Summer 2009

Rediscovering Central Asia

by S. Frederick Starr

To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable past.

In AD 998, two young men living nearly 200 miles apart, in present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, entered into a correspondence. With verbal jousting that would not sound out of place in a 21st-century laboratory, they debated 18 questions, several of which resonate strongly even today.

Are there other solar systems out among the stars, they asked, or are we alone in the universe? In Europe, this question was to remain open for another 500 years, but to these two men it seemed clear that we are not alone. They also asked if the earth had been created whole and complete, or if it had evolved over time. Time, they agreed, is a continuum with no beginning or end. In other words, they rejected creationism and anticipated evolutionary geology and even Darwinism by nearly a millennium. This was all as heretical to the Muslim faith they professed as it was to medieval Christianity.

Few exchanges in the history of science have so boldly leapt into the future as this one, which occurred a thousand years ago in a region now regarded as a backwater. We know of it because a few copies of it survived in manuscript and were published almost a millennium later. Twenty-six-year-old Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni, or al-Biruni (973–1048), hailed from near the Aral Sea and went on to distinguish himself in geography, mathematics, trigonometry, comparative religion, astronomy, physics, geology, psychology, mineralogy, and pharmacology. His counterpart, Abu Ali Sina, or Ibn Sina (ca. 980–1037), was from the stately city of Bukhara, the great seat of learning in what is now Uzbekistan. He made his mark in medicine, philosophy, physics, chemistry, astronomy, theology, clinical pharmacology, physiology, ethics, and even music. When eventually Ibn Sina’s great Canon of Medicine was translated into Latin, it triggered the start of modern medicine in the West. Together, the two are regarded as among the greatest scientific minds between antiquity and the Renaissance.

Most today know these argumentative geniuses, if at all, as Arabs. This is understandable, since both wrote in Arabic (as well as Persian). But just as a Japanese writing in English is not an Englishman, a Central Asian writing in Arabic is not an Arab. In fact, both men were part of a huge constellation of ethnically Persian or Turkic geniuses in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, geology, linguistics, political science, poetry, architecture, and practical technology—all of whom were from what today we call Central Asia. Between 800 and 1100 this pleiad of Central Asian scientists, artists, and thinkers made their region the intellectual epicenter of the world. Their influence was felt from East Asia and India to Europe and the Middle East.

Today, this is hard to imagine. This vast region of irrigated deserts, mountains, and steppes between China, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and the Caspian Sea is easily dismissed as a peripheral zone, the “backyard” of one or another great power. In impoverished Afghanistan, traditionally considered the heart of Central Asia, U.S. forces are fighting a backward-looking and ignorant Taliban. The main news in America from the rest of Central Asia is that the Pentagon is looking for bases there from which to provision the Afghan campaign. In China, the region is seen chiefly as a semi-colonial source of oil, natural gas, gold, aluminum, copper, and uranium. The Russian narrative, meanwhile, dwells on Moscow’s geopolitical competition there with the West and, increasingly, China. By and large, most people abroad ignore the land of Ibn Sina and al-Biruni, dismissing it as an inconvenient territory to be crossed while getting somewhere else.

Given the dismal plight of these lands in the modern era, who can be surprised at this? Beginning a century and a half ago, Russia colonized much of the region, while Britain turned Afghanistan into a buffer to protect its Indian colonies from Russia. China eventually absorbed a big chunk to the east, now known as Xinjiang, the “New Territory.” Ancient traditions of learning had long since died out, and while the Soviets revived literacy, they suppressed free thought in both the secular and religious spheres. A new day for the region began with the creation of five independent states after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and with the establishment of a new and more modern government in Afghanistan after 9/11.

Eighteen years on, all of the new states have preserved their sovereignty and Afghanistan is clinging to life. But several of the region’s countries remain destitute, and even the most successful ones are riddled with corruption and still dependent on authoritarian forms of rule. As William Faulkner reminded us in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in 1950, there is a big difference between surviving and prevailing. Is the best hope of these lands merely to work their way back up to zero? Or can they possibly reclaim some of the luster of their glorious past, and prevail?

And glorious it was. It is hard to know where to begin in enumerating the intellectual achievements of Central Asians a millennium ago. In mathematics, it was Central Asians who first accepted irrational numbers, identified the different forms of cubic equations, invented trigonometry, and adapted and disseminated the decimal system and Hindu numerals (called “Arabic” numbers in the West). In astronomy, they estimated the earth’s diameter to a degree of precision unmatched until recent centuries and built several of the largest observatories before modern times, using them to prepare remarkably precise astronomical tables.

In chemistry, Central Asians were the first to reverse reactions, to use crystallization as a means of purification, and to measure specific gravity and use it to group elements in a manner anticipating Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of 1871. They compiled and added to ancient medical knowledge, hugely broadened pharmacology, and passed it all to the West and to India. And in technology, they invented windmills and hydraulic machinery for lifting water that subsequently spread westward to the Middle East and Europe and eastward to China.

But wasn’t this the great age of Arab science and learning centered at the Caliphate in Baghdad? True enough. There were brilliant Arab scientists such as the polymath and founder of ophthalmology Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965–1040). But as the Leipzig scholar Heinrich Suter first showed a century ago, many, if not most, of those “Arab” scientists were in fact either Persian or Turkic and hailed originally from Central Asia. This is true of the mathematician and astronomer Mukhammad ibn Musa al-Khorezmi (ca. AD 780–850), who was from the same Khorezm region of the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border area as al-Biruni, hence “al-Khorezmi.” Algorithms, one of his many discoveries, still bear his name in distorted form, while our term “algebra” comes directly from the title of his celebrated book on mathematics. Similarly, Abu Nasr al-Farabi (ca. AD 872–961), known in the West as Alfarabius, whose innovative analyses of the ethics of Aristotle surpassed all those of Western thinkers except Thomas Aquinas, was a Turk from what is now Kazakhstan, not an Arab.

The extraordinarily important role of Central Asian intellectuals in Baghdad is less surprising when one bears in mind that the Abbassid Caliphate was actually founded by Central Asians. True, the caliphs themselves were Arabs who had settled in the East, but in the process they had “gone native” and embraced the Persian and Turkic world in which they found themselves. One caliph, al-Ma’mun, refused for years after his appointment in AD 818 to leave Central Asia, ruling the Muslim world instead from the splendid oasis city of Merv in what is now Turkmenistan. When he eventually moved to Baghdad he brought with him, along with his Turkic soldiers, the more open and ecumenical values of Central Asia, with their blend of influences from the Persian and Turkic cultures.

The movement from Central Asia to the Middle East recalls the ancient brain drain from the centers of Greek learning to Rome. The difference is that even as some Central Asian scientists and scholars were moving to Baghdad, Arab intellectuals were also being attracted to the great centers in Central Asia. In a kind of reverse brain drain, the extraordinarily enlightened city of Gurganj (where al-Biruni lived), in what is now Turkmenistan, became a magnet for Arab scientists, as did the well-financed and opulent court at Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan. Nor did all Central Asians who had been lured to Baghdad choose to stay there.

What territories should we include in this “Central Asia” that produced such a flowering of genius? Certainly all of the five “stans” that gained independence in 1991: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. No less central to this flowering of the intellect were the great cities of what is now Afghanistan: Balkh, Herat, and others. Add also modern Iran’s northeastern province of Khorasan, whose capital city, Nishapur, produced long ranks of innovators during those bounteous years. The boundaries of this “zone of genius” also extend across what is now the western border of China to embrace the ancient city of Kashgar and several other great centers that have always fallen within the cultural orbit of Central Asia.

It is one thing to draw a circle on the map, but quite another to explain why this region, call it Greater Central Asia, should have produced such a cultural flowering. Booming cities provided the setting for cultural life. A traveling Arab marveled at what he called the “land of a thousand cities” in what is now Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The ruins of mighty Balkh, once the capital of this region, still spread for miles and miles across the plain west of modern Mazar–i-Sharif in Afghanistan. In its heyday Balkh was larger than Paris, Rome, Beijing, or Delhi. Like all the great regional centers, it had running water, baths, and majestic palaces—and solidly built homes of sun-dried brick for non-palace dwellers.

It was also richer, thanks to continental trade. Merchants from Balkh and other Central Asian commercial centers journeyed to the Middle East, Europe, China, and deep into India. Traders from those lands brought goods to the sprawling commercial entrepôts in Greater Central Asia. Since slavery thrived throughout the Muslim world and beyond, the bazaars also included large slave markets. Gold, silver, and bronze currency from these thriving hubs of commerce traveled all the way to Gotland in Sweden and to Korea and Sri Lanka.

Central Asia lay at the junction of all the routes connecting the great cultures of the Eurasian landmass. This network of routes, today often called the “Silk Road,” in its heyday transported a huge variety of goods in every direction. Glass blowing spread from the Middle East to China via Central Asia, while papermaking and sericulture (the production of silk) went from China westward. But the Central Asians were not passive transmitters. For half a millennium, Middle Easterners and Europeans esteemed Samarqand paper as the best anywhere, while the treasures of more than one medieval cathedral in Europe consist of silk manufactured in the Fergana Valley of what is now mainly Uzbekistan.

Traders also carried religions. Greek settlers in the wake of Alexander the Great (356–23 bc) brought the cults of Athena, Hercules, and Aphrodite to their new cities in Afghanistan. Then Buddhism found fertile soil across the region, and spread from there to China, Japan, and Korea. Along the way, Buddhist artists picked up from immigrant Greeks the idea of depicting the Buddha in sculpture. About the same time, Jewish communities were formed, Syrian Christian bishoprics established, and Manichean communities founded across the region. In a stratum beneath all these religions lay the region’s core faith, Zoroastrianism, with its emphasis on the struggle of good and evil, redemption, and heaven and hell. Zoroaster, who probably lived in the sixth or seventh century bc, came from the region of Balkh, but his religion spread westward, eventually to Babylon, where Jews encountered it and fell under its influence. From Judaism its concepts spread first to Christianity and then to Islam.

So when Islam arrived with the Arab armies in the late seventh century, it encountered a population that was expert in what we might today call comparative religion and philosophical analysis. Many Central Asians converted, but others did not, at least not until after the period of cultural effervescence had passed. Muslim or not, they were expert codifiers, and one of them, Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (ad 810–70), brought together and analyzed the hadiths (sayings) of Muhammad, the compilation becoming regarded as Islam’s second most holy book after the Qur’an. Secular ideas also wafted back and forth across the region. The astronomer al-Khorezmi wrote a book comparing the utility of Indian numerals (and the concept of zero) with all other contenders, while others mined Indian geometry, astronomy, and even calendar systems for good ideas. Earlier Central Asians had tested various alphabets, including ones from Syria and India. Several local languages opted for an alphabet deriving from Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. It is hard to imagine a more intellectually open region anywhere.

What distinguished Central Asians from both the Arabs and the Chinese is that they were polyglots. They considered it normal to live amid a bewildering profusion of languages and alphabets, and managed somehow to master whichever ones they needed at the time. Thus, when the Arab armies arrived bearing a new religion, it was natural that at least some officials and intellectuals would learn the Arabs’ strange language to see what it offered. Traders soon thereafter began arriving with writings newly translated from classical Greek. Often the work of Christian Arabs, these translations suddenly opened challenging new ideas in philosophy and science to Central Asians. In due course, they were to master and even go beyond their ancient Greek mentors.

The flowering of Greater Central Asia was thus a product of “location, location, location,” both with respect to the trade-based prosperity that it generated and to the welter of religions and ideas that came on the back of that trade. But trade alone would not have given rise to the intellectual awakening that occurred, for not all trade unleashes genius. Perhaps it is best to think of trade as a necessary condition for intellectual takeoff, but not a sufficient one.

How important was religion to this explosion of creativity? For many, Islam was the crucial factor. When al-Bukhari embarked on his lifework of scholarship he was doubtless moved by deep piety, as were scores of other great thinkers. Al-Farabi never doubted that his research into the basis of ethics would strengthen formal religion. Others agreed with al-Farabi but insisted that free inquiry and research should guide religion, not vice versa, and certainly not be constrained by it. Still others were outright skeptics who dismissed religion as fine for the mass of society but a farce for intellectuals. This was the view of Omar Khayyám (1048–1123), the brilliant mathematician who is known today mainly for his poetry, a collection of which was introduced to the West in the 19th century as the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

All this adds up to the possibility that intellectual boldness owed less to what religion did than to what it did not do. This is important, given the struggle that existed at times between religion and science in the West. But one senses that someone like al-Farabi, who tossed off a major study on musical theory in addition to all his other works, needed neither permission nor encouragement to treat the whole world as his oyster.

Pinpointing the causes of Central Asia’s golden age is all the more difficult because the great minds who gave the age its brilliance were such a diverse lot. A few came from wealthy landed families and could live off their estates, while others, such as Ibn Sina and al-Biruni, won appointments to lucrative high offices. But they were exceptions. Most of the thinkers were full-time scientists, scholars, and intellectuals, or at least aspired to be. With no universities or academies of science to support them, this was no easy undertaking. Even if they assembled a few paying students, the resulting income never provided enough to sustain them. And so, by default, they relied on the patronage of rulers.

Here was one of Central Asia’s great strengths. To be sure, a would-be scientist could strike out for Baghdad in hopes of joining the House of Wisdom, an academy of sciences established by the Central Asia–born caliph al-Ma’mun. But there were many local rulers and courts throughout the region, just as there were also in Persia to the west. All gave a respectful nod to Baghdad but considered themselves functionally independent. Each of these rulers was a kind of caliph in his own right, ruling in a thoroughly authoritarian manner and defending his territory with a large army of Turks. But they also promoted trade, collected taxes, built splendid capitals, and, significantly, spent fortunes on the arts and sciences. One such court was at Gurganj, where al-Biruni worked. Another was at the already-ancient walled city of Samarqand, where between 850 and 1000 the Samanid dynasty maintained a magnificent library, intense salons where savants discussed the Great Questions, and a lively social world centered on music and poetry.

There was nothing kind and gentle about some of these rulers; nor were all of them sophisticated as patrons of the arts and sciences. From his capital in eastern Afghanistan, Mahmud of Ghazna (971–1030) ruled an empire stretching from India to the heart of modern Iran. Mahmud was ruthless and viewed culture more as an adornment than a necessity. Yet he successfully engaged al-Biruni, who proceeded to author the first comprehensive study of India and Hinduism in any language. Mahmud also patronized the great poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi, whose grand panorama of pre-Muslim Persia, the Shahnameh (ca. 1000), influenced troubadours as far away as France and remains a classic of world literature.

The last great explosion of cultural energy in Central Asia occurred under the Seljuk Turks beginning about 1037 and continuing for more than a century. From their eastern capitals at Merv in modern Turkmenistan and Nishapur near the present-day Iranian-Afghan border, they encouraged innovators in many fields. Among their achievements was the invention of a way to cover large spaces with double domes. One of their earliest efforts can still be seen rising from the desolation of their ruined capital at Merv. Following a circuitous route that led through Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome at the Cathedral of Florence to St. Nicholas’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg, this innovation eventually defined the cupola of the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Why did the great age of Central Asia fade? The most common explanation blames the waning of the intellectual whirlwind on the Mongol invasion, which Ghenghis Khan launched from the Mongolian heartland in 1218. It is true that the Mongol invaders sacked most of the magnificent cities of Central Asia, but three objections undermine this thesis. First, all but a few of the cities quickly revived, thanks to trade and commerce. Second, far from isolating the region, the Mongol conquest increased contacts between Greater Central Asia and both Europe and the rest of Asia. This happened because the conquering Mongols abolished borders and tariffs within their vast empire. When Marco Polo passed through Afghanistan en route to China in the 13th century, he did so with a single “patent,” or visa. To the extent that cross-cultural contact was an essential ingredient of intellectual vitality, it flourished under the Mongols.

Third, even if the Mongols had set out to suppress free thought in 1221 (they did not), there would have been no need for them to do so. A full century earlier, much of the cultural energy that had crackled across the length and breadth of Central Asia for hundreds of years had dissipated. True, at Merv in the 12th century there were still a dozen libraries, one of them with 12,000 volumes, and there were more than 50 doctors in Bukhara. But as early as 1100, the focus of intellectual life had shifted from bold sallies into vast and unknown territories to the preparation of compendiums of earlier studies and careful treatises on safer, more limited subjects. A sure sign that the formerly bright flame had diminished is the fact that most of the surviving manuscripts from this period are either copies of earlier writings or commentaries on them, not original works.

If the “Whodunit?” question does not point to the Mongols, what caused the decline? Most of Central Asia’s great ancient cities today present a picture of gaunt ruins baking silently in the desert sun, the bleakness relieved only by occasional tufts of sage. Viewing them, one is tempted to blame the cultural downturn on climate change or some other ecological shift. But most studies of the region’s ecological history conclude that the climate during the boom years was nearly identical to what it is today, and that the main change was the decay of the irrigation systems that were once the region’s glory.

Looking beyond the Mongols and ecology, at least four factors contributed to the region’s decline. First, and perhaps foremost, nothing endures forever. The golden age of classical Athens lasted barely a century before the city slipped into a lesser silver age. Few of the Renaissance cities remained at a peak of cultural creativity for more than a century and a half. It is natural and inevitable that decline should set in after a high point.

In the case of Central Asia, even more than with the Arabs to the West, the mighty stimulus for original thinking had been the challenge of mastering and assimilating vast and unfamiliar bodies of thought, from ancient Greece, the Middle East, and India. By 1100 this had been accomplished, and no comparably huge body of new learning presented itself thereafter. The European Renaissance should have provided such a stimulus, of course, but by that time the great trade routes that had connected civilizations had seen better days and Central Asia’s isolation and decline was becoming entrenched.

Second, religions, like the cultures of which they are a part, go through cycles, beginning in dynamism, self-confidence, and experimentation and then hardening into orthodoxy. In Central Asia, this had already occurred with both Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. In the case of Islam, the greatest flowering of creative thought started early, between 800 and 1100. The hardening into orthodoxy also began early, but did not reach its apex until around 1100. Even then, there remained a few isolated outposts that stayed intellectually vital for another century or so. But in Persian and Turkic Central Asia, as in the Arab heartland and in Persia proper, the demands of a steadily rigidifying Muslim orthodoxy gradually narrowed the sphere in which free thought and humanism could be exercised.

Beyond these “morphological” realities that contributed to the withering of free intellectual life in Greater Central Asia, a third and much more specific factor was at work: the Sunni-Shia split within the Muslim faith. This fundamental division dates to the first generation after Muhammad’s death in AD 632. By the time of the rise of the first Caliphate in Damascus, the Sunnis were firmly in charge throughout the Muslim world except in Egypt, where the Fatimids, a Shiite dynasty, flourished from 968 to 1171. But even before the fall of the Fatimids the Shiite faithful were being hounded eastward, shifting the core zone of confessional conflict to Persia and Central Asia. As this occurred, the reigning Sunni rulers across the region tightened their grip on all who might be suspected of schismatic leanings. Many of the great innovators, such as Ibn Sina, had come from Shiite families. Now anyone like him was suspect.

Needless to say, the change hit the freethinkers particularly hard, but it affected no less the mainline Sunnis. Two figures from the town of Tus on the western fringe of Central Asia in what is now eastern Iran epitomized this new direction. The first, Nizam al-Mulk (1018–92), was a highly gifted administrator and also one of the best political scientists of the era. Al-Mulk’s teachers had introduced him to works by the best minds of the Central Asian renaissance. But by the time he was appointed vizier of the Seljuk Empire, the battle against Shiite dissidence was at full tilt. Fearing deviance on every side, al-Mulk proposed to establish a network of schools, or madrassas, that would instill orthodox Sunni Islam and turn young men into well-informed loyalists of the faith. Graduates would reject not only the Shiite schism but any other forms of thought that might be suspected of deviance from orthodoxy.

The second transformative figure, Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058–1111), a philosopher and theologian, launched a frontal attack on the dangers posed by the unrestrained exercise of reason. The title of his most famous work tells it all: The Incoherence of the Philosophers (i.e., scientists). Like the Grand Inquisitor in Feodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, al-Ghazali intimately knew his enemy, in this case Aristotelian empiricism, which had attracted the best minds of the region. Attacking Aristotle, he attacked all contemporary rationalists, and to devastating effect.

Together, al-Mulk and al-Ghazali lowered the curtain on independent thought that had been raised in Central Asia for three centuries. Yet Central Asians responded with their typical creativity. With outer forms of the faith hardened and rigidified, they evinced a fresh interest in individual spirituality. Their highly personal system for achieving a mystical experience of God required neither books, hierarchies, nor mosques, and was called Sufism. Central Asians had ready at hand many forms of such mystical and private worship, thanks to their contacts with Hindu India and their rich local traditions of Buddhism, Syrian Christianity, and even Judaism, which had thrived in the region’s trade centers. How mystical currents within these faiths contributed to Sufism is much debated, but one thing is clear: Even though the first Sufis had been Arabs, Central Asia became Sufism’s heartland. Several of the first and greatest Sufi movements arose there and spread thence throughout the Muslim world. Today Sufi poems by Rumi, Attar, and others have gained a New Age following, but in their own era they represented a turning inward and away from the civic realm.

Central Asia by no means disappeared from the world’s view after 1100. In the 14th century, Timur, known in the West as Tamerlane, conquered the world from Delhi to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and then assembled learned scientists and writers in his rebuilt capital of Samarqand. A century later, Babur sprang from the Fergana Valley and went on to found the Mughal dynasty in India. A gifted writer, Babur followed the old Central Asian practice of gathering creative talent to his court.

Yet Central Asia never regained the intellectual luster it had possessed in the centuries between 800 and 1100. High local tariffs killed the golden goose that had given birth to prosperity and inter-cultural contact. Religious orthodoxy stifled the region’s most original thinkers. As the decline set in, Central Asia gradually ceased to be central to the high culture of all Eurasia and sank into the status of a remote and dusty boondocks.

From this descent into obscurity it was an easy step to Dan Rather’s coverage of Afghanistan and the region in the immediate wake of 9/11. Donning a bush jacket and filming at dawn and dusk, he presented the region as inaccessible, backward, exotic, marginal, and threatening—in short, the end of the world. Ibn Sina, al-Biruni, and scores of other world-class geniuses from the region might just as well never have lived.

Even though the Central Asia of Rather’s depiction was and is an evocative image, it carries some bothersome implications. On the one hand, it conjures up a place where the best the United States and the world community can hope for is to limit the damage arising from it. This means destroying whatever threatens us and then getting out. The problem is that the thinking behind such an approach can then become self-fulfilling: A place we judged to be hopeless becomes truly so, and even more threatening than before. The fact that Central Asia and Afghanistan are situated between four—and possibly soon five—nuclear powers does not help matters.

Fortunately, this prevailing image of backwardness is not the whole story. Since the region emerged from Soviet and Taliban rule, the ancient continental trade routes have begun to revive. Indians and Koreans flying to Europe stop off there. Half a dozen countries and as many international financial institutions are busily building a network of highways that will eventually link Europe, China, India, and the Middle East. The fact that this is occurring without central direction means that its extent has largely gone unnoticed. But the road building has now reached the level of an unstoppable force. The opening of routes between Europe and China and across Afghanistan toward the Arabian Sea, India, and Southeast Asia and linking the Middle East, China, and India will, in the coming decade, transform the entire Eurasian landmass. Little that is emerging is absolutely new. Indeed, anyone interested in knowing what the new transport configuration will look like might start by examining the trade routes of the golden era.

Similarly, the opening of Central Asia between 1991 and 2001 is beginning to transform the region intellectually. Tens of thousands of the region’s students have gone to study at the best universities abroad. In an act of enlightenment worthy of their predecessors a millennium ago, the governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have paid for these young people to acquire the most modern knowledge and bring it back home. They return with a passion for reconnecting their region with the global world of ideas. Within the next decade, these young men and women will assume leadership roles in their societies and in the region as a whole. It is hard to imagine that they will consider the prevailing corruption to be normal, or accept Soviet-style controls over their ideas. Even in Afghanistan the National University, the recently established American University, and thousands of lower schools are opening new prospects to the rising generation.

These young people quite reasonably ask, “Who are we?” Answers pour in from every side. Many in the Middle East and even in the West, from the White House down, tell them they are Muslims, defined mainly by the faith in which they were raised. Alternatively, some experts smugly invoke the notions of tribal or clan heritage to explain what they consider the region’s hopelessly retrograde politics. Meanwhile, local patriots hail their various national ethnic identities—Kyrgyz, Tajik, or Uzbek—each of which, they insist, is absolutely unique and like no other.

These proposed identities may have some basis in reality. But all run the risk of narrowing the horizons of the emerging generation and limiting their expectations of themselves. The attraction of some young people to fundamentalist religious organizations or narrowly nationalistic groups is also a cause for concern. But Central Asians have ready at hand a meaningful past that lifts up the individual, defines each person in terms of reason and wisdom, and places that person in the mainstream of global developments. This is the great tradition that for 300 years made their region the center of the world of intellect. Why shouldn’t Central Asians and their friends abroad place this remarkable heritage, rather than some narrowly religious or national ideology, as the lodestone of their policies today?

This means focusing more of our support and theirs on reopening the great continental transport routes, instituting freer borders, lowering tariffs, and reducing meddling from the governments. Free trade must also extend to the world of ideas. This means creating the unfettered intellectual space that enabled Ibn Sina and al-Biruni to hypothesize on evolution rather than creationism and even to contemplate the existence of other worlds. Though they each lived under a different government, nobody intercepted their mail and nobody censured their heretical thoughts. In fact, rulers competed to become their patrons and to support their work.

Would this happen today in Central Asia? Several governments in the region are glad to talk of unfettered continental trade but bridle at the prospect of an unfettered exchange of ideas. Yet in every country in the region, there are distinguished champions of the kind of intellectual openness that will give rise to modern Ibn Sinas and al-Birunis. With the emergence of the new generation, increasing numbers of these people are in government. The idea of a fresh flowering of Central Asia may seem a distant prospect, but it is not impossible, especially if Central Asians become more familiar with their rich heritage and draw from it relevant lessons for the present.

If this is the challenge to inhabitants of the region today, the challenge to their international partners is to treat the regional states as sovereign countries, not as culturally inert objects to be shoved around on a chessboard. It is not enough to view them simply as a “zone of [our] special interest,” as Vladimir Putin’s government does; as a source of raw materials, as the Chinese do; or as a fueling stop en route to Kabul, as the United States does. The better alternative is to acknowledge that somewhere in the DNA of these peoples is the capacity to manage great empires and even greater trading zones, to interact as equals with the other centers of world culture, and to use their unique geographical position to become a link and bridge between civilizations. Such an awareness will raise expectations on all sides, and encourage the region’s international partners to view it as more than the object of a geopolitical game.

This, too, won’t be easy, but acquiring a deeper knowledge of Central Asia’s past is an essential place to begin.

Full text PDF available here.

S. Frederick Starr is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He was the founding chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute and president of Oberlin College and the Aspen Institute. He began his career doing archaeological work in Turkey and teaching intellectual history at Princeton and has picked up those threads in the present article, which is based on a book he is writing.
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COMMENTS (59)

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and in no way represent the views or opinions of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This section is moderated by Wilson Quarterly staff.

About Central Asia

Main problem with Central Asia is that in last 500 years majority of trade goes by sea. As a result, majority of traded goods is produced near sea. Main towns are mostly close to sea, too. Unlike in time of camel caravans, Central Asia is far behind main trade routes. Only fortunate fact is that Earth is virtually shrinking and in knowledge based economies is less important where professionals are located then even few decades ago.

Posted by: Mladen | 8/24/09

Reply

About Central Asia Mladen statement that for 1500 years, majority of Central Asian trade goes by sea, is to belie the fact that Central Asia has no seas in classical sense. Caspian sea and Aral sea are confined, small and landlocked which do not meet the criteria of being sea. All rivers peter out in the deserts or barely trickle to the the dying sea. The rivers north of Tian Shan range are potent but they drain into Antractica and lie at right angle to the trade route, flowing South to North. You may need a recheck. Thanks

Posted by: Dr.makni | 9/28/09

Also, this...

Not to mention that the entire region is in the grips of (pardon the affront) a backwards theocracy which tends to stifle individual liberty and creativity

Posted by: Kant feel Pietzsche | 10/4/09

great text

enjoyed reading this article as it provokes some ideas that were sensed subconsciously, but were never voiced. The question of cultural belonging, belief system(s) may is huge for students from the region who study abroad (may not seem so, but it is). The void is filled with the influences we are exposed to, depending on where one happened to be and whom did he/she happen to meet. And here is where "the DNA" plays its role: in synthetising, adapting, and producing a character that reflects all the inputs - hopefully, capable overcoming the "grips of ..." (fill in the blank)

Posted by: Ainur | 11/8/09

reply *

(* This post is to replace my previous one where I found typos) I really enjoyed reading this article as it provoked some ideas that were sensed, but never voiced. The question of cultural belonging, belief system(s) is huge for students from the region who study abroad (although may not seem so). The void is filled with the influences we are exposed to, depending on where one happened to be and whom did he/she happen to meet. And here is where "the DNA" plays its role, I think: in synthetising, adapting, and producing a character that reflects all the inputs - hopefully, capable ?f overcoming the "grips of ..." (fill in the blank) upon our return home...

Posted by: Ainur | 11/8/09

reply

this made me proud of (maybe for the first time) that i am Central Asian. All we hear now is how bad it is there.now i know why my father keeps Omar Khayyám's poems, he knows Central asian history better than me. the stereotypical image of nomads just happy to ride their horses through the endless steeps of Central Asia and trapped in their 'backward'traditions is still strong. as reinfornced from the movies made by western filmmakers to discover the lives of this 'forgotten' peoples. the feeling of intellectual inferiority is still so strong since we, central asian scholars, are faced with an attitude that what is left for us is to learn from the great minds of the West and follow their pattern of civilization and development. in fact we depend on the support of the western institutions to carry out our research while our govts. can barely pay out pensions. So the patron of future great Central Asian scholars is the West, at the moment.but there is a structural and cultural dependency.

Posted by: kisha | 11/10/09

Central Asian Demise

We tend to blame the demise of civilizations to external factors beyond their control. But yet history has told us that empires extinguish themselves at the hands of their inept and misguided rulers. Show me a civilization at its peak and I’ll show you a great leader. Rarely does a great culture succumbs to invasions and abuse from the outside. Perhaps we should look more to the cause of their failure on their own complacency not recognizing their own short comings and their inability to adapt to the fast changing events of their time.

Posted by: Carlos Borjal | 11/20/09

Decline

Excellent article, I have not doubt that one day the CA will find its new niche in the world. However, the author seems to underestimate the negative impact of Mongol invasion. Until Mongol invasion, territory between Amu and Syr rivers was dominantly Iranian (tajik - non-turk) and the genocide was directed almost exclusively on them -sedentary people living in cities - the original source of all achievements of Central Asia civilization. Mongols have obliterated 80% of this human potential and the rest was destroyed by marauding turkik nomads. From there on Turkic nomads began to move in un mass and thus undermining/diluting the civilization potential of this region. If you look at Uzbekistan policy of forced assimilation of Tajiks and Persian culture of Samarqand and Bukhara you understand that they behave more as an occupying force rather than as someone from the region. The renaissance of Central Asia would only be possible if this destructive nationalistic motives are removes, Samanid ideas, not the ideas of Temurlan (medieval Hitler) should be a unifying idea for Central Asia.

Posted by: Sogdian | 11/25/09

India & Al-Biruni

Ancient Indian history has documented well the presence of Al-Biruni in India when he first came with Mohammad Bin Ghazni, the first Islamic invader of the Indian subcontinent. It is also well-known that from 500 to 1000 CE, there were great centers of learning in India, patronized by the Maurya rulers, at Nalanda and Taxila studying Indian mathematics, astronomy, astrology, ayurveda, philosophy etc. Al-Biruni’s stay in India began in 1017 or 1018 CE. It is strange that a scholar like Professor Starr finds it difficult to give any credit to ancient India’s influence on Al-Biruni in furthering his education! Please see the following sources. I hope that Prof Starr has at least read Al-Biruni’s own accounts of his travels and studies in India.” http://www.skyscript.co.uk/albiruni.html “Astrology entered the Islamic tradition from three directions: Persia, India and Greece. The first major astrological text to be translated into Arabic came from India. This was the Siddhanda, translated in Baghdad around 770 and known to the Arabians as the Sindhind. “The discovery of the theories of Ptolemy and Hipparchus, however, brought a new scientific rigour to the study. This was further stimulated by contact with India and the advanced techniques of Indian mathematics. The numeric symbols 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and the decimal system of notation based on the symbol zero - which was unknown to the Greeks and Romans - came originally from India, as did algebra and the sine function in trigonometry (the other five trig functions were Arabic inventions). These innovations brought unprecedented accuracy to Arabic astronomy.” http://www.albalagh.net/kids/history/biruni.shtml “He also wrote the book Kitab-al-Saidana which is on Indian medicine.

Posted by: Alex | 12/25/09

Reply to Dr.Makni

I believe you misunderstood the post you read. World wide trade has been by sea for the last five hundred years. And no longer travels through central Asia as it did in previous centuries.

Posted by: Jonnyt | 12/25/09

decline

To western thinkers our many faceted world culture revolves around centers of uninhibited mechanistic thought. These centers provide us with material visions enabling us for an instant in eternity to escape the confining limitations of materialism’s constant need for higher moral understanding. Morally man’s existence is a mess. There is no consensus and never will be as long as material advantages define success and otherworldly images offer only self-indulgent escapes. The moral intellectuality of the material perspective always fails mankind because the material perspective is a wrong perspective assumed for whatever reasons in the intellectual infancy of human growth explaining why the collective morality of man’s existence is a mess. Even though empires and cultural oases continue to crumble we have been unwilling to see or accept this failure of the material perspective to provide sustainable progress. Sustainable progress demands stable or consensual moral thought consistent with reality which is impossible from a material perspective. A material perspective does not describe existence it is and anything built upon this foundation will not endure.

Posted by: Jerry Hewes | 12/25/09

Central Asia

All true, but overlooks the role played by untapped Oil, Natural Gas & Mineral deposits. Both Russia and the West are jockeying for exploration rights, which would lead to economic expansion in the area, high speed trains (i.e. Tibet) + more frequent plane service.

Posted by: George Liptak, Jr, | 12/25/09

Rivers

First, Antarctic Ocean is adjacent to Antarctica, on the opposite side of globe! Next, I spent a year on the Greenland ice cap. Definite signs of Viking occupation have been found, which leads to current view of alternate warm +cold temperatures based on ice core samples. Atlanta is just one example of major city not founded on major body of water (4.1 million people in metro area). Finally, mainland China is looking for somewhere to relocate 300 million people. Does not want more folks in existing seacoast cities.

Posted by: George Liptak, Jr. | 12/25/09

Theocracies

Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that there were only 36 real democracies in a UN that has 191 members, when he was US ambassador to that body. The entire Middle East, awash in Oil wealth, is run by various versions of theocracy. Moslems tried to overturn the secular governments of Egypt + Turkey. I wouldn't be too quick to identify that form of rule with poverty!

Posted by: George Liptak, Jr. | 12/25/09

India

All true. The Indus River civilization predates most of the world's nations, but it stands today isolated and deserted. There is no known written language,but evidence of substantial astronomic and engineering knowledge there.

Posted by: George Liptak, Jr. | 12/25/09

Dan Rather's coverage of Afghanistan

One quibble regarding the article's reference to Dan Rather's coverage of Afghanistan. Mr. Rather did not start covering Afghanistan after 9/11. He was sneaking into Afghanistan dressed up as an Afghan after the Soviets invaded 20 years earlier, earning the nickname "Gunga Dan." See George Crile, "Charley Wilson's War," at pp. 18-19.

Posted by: tbraton | 12/25/09

CENTRAL ASIA

The roads may be just what is needed but how about the irrigation? can that be resurrected? given time it may be more beneficial.

Posted by: Kieth | 12/25/09

International Trade

Miaden poses excellent point, role of international trade. Also, Central Asia was at nexus of Indian, Chinese, Iranic, Turkic, Hellenic, and Syrian civilizations plus religions. Trade and nexus means exposure to many ideas, etc. Trade broad constant ideas. When sea routes replace land routes, international trade in Central Asia dried up,in turn drying up economic surplus to support intellectual life plus constant source and stimulus of ideas. Became oxbow lake, cut-off and stagnant.

Posted by: Dr. Dale | 12/25/09

Reasons for Decline

Fascinating article. I know very little of Central Asian history, but have been reflecting of late on the demise of various great civilizations throughout history. This is of special interest given the dramatic changes that seem to be occurring in our world today. I wonder if I am correct in extracting from this article that a leading cause of the demise of this flourishing region was the transition from a culture that celebrated openness, tolerance, inquisitiveness, and acceptance of diverse viewpoints to one that became dominated by fear of the very same differences that had led to its rise. , I believe has also been the case in other formerly dominant and thriving civilizations such as the ancient Egyptians, for example. If this is true, then I wonder what the implications are for the modern world, especially for us as Americans. Some intellectuals in recent years have forecast the decline of America as the dominant world power. We still believe in our dominance, but we are increasingly being subjected to the fear and restrictive viewpoints that are leading us to stop listening and instead simply try to impose our views on others. In this respect, I find this article somewhat depressing. But as Prof. Starr also points out, civilizations and cultures rise and fall throughout history. We are in a period of change. Who knows what lies on the other side. Hopefully, someday in the far off future some of our great intellects and inventors will also be remembered. Not just the destruction we have wrought or the closed-mindedness we sometimes display. Thanks for the article and this opportunity to express my opinion.

Posted by: Peg | 12/25/09

Perennial wisdom

For an in-depth examination of the history of perennial wisdom tradition and intersection of authentic Eastern and Western esotericism in Central Asia, see _Origins of the Tarot: Cosmic Evolution and the Principles of Immortality_.

Posted by: Sifu | 12/25/09

Central Asian Flowering

Fascinating article - I always thought that the great minds mentioned here Ibn Sina, etc.came from farther west. I would add two observations - Professor Halford McKinder wrote an essay about 100 years ago discussing Central Asia as the pivot of world history. I could not fathom his thinking, until now. It seems that he too was caught up in the fascination with the trading and the cultural and intellectual creativity. The second observation is that, whether in renaissance Italy or Central Asia, one mainspring of curiousity and intellectual questing is the happy consequence on heterogenous (or diverse) beliefs and and culturals rubbing up against each other without any feeling a real need to obliterate that which is different. the principle of homogenization, whether communist, fascist, christian/inquisitorial, or fundamentalist islamic, leaves a wasteland in the name of uniformity and right thinking. I have reached a tentative conclusion that the mainspring of the Western Ascendancy is essentially intellectual in nature, derived from the interplay, the fertile friction, of the Judeo-Christian tradition (a tension there), with the Graeco-roman (another creative tension). What we can most thank Jesus for is his directive to "render on to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is Gods" as well as his "my kingdom is not of this world" The healthy corollary, of course, absent in Islam, is that you don't render to one what you render to the other. This allowed the Christian West to shake free the impetus to establish the kingdom of god upon earth. Food for further thought. Excellent essay

Posted by: Manfred Schweitzer | 12/26/09

CENTRAL ASIA STORY

KUDOS TO PROFESSOR STARR. THE WISDOM OF THE AGES GOT LOST IN ITS JOURNEY TO THE PRESENT.

Posted by: DANSAHNTEAL | 12/26/09

"Sufism"

Could the local practice of mysticism in Central Asia have changed during the period surveyed here? That could have a huge impact on knowing and knowledge. Practices, especially when they become more widely or publicly disseminated, can easily become, even inadvertently, transformed -- and, if they become mixed with practices from elsewhere, who knows? With little background in this area, I had difficulty figuring out from the paragraph mentioning Sufism what happened -- so please forgive me if my question is not helpful -- but I found that paragraph thought-provoking.

Posted by: AniDalit | 12/26/09

materialism, intellectualism, and mysticism

Jerry Hewes, Suppose the use of mystic practices for spiritual ends got highjacked, however inadvertently, and became used for intellectual and material ends, and (pace Manfred Schweitzer), what should have been rendered unto the divine became rendered on a lower plain. This could easily happen, I think, if people practiced mysticism in such a way that listening to the divine got separated from the receipt of knowledge. This could result in a great intellectual flowering, as people gratified themselves from the tree of knowledge without understanding, followed by a great decline, both of which would be accompanied by a loss of our spiritual compass -- and we would wander farther and farther away from what I think you are calling the moral perspective, to the material perspective.

Posted by: AniDalit | 12/27/09

materialism

The lust for power, as evidenced by material possessions,may be caused by an unconscious fear of death, the ultimate loss of power, and a humiliating defeat to our ego. Thus the unconscious symbolism of our material possessions leads to an unending lust for more and more things, since as Freud said, an unconscious need is never met. And this lust leads to extremes, distorting a culture. And maybe leading in some cases to huge debt and bankruptcy, which brought down Rome and Britain. Power and love cannot coexist as governing principles, and love is relegated to empty gestures. Einstein said that nationalism is the childhood illness of mankind. Sorry to be so bleak, but Happy New Year anyhow. (What a great article!).

Posted by: shrinkbake | 12/27/09

Thanks

Thank you for the essay and for David Brooks on 12/25 for bringing it to my attention.

Posted by: Krrrr | 12/28/09

fear of death

If I may: At least some mystics perceive incarnation as the challenge, death the liberation (Jung?), and realize that trying to engage in mystic practices without sufficiently quelling the ego (and letting go of attachments) is very dangerous -- so, I agree it (that is, materialism and the death spiral of a culture) may be all about the ego and its misapprehensions and actions arising out of fear.

Posted by: AniDalit | 12/28/09

A Quibble About Irrigation

In Collapse, Jared Diamond's accounts of declines and falls, irrigation plays a role in several by gradually salinizing the soil. Did that happen in Central Asia as well, just as it did in Mesopotamia and other places? It seems a bit quick to write off ecological change as a culprit without knowing that. A great piece otherwise, particularly the bit about roadbuilding, which seemed really the most significant bit of new information here. One point about that: what are the ecologic consequences of putting fleets of semi-trailers on the road between, say, Beijing and Moscow?

Posted by: dj | 12/31/09

Thanks

I appreciate articles of this kind. It shows the reality of what CULTURAL RICHNESS means to those who don´t know or don´t appreciate anything but money. Reading this article proves me that we must learn from those who studied for the good of their lands, to share it with others all around the planes. That´s why, all I can say, it´s thank you for this valuable remembering! Also, I can recommend the book "Samarkanda" of Amin Maalouf to those who wish to learn more on the subject. It´s a very much interesting book!!!

Posted by: Tulsi Bharti | 1/3/10

Over Analysis

The post was great and informing. An analytical style, but very interesting, but then, I think was touched too hard with others trying to build up theirself by adding opinions that missed the point of the post.

Posted by: e cigarette | 1/4/10

Absorbing!

Totally enthralling article about a part of the world I never give much consideration to.

Posted by: electronic cigarette | 1/5/10

Failure of Civilizations

The failure of civilizations is manifested in the United States as a failure to LEARN that, as a democracy, you do not have the right to force another country to use a the same democratic template... With other extinct civilizations, bureaucracy, or the failure to limit it's scope, led to their downfall..

Posted by: William Stewart | 1/8/10

re: Central Asian Demise

I couldn't agree with Mr. Borjas more. We need to look into the DNA of central Asians and Arabs for that matter to explore why they have historically (and presently) deferred to self interested, shortsighted and corrupt leadership which tends to blame external forces for internal issues. Until, that changes, this area will remain a pawn for China, India and the U.S.

Posted by: Estie | 1/9/10

hey

true, they need to work on the irrigation and also the roads they can't just focus on one thing

Posted by: cheap kamagra | 1/31/10

Turkic-Persian Tension

"Sogdian" has a point, and hint of it is in that moniker, which reminds us of the alphabet which the Turkic Uighurs employed to conduct the written business of the Mongols, long ago. Turkic peoples actually revived a Persia which had become an Arab backwater and restored some of her independent glory, only to become today's downtrodden "Azeri Turks" in Iran. The very real tensions in Uzbekistan, where Tajiks suffer, and in Pakistan and Iran, where Baloch suffer, are not ethnic but political, the cynical fallout from autocratic regimes as desperate to hold onto power as Milosevic was in his paranoid Serbia. Demonizing and persecuting minorities is professional work for shaky leadership, an art form. Not ethnicity but oil ownership animates tensions with Turkoman peoples in Iraq, from Kurds and Arabs alike. None of this is cultural. All of it is avoidable.

Posted by: Greg-o | 2/11/10

Rediscovering Central Asia

A very thoughtful and rare in today's Western intellectual world view of history. I agree with the author: the CA is on the cusp of renaissance. The powerful process of self-identification - this is how the current overall process in CA could be defined. And this process implies the re-evaluation of the whole previous history with its failures and achievements. To understand better the essense of historical processes there and possible forecast of future, one should read the works of great Soviet researcher Lev Gumilev. If they are available in English, of course.

Posted by: Glafira | 2/12/10

Asia

I have been dealing with people on china recently and I have found them absolutely wonderful.

Posted by: electronic cigarette | 2/19/10

electronic cigarette

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Posted by: electronic-cigarettes | 2/19/10

Dessertification, Geographically motivated Intellectualism and Sea Trade

Though archaeological and historical data for the CA region is still very incomplete (much more will yet be rediscovered), posters make several good points about this excellent overview of CA. 1-The region does show evidence of dessertification. However the database is incomplete archaeologically (soil samples in a quantified, comprehenisve, temporal and spatial distribution pattern are needed). This is a possible avenue for decline. 2-The intellectual blooming that took place was clearly a product of geographical centrality between great civilization areas such as South Asia, East Asia, and the Mediterranean Basin (includes 'mid east' yes I know it is not the best term but it is well recognized). I wonder if the historical context or timing was right? Great core areas of population trading and exchanging ideas by a set of land routes that had reached their maximum by 700-1000 CE? 3- Sea Trade had always been one more component of the Afro-Eurasion interchange systems that centered in CA. We can look at the "Periplous of the Erythrian Sea" http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/periplus.html for English translation. This is evidence of the 2000 + year old sea trade allready existing with the emergence of the "silk road" trade networks by land and sea. The Indian Ocean was the center of successful seafaring ventures between the Mediterranean Basin, Indian Ocean and East Asian seatraders well before, during, and after the flowering of CA. Point is, seatrade could move larger bulk of goods than land trade and could have impacted CA both positively and negatively. This is a subject that deserves further review. Major Ports included Basra on the Persian Gulf (700-1000 CE) and Berenike on the Red Sea (0-500 CE). Sea trade was noted as 1/20th the cost of land trade during Roman Empire times for instance. This hints at the complex relationship explored by Starr concerning external linkages for CA during its heyday and indicates why sea trade could impact a region hundreds of kilometers inland. Arab seatraders filled the niche between classical and early modern trade times all along the Indian Ocean and came to constitute a significant population in SE Chinese seaports by 1100 CE. Several major riots against their presence by the Chinese are noted in Chinese sources from the time. Chinese expansion in Tang times into CA had been blunted by the 751 CE loss to Muslim forces at the Talus River. Afterwards the expansion by land and sea along the trade routes to East Asia became dominated by traders from Arabian Sea and CA. See: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/4455 http://asiapacificuniverse.com/pkm/spiceroutes.htm "Arab Seafaring" Hourani Oresman, Matthew. "Beyond the Battle of Talas: China's Re-emergence in Central Asia." Ch. 19 of "In the tracks of Tamerlane: Central Asia's path to the 21st Century," Daniel L. Burghart and Theresa Sabonis-Helf, eds. (2004). This sea trade brings up an additional point-The role of East and Southeast Asia in the development of CA especially after the battle of the Talas River in 751 CE. Quite a bit of East Asian technology, like papermaking, and ideas etc. would have been available for the budding CA region and minds. No doubt Starr is aware of this as well. Its no wonder one of the first 'universal or world history' attempts was derived from this region and time.

Posted by: Ch | 2/19/10

second that

i second that.i like to visit china every now and then along with my family.

Posted by: treat anxiety | 2/23/10

Great information!

Well it is not to clear about the problem you said in this post, for example: "If this is the challenge to inhabitants of the region today, the challenge to their international partners is to treat the regional states as sovereign countries, not as culturally inert objects to be shoved around on a chessboard. It is not enough to view them simply as a “zone of [our] special interest,” as Vladimir Putin’s government does; as a source of raw materials, as the Chinese do; or as a fueling stop en route to Kabul, as the United States does. The better alternative is to acknowledge that somewhere in the DNA of these peoples is the capacity to manage great empires and even greater trading zones, to interact as equals with the other centers of world culture, and to use their unique geographical position to become a link and bridge between civilizations. Such an awareness will raise expectations on all sides, and encourage the region’s international partners to view it as more than the object of a geopolitical game".

Posted by: construction games | 4/16/10

Great article, less hope of improvements.

I met Dr.Starr in New York in April, 2010 and was immensely impressed by his knowledge and glowing presence. He suggested that I visit this website . As an amateur historian, I spent a couple of months travelling from Xian( terminus of the silk route) in China through Xingiang, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,Turkminstan, Termez(Bordering Mazar-i-sharif) and Tajikistan between 2009 and 2010. Yes, I made this trip to see all the great events and sites that Dr.Starr has so elegantly portrayed and was truly impressed by the immense achievements by humans( Persians, Turks, Arabs and Han Chinese). Dr. Starr however mentioned in the gathering that I attended at the Plaza Hotel in NY that the US involvement in Afghanistan "will finally unlock this region and restore it on a path to its past". I respectfully disgree with this paraphrased statement as more of a "scholarly expectation" rather than a practical possibilty, given the geo-political and religious grandstanding of the 21st century. As an earlier responder had written look at where the Indus civilization is today( Pakistan and parts of India), look at where the Greeks are today,how about the Persians, look at where the Arabs are today. If history is a lesson, great things happen at a particular time, in a particular place because certain great individuals reside in a community that was condusive to achievements in the sciences, the letters and political thinking. I can list only the USA as one such place today where the flowering of technology, politics and thought has flourished for 2 centuries, perhaps soon to be in the historical dust similar to Central Asia. Ramdas Iyer, New Jersy

Posted by: Ramdas Iyer | 4/22/10

Why a civiliztion dies

Death and its meanings can not be understood or its mystry be solved. Therefore we can not say how a civilizaton meet its death. thanks for reading my comments. Junaid

Posted by: M. Junaid | 8/8/10

Why can't All Turks return to their own homeland in Central Asia, Turkimenstan.

I don't understand why the evil Turkish empire has to exist? If Central Asia is beautiful why can't all Turkish people leave our lands and return to their own homeland? I have been exiled from my beautiful homeland so long because of Turkish genocide against the Greek people. They have invaded Byzantium a rich cultural center of Europe of 1,000. What did they replace it with? Illiterate people who keep women back in the middle ages and destroy our beautiful churches, Hagia Sophia is a prime example. They murdered and raped our women and they slaughtered our men for what? Their goal is to Turkify all that is purely Greek. But, don't they realize that our history and people is far more superior than their barbaric behavior toward Christianity and Hellenism? Cyprus, my island is and will always be Greek. What does 36 years mean in the slope of things. Just as Constantinople is Greek they might murder our people tried to destroy our churches and school yet, it is still Greek. Even Dr. Oz who has a Turkish name is really Greek. His DNA proves it. But, his family were the Greeks who were kidnapped and raise as Turks. When they realized their real history it becomes intolerable what this evil racist barbaric empire tried to do to us and the world. I just wished the Ottoman Turks stayed in their own country and never tried to invade Byzantium. The world would have been a much peaceful and creative place. Maybe it is not too late for them to leave and return to their own country.

Posted by: Aphrodite Cyprus Greece | 12/4/10

From Central Asia

I published material in Central Asia about the similarities between the Kyrgyz hero, Manas son of Jakyp, and a biblical tribal leader, Manasseh son of Jacob from Genesis 48. I was quickly deemed a heretic or Jewish spy by the old guard and those still trying to stifle free thought. Fortunately, as stated in Prof. Starr's article, many modern Central Asians desire a free exchange of religious ideas. May they turn the tide and bring about the rediscovery of Central Asia.

Posted by: Risbek | 12/7/10

nice

I always think of this every time someone brings up this western face of this clash of cultures or the need for the Muslim world to undergo an "Enlightenment", as did Europe. The thing is I had a Enligtenment, 700 years or so before the European. While Europe was recados para orkut in the grip of the dark ages, and the clerics were sending the suicide jihaads targets outside the Muslim world was a thriving center of liberal thought. People of all races, creeds and colors held political office, there was a republic, science and art are respected, literacy rates are high ... It is a great historical irony, and at the same time a reminder that all of our social progress can be removed in just a few generations.

Posted by: alex | 2/18/11

Eighteen years on, all of the new states

Eighteen years on, all of the new states have preserved their sovereignty and Afghanistan is clinging to life. But several of the region’s countries remain destitute, and even the most successful ones are riddled with corruption and still dependent on authoritarian forms of rule. As William Faulkner reminded us in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in 1950, there is a big difference between surviving and prevailing. Is the best hope of these lands merely to work their way back up to zero? Or can they possibly reclaim some of the luster of their glorious past, and prevail?

Posted by: Smith | 3/4/11

Orkut Scraps

I believe you misunderstood the post you read. World wide trade has been by sea for the last five hundred years. And no longer travels through central Asia as it did in previous centuries. Orkut Scraps

Posted by: Orkut Scraps | 3/6/11

Orkut Scraps

Dr. Starr however mentioned in the gathering that I attended at the Plaza Hotel in NY that the US involvement in Afghanistan "will finally unlock this region and restore it on a path to its past". I respectfully disgree with this paraphrased statement as more of a "scholarly expectation" rather than a practical possibilty,

Posted by: Orkut Scraps | 3/6/11

Central Asia was a hotbed of new ideas that were stolen by other culture when they visited there (ahem Marco Polo). Afghanistan might be in trouble right now, but the history that the country has is vast and needs to be heard. People just hear about opium and war, but there is a culture there that deserves a voice.

Posted by: video games | 3/8/11

1891 ink and pencil art work of the tribe

Looking for more info on my piece of artwork. It is E (backwards) Cokdadbcri (spelling?) dated 1891 and a second word mabe artist Mepbor (spelling). Can anyone help me with the spelling and history? There are four people (family), a white horse with a rider and a two wheeled covered wagon type cart being pulled by the white horse.

Posted by: Maxine | 3/12/11

Technology

Posted by: Technology | 3/14/11

IPhone

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Posted by: IPhone | 3/14/11

nice blog

Took me time to read all the comments, but I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be very useful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here! It's always nice when you.

Posted by: RI Property | 4/30/11

Sun Tszu

What happened 1000 years ago always returns; that is the ancient [rule of] eternity. - Sun Tszu The article is interesting, however, talking about Russia colonizing Central Asia is not correct and offensive. Definitely, there were some battles of domestic "ultra-rightists" tribes, but overall people understood that there's power coming, which will protect their homes and communities from Afghanazing. The British in 19-20th centuries and then Americans in 20-21st centuries turned vast areas [Afghanistan] into the disaster and war - that's a fact. Another fact is that Russia and then USSR has brought progress and development into Central Asia. So, putting pro-West propaganda into such a nice article makes the author a mere populist (in the most negative sense of the word).

Posted by: Baurzhan | 5/9/11

Mastering Mindset

Posted by: Pick Up Girls | 5/22/11

Decline paradigm

This is a very interesting article, but reducing the entire middle period to a brief mention of Timur and Babur leaves a serious lacuna. The Timurid courts (none of which, by the way, would have been possible without the Mongol invasion) included cities other than Samarqand (Herat, Qazvin, Shiraz), and were incredible centers for art and the various other trappings of high culture. Competition was high between the Timurids and neighboring Turkmen and Safavids for the best poets and thinkers, and there was a continuous exchange and migration of courts. Furthermore, Islam was by no means a stultified relic in the middle period, defined--Babur converted from Sunnism to Shi'ism and back, and the Timurids before him were defined by considerable "confessional ambiguity," as I have heard it described. It was a dynamic time, from what we know. Additionally, this article disappears the profound Soviet impact on the region today--all of the disparate nationalisms mentioned by the author are a direct result of Soviet language and ethnicity planning. The Soviet influence cannot be overstated.

Posted by: Yoldash | 6/1/11

Active intervention to create a fundamentalist Evangelical United States and called for jihad in the Arab world, also creates a negative largely secular Europe. In the face of death, God, Europe suffered some of the bloodiest wars in history, which is removed in a hundred years in the early twentieth century, the terms of their religious heritage century crisis of survival together. As the Arab world continues to shift to modernization (Westernization) of industrial and postindustrial society already exists between the new economy and new global culture he brought with him the "old" way (which is really sad the current state of tension in the Middle East declined in the last 200 years) . God and the influx of Western culture has led to a definite conclusion about the arrival of the death of the conservative co-operation, the dead who sinful West corrupt moral values and spirit of the people, he should resist the Iranian revolution liberated from a tyrant the West only to chain them to the radical theology of the people of the state established by Ayatollah Khomeini, to reflect with the West, brought with them their sins. thanks Regards Andrew

Posted by: Andrew | 6/20/11

This is indeed a fascinating journey into Central Asia's past. I also agree wholeheartedly with S. Frederick Starr's central premise (and conclusion, for that matter) that in order to conceive of the future of central Asia, we must gain a better understanding of its past. This makes total sense to me.

Posted by: | 1/12/12

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Divided By

This Is Not a Map

Message in a Genome

Rediscovering Central Asia