Kyrgyzstan  Simone de Boer Part 4 Shrines and Monuments as Sites of Memory 9 Genealogy and Family Ties of Mawarannahr Sayyids: A Study Based on Funerary Epigraphy  Babur Aminov 10 Ḥaẓīra Memorial Complexes in Mawarannahr: Evolution and Architectural Features  Mavlyuda Yusupova 11 Commemorating the Russian Conquest of Central Asia  Alexander Morrison 12 Remembering the Alisher Navoi Jubilee and the Archaeological Excavations in Samarqand in the Summer of 1941  Elena Paskaleva 13 Soviet Legitimization of Islamic Architecture in Old Khiva as Reflected in the Diaries of ʿAbdullāh Bāltaev (1880–1966)  Bakhtiyar Babadjanov 14 “Memory Traces:” Buston Buva Mazār in the Ferghana Region of Uzbekistan, 1980s–2010s  Věra Exnerová Glossary of Terms Index

About the Author :
Elena Paskaleva, Ph.D. (2010) is Assistant Professor of Critical Heritage Studies at Leiden University. Her courses deal with the politics of commemoration across the Middle East and Asia. She has published on the history and socio-political importance of Timurid architecture. Gabrielle van den Berg, Ph.D (1997) is Professor of Cultural History of Iran and Central Asia at Leiden University. She has published on classical Persian and Tajik literature and has worked extensively on the oral traditions of Badakhshan, Tajikistan.