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"Slaves" was one of the most essential "commodities" on the Silk Road. But these "trade goods" not only have material and artistic value, like others (textiles, animals, jewelry, chemicals. ) but also were social beings that brought their languages, traditions, cultures, religions, etc., wherever they went. Therefore "slavery" had an enormous place that made cultural mixture of local peoples on the Silk Road. This paper, using Islam, Chinese, Uyghur, and Sogdian sources, tried to determine the essential elements of the institution of slavery on the Silk Road, especially in the 7-11th centuries.

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My paper investigates the urban and architectural history of the Registan square in the center of Samarkand in today’s Uzbekistan. Three monumental madrasas (residential colleges for Islamic higher education) constructed from the early 15th century to the mid-17th century delineate this rectangular square. The first and oldest madrasa on Registan is the Ulugh Beg madrasa, built around 1420 by Ulugh Beg, the prince-governor of the Timurid dynasty (ca.1370-1507). The second and third structures are the Shir Dor madrasa and the Tilla Kari madrasa. Both were commissioned in the post-Timurid period by Yalangtush Bahadur (d. 1655), the Uzbek general-governor of Samarkand, who served the Bukharan khans. My research seeks to understand the formation of the Registan as both a physical and conceptual space during the Timurids and its transformations in the post-Timurid era.

As one travels throughout historic cities of Central Asia—such as Samarkand and Bukhara—the madrasa clearly dominates their urban landscapes positioned at the centers of towns or other important nodes of cities. And yet, existing scholarship has overlooked the madrasa’s urban ubiquity, a feature that makes Central Asian cities unique. What did it mean to build multiple monumental madrasas in urban and commercial centers during the 16th-18th centuries? How did the structures, decorative and epigraphic programs, and a host of written documents which record the foundation and social lives of these Central Asian madrasas challenge earlier understandings and expectations of the Muslim educational institution? My research examines Samarqand’s Registan as a case study, situating its evolution against the backdrop of changing architectural/urban typologies in the eastern and central Asian Islamic lands.

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Nomadic pastoralism has historically been portrayed as a lifeway and subsistence strategy that is mysterious and romantic – and unfortunately static (Porter 2012; Myadar 2011). This ongoing narrative in which pastoralists are perceived as reenacting ancestral behavior without modification does not provide space for these pastoralists communities to showcase their capacity to be both flexible and dynamic; however, ethnographic sources and the archaeological record provide a large collection of evidence that prove just that (Salzman 1972; Frachetti 2012; Honeychurch 2014). For this paper, we will be focusing on the ways in which the nomadic pastoralist communities from the Tarvagatai Valley in north-central Mongolia have reconceived and recreated their landscapes throughout over three thousand years of continuous occupation, from the Bronze Age (1800 – 800 BCE) to the Mongol Era (13th-14th centuries CE). The environmental and material records of this valley speak to the dynamic and changing uses and relationships embodied in the domestic spaces, monuments, and spaces in between. Through this investigation of the reconceptualization of space, we are able to touch on how the construction of a landscape connects to larger themes of economy, subsistence, socio-political organizations, and social networks. Landscape in this view is co-constructed by humans, non-humans, and the physical space itself through the process of placemaking. Placemaking, or the anchoring of different emotions, memories, and practices to specific places in the physical world, may be related to culturally significant secular and ritual activities, or they may be the culmination of daily practices and interactions with the world around them (Ashmore 2014; Maher 2019). Yet the actions and meanings behind placemaking are culturally relevant, and by understanding how the location, construction, and use of these places in the larger conceived landscape changes through time, we can understand how these pastoralists communities were able to externally express their dynamism and flexibility. Excavation and geophysical and pedestrian surveys of Tarvagatai Valley provides the oppurtunity to bring diverse time periods in conversation to demonstrate the continuity and change in placemaking practices.

Ashmore, Wendy

2014 On Ancient Placemaking. In Of Rocks and Water: an Archaeology of Place, ed. by Ömür Harmansah, pp. 40-46. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Frachetti, Michael D.

2012 Multiregional Emergence of Mobile Pastoralism and Non uniform Institutional Complexity across Eurasia. Current Anthropology 53(1):2.

Honeychurch, William

2014 Alternative Complexities: The Archaeology of Pastoral Nomadic States. Journal of Archaeological Research 22:277-326.

Maher, Lisa A.

2019 Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance and Transformation of an Epipalaeolthic Landscape. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 26:998-1083

Myadar, Orhon

2011 Imaginary Nomads: Deconstructing the Representation of Mongolia as a Land of Nomads. Inner Asia 13(2):335–362

Porter, A.

2012 Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations: Weaving Together Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Salzman, Phillip C.

1972 Multi-resource Nomadism in Iranian Baluchistan. In Perspectives on Nomadism, edited by William Irons and N. Dyson-Hudson, pp. 60–68. E. J. Brill, Leiden.

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The Timurid prince Sultan Husain Bayqara commissioned paintings and manuscripts in 15th-century Herat. His court had literary majlises, or poetry gatherings, in which Ali Shir Navai and Abdul Rahman Jami were the main figures. Herat at this time reached great cultural and artistic heights during Bayqara’s rulership. Sultan Bayqara was, however, a product of his ancestor Timur’s legacy, who had brought artisans and craftsmen from all the lands he had conquered to his capital Samarqand. After a discussion of how Timurid patronage and harnessing of artistic talent came about, this paper then focuses specifically on the manuscript patronage of Sultan Bayqara. I argue that without Timur’s passion for historiography and architecture, Sultan Husain Bayqara’s reign in which art and culture reached such a plateau would not be possible. Sultan Husain Bayqara commissioned a famous illustrated Zafarnama, also known as the Garrett or Baltimore Zafarnama, at the end of the 15th century with magnificent miniatures attributed to the great artist Bihzad. Another masterpiece is the Divan of Sultan Husain Bayqara written by him and copied by the famous calligrapher Sultan Ali Mashhadi in 1500 CE. It demonstrates the sultan’s erudition and refinement. This patronage of artistic endeavors by Sultan Husain Bayqara demonstrates a keen love for historiography and poetry, the foundations of which will be the main discussion of this article.

Sultan Husain Bayqara continued his patronage of manuscript production in Herat’s royal library called kutubkhana built by his Timurid great-granduncle Shahruh. The famous calligrapher of the time was Sultan Ali Mashhadiy, and his manuscripts were extremely highly prized. Almost every court In Khorasan and Transoxiana kept specimens of his calligraphy in libraries. The artist Kamal al-Din Bihzad was central to fulfilling his commissioned manuscripts. My argument is going further with Sultan Husain Bayqara’s great patronage of cultivating art and manuscript production, which he was able to continue through his ancestor Timur’s legacy. I argue that the many achievements in Sultan Husain Bayqara’s court were successfully executed given their unique approach to extending Mongol ancestral traditions.