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- Format:
- Panel
- Theme:
- History
- Location:
- Sessions:
- Friday 7 June, -
Time zone: Asia/Almaty
Accepted papers
Session 1 Friday 7 June, 2024, -Abstract
This paper focuses on the political history of the Saljuqs and their relationship with the Qarakhanids from the reign of the Saljuq sultan Malikshāh to Sanjar in the 11th and 12th centuries. From their early history, the Saljuqs have encountered the Qarakhanids in Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr. Despite frequent military clashes between them, they have long maintained relations through marriage, in which elite women played an important connecting role. One of the most famous women was Terken Khatun, a Qarakhanid princess and a wife of Malikshāh. Both historical sources and academic studies focus on her remarkable role in the decline of Niẓām al-Mulk and the struggle for her son Maḥmūd to succeed to the throne after Malikshāh’s death, but pay less attention to her Qarakhanid background. In this paper, I intend to connect the Saljuq history with the Qarakhanids, reconsider the role of Terken Khatun, and also analyze the influences of other figures, such as the vizier Tāj al-Mulk, members of the Saljuq family Tutush b. Alp Arslan and Ismāʿīl b. Yāqūtī, and the Qarakhanid ruler Shams al-Mulk Naṣr. In comparison, another Terken Khatun who was Sanjar’s wife and also from Qarakhanids, was a more “silent” figure in the texts. I argue that Sanjar’s appointment of the rulers of Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr was largely based on this Qarakhanid princess’s branch of kinsmen, and it in turn consolidated Sanjar’s own authority in this region and ensured his dominance within the Saljuq family. In contrast to previous studies, I try to demonstrate that the political conflicts among the Saljuq family members were not just an internal issue, but closely related to their relationship with Central Asia, in this case, the Qarakhanids. This paper uses historical texts in Persian and Arabic, mainly Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī’s Saljūqnāma, al-Rāwandī’s Rāḥat al-Ṣudūr wa Āyat al-Surūr, Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Kāmil fīʾl-Taʾrīkh, and Bundārī’s Zubdat al-nuṣra wa-nukhbat al-ʿuṣra, the Mirror for princes Siyāsatnāma of Niẓām al-Mulk and the Arabic biographical dictionary Jihat al-aʾimma al-khulafāʾ min al-darāʾir wa-’l-imāʾ of Ibn al-Sāʿī, as well as some numismatic and architectural evidence.
Abstract
Modern scholarship suggests that a cold period caused crises in the 11th century causing the Turkmen and Pechenegs to migrate southwards and westwards (Bulliet 2009, Ellenblum 2011, El-Hibri 2021). In conflict with this narrative, a diverse group of proxy records from Lake Gölcuk (Anatolia), the Aral Sea, Lake Balkhash (Kazakhstan), the Plotnikovo Mire (Russia), and Lake Ayakum (Northern Tibetan Plateau) show dry conditions during the eleventh century. My paper will propose a middle ground between the paleoenvironmental and human evidence with a discussion of how the Seljuks and Qarakhanids structured their economies in ways that allowed adaptation to the dry period. These cases challenge earlier crisis narratives of the eleventh century while considering environmental factors when analyzing the administrative systems of these two mobile pastoralist states. This period saw the Turkification and Islamization of much of Central Asia and the Middle East as well as the institutional development of Sufism and waqf, thus, understanding the connections between environment and society of this period develops our knowledge of Central Asian history over the long durée.
Abstract
This paper discusses the identity of Dilshad who financed the restoration of the Afaq Khojam mausoleum in 1226 A.H. with her Sufi activities, and analyzes the connections between her and the legend of "Fragrant Concubine" through a review of legends, inscriptions, archives, and historical records. I point out that Dilshad was actually the Fragrant Concubine in early Chinese descriptions of the "Fragrant Concubine temple" (Afaq Khojam mausoleum), on the other hand that the Fragrant Concubine legend in Peking was about Khoja Jahan's widow Fatimä (Rongfei/Baktan Fei), these two were not related at all. I argue that the widely spread Mämurä version of false the "Fragrant Concubine legend“ nowadays was created on the basis of a reconciliation of these two contradictory or unrelated legends. I also argue that, like the Fragrant Concubine legend, which has been constructed by selection, reorganization or re-creation, the narrative of Dilshad who were an important figure in the Sufism activities of the Afaq Khojam mausoleum, has been consciously ignored and seriously distorted by different groups of people according to their psychological tendencies in recent years. I argue this is also the result of various social forces seeking to rationalize the current situation by constructing her identity to serve their actual benefits. This paper is based on multilingual materials, including Manchu, Chinese, Turkic and Persian.
Abstract
This paper presents a chapter from the scholarly book The Spiritual Legacy of Yasawi, translated into English in 2023 and forthcoming from the Almaty-based Kokzhiat-Gorizont Press. The author Prof. Aidar Abuov will co-present with his translator Dr. George Rueckert of Almaty’s KIMEP University. The paper briefly discusses the work of the early 12th century Sufi poet and mystic Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, whose collection of verses the Hikmet Divani (The Book of Wisdom) is among the masterpieces of Islamic and world literature and whose mausoleum in the city of Turkestan (ancient Yasy) is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Yasawi’s verses were written in a middle Turkic language that enabled their wide dissemination through Turkic Central Asia (Turan) along with the dervish disciples of the Sufi brotherhood that Yasawi established, called the Yasawiyya. The paper argues that the activity of the Yasawiyya was the single most important factor in the Islamization of nomads living north of the Seyhun River (Syr Darya). But this process was not so much a matter of systematic proselytization as of a mutually interactive “compromise,” whereby nomadic tribes perceived Islam through the verses, while local rites and customs, such as the pagan cult of Tengri, receiving an Islamic interpretation in the verses, began their assimilation into the canons of Muslim faith. The resulting synthesis led to the version of Islam unique to Kazakhstan and much of Central Asia. Specific examples from the Hikmet verses are presented and analyzed.