Islamic Central Asia: An Anthology of Historical Sources ed. by Scott C. Levi and Ron Sela (review)

As anyone who has ever attempted to teach the history of Central Asia can attest, the sheer lack of primary sources available in English serves as a tremendous obstacle to introducing students to this fascinating and fruitful subject. To that end, Scott C. Levi and Ron Sela have edited this valuable anthology, explicitly intended as a "pedagogical resource" for the study of the region (P. 1).

In this they are mostly successful. The translations are of uniformly high quality. All are in very readable English and seemingly lacking in technical errors. In addition, many of the translations have been produced specifically for this anthology, making it an important contribution for the study of Central Asian history in and of itself. (We may therefore add this collection of primary source readings to the growing body of translations into English of Central Asian texts, which includes relatively recent contributions by Allen Frank, ¹ Jo-Ann Gross, ² and Rustam Shukurov et al., ³ among others.)

Also helpful are the introductions that accompany each set of readings. These introductions pro vide important context for students who are - presumably - otherwise mostly unfamiliar with the contours of Central Asian history. As with the translations, these are all well done, and they only serve to enhance the collection's usability in a classroom setting.

Some of the texts are standard sources for teaching the history of Central Asia. Ibn 'Arabshah's (1392-1450) record of Timur's conquests is an indispensable source on the Timurid dynasty. Likewise, the chronicles by Baladhuri (d. 892), Tabari (839-923), and ibn Khallikan (1211-1282), respectively, are classics in the historiography of the Islamic world, and travelogues by Ahmad ibn Fadlan (fl. early tenth century) and ibn Battuta (1304-1377) - popularly called the "Muslim Marco Polo" - are similarly renowned. Though many of the sources here are readily available in translation elsewhere, their inclusion is convenient for instructional purposes.

The collection features some more obscure sources, as well. The apocryphal biography of Timur from eighteenth-century Bukhara serves as an important example of the many different facets of historiography as a genre and its place in the political and cultural life of Central Asia. A sixteenth-century deed of sale, also from Bukhara, by a member of one of the city's most prominent families provides a seldom seen glimpse of the quotidian economic activity of the region. And the excerpt from Fazil Mahmud Churas's (fl. late seventeenth century) chronicle, which describes the relations between different nomadic groups, sheds light on an aspect of Central Asian history that has very few written sources. (On the other hand, the collection devotes an entire section to the Great Game, an area of Central Asian history that is not lacking in available primary source documents, many in English. Presenting alternative perspectives on this conflict would be beneficial, of course, but unfortunately only two of the five texts included here are by non-European writers.)

One significant advantage this collection has is its historical sweep. The large number of texts contained here - fifty-five in all - lends itself to a broad scope, and the chronological breadth of the anthology is immense. The texts included stretch from the Arab conquests of Ma wara' al-nahr in the eighth century up through the tsarist domination of the region at the turn of the twentieth; one can read within this single volume both the "Secret History of the Mongols" as well as an account of the Russian invasion of Khiva.

In contrast to the chronological sweep, however, the thematic scope is decidedly narrower. The vast majority of texts (some forty of the fifty-five) focus on political and/or military elites. This not only includes straightforward histories, such as the Zubdat al-athar, the excerpted portion of which describes the origins of the Shaybanid state, but the travelogue...