Lectures were Central Asia is main content Lecture 1: Where is Central Asia? Mapping Central Asia from outside... Every map is political. I present two main thoughts: There have been since centuries and more 4 important civilisations that influenced the cultures and peoples of Central Asia. (I) In the north Russia since the making of the Rus (1015 AD), (II) the Persian Empire after Alexander the Great (356 BC), (III) India (I wont give any date. too long ago and circulating ;-) and (IV) China. First who had a description and an idea of Central Asia was Xuanzang (624 ff AD). He invented the word xiyu () Western Regions, still the designation of Central Asia in China. The term Central Asia was only common among scholars in the midst of 19th century. Lecture 2: Sedentary Perspective Inside Central Asia a huge part of the population is sedentary and settled along the rivers of Central Asia (the Amudarja, the Syrdarja, the Zerafshan, the Ili the Tarim, or along the sea shores of the Aral Sea, Lop Nor and many others). They had established an infrastructure of roads for commercial, religious, educational exchange that connected the rural with the urban, villages with cities and cities with the outside world. Frequently moving groups (like merchants, scholars, artists and craftsmen) connected Central Asia and the outside world and were famous for their arts, crafts, fruits and architecture etc.. They were often bilingual in Persian as well as Turkic idioms. For the Central Asian urban or rural population water was central.The centrality of water gave a lot of places the possebilities to become centers in Central Asia. Samarkand, Buchara, Kashgar or Kabul became important places for religious, educational and commercial purposes. The domination of Islam in the region made cities even more attractive because Islam only allows cities to have a Fridays Mosque. Central educational institutions like the madrasa could only be found in cities. Cities and countryside were connected: urban centres could not maintain a stable population without the influx of populatiion. The dynamics of integration and conflict between sedentary and nomadic groups can be seen in a lot of local settings today in Afghanistan and partially on the mangyshlaq penisula or in the Amudarya Delta region nowadays. Lecture 5: Division of Power in Central Asia The division of power is a complicated matter, that i often underestimated in European Media Coverage on Central Asia. There are two different and important approaches to power: how power is distributed from top to down and how power evolves from bottom up. Both processes have their place in Central Asian societies and have to be clearly understood before we make others believe, that power is in the hand of one small group. Lecture 6: The Encroachment of Central Asia The Lecture shows the several types of borders, we can find in Central Asia: frontiers, borderlines, boundaries, watchtowers and tributary systems. The focus here is on the the living borders, the physical borders and how these physical borders became national borders in Central Asia. Lecture 7: Borders in Central Asia The lecture tries to illustrate the evolvement of borders in the regions of Central Asia and shows how physical borders evolve from lines of control, double taxation and 3 states on one existing territory to the idea of a nation state with territory, borders etc..
|