You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The setting for the studies collected here is the West-Eurasian steppe region, extending from present-day Kazakhstan through southern Russia, Ukraine and Moldavia to the Carpathian Basin. The first articles deal with pre-Mongol, Turkic peoples of the region and their relations with the Byzantine Empire to the south, but the core of the volume is the history of the Golden Horde and its successor states, such as the Kazan and Crimean Khanates, whose Turco-Mongol overlords are often referred to as Tatars. These played a decisive role in the history of Western Central Asia and Eastern Europe in the 13th-16th centuries and had a fundamental influence on the rise of the Russian state. Particular articles look at Mongol institutions and terminology, others at the interaction of the medieval Tatar and Russian worlds.
The Cumans and the Tatars were nomadic warriors of the Eurasian steppe who exerted an enduring impact on the medieval Balkans. With this work, István Vásáry presents an extensive examination of their history from 1185 to 1365. The basic instrument of Cuman and Tatar political success was their military force, over which none of the Balkan warring factions could claim victory. As a consequence, groups of the Cumans and the Tatars settled and mingled with the local population in various regions of the Balkans. The Cumans were the founders of three successive Bulgarian dynasties (Asenids, Terterids and Shishmanids) and the Wallachian dynasty (Basarabids). They also played an active role in Byzantium, Hungary and Serbia, with Cuman immigrants being integrated into each country's elite. This book also demonstrates how the prevailing political anarchy in the Balkans in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made it ripe for the Ottoman conquest.
This is a collection of papers in Turkic and Mongolic Studies, with a focus on the literacy, culture, and languages of the steppe civilizations.
In War on the Eve of Nations: Conflicts and Militaries in Eastern Europe, 1450–1500, Vladimir Shirogorov examines how Eastern European armed forces produced critical geopolitical changes in the region. Analyzing the interactions between changes in warfare and the nation-building process, Shirogorov focuses on developments regarding the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Muscovy, Sweden, the Kazan Khanate, and Ottoman Turkey.
This book presents the opinions of experts and researchers from the Black Sea states with respect to history, security, politics, strategy, energy, and economy in the region, and explains various dimensions of the present international relations and problem areas from both theoretical and conceptual perspectives. Offering the reader a comprehensive approach that covers a wide range of affairs, it is hoped that this book will fill an important gap in international relations studies. While the added word “Blue” in the title indicates our shared aspirations for a clean and peaceful future, overall this book is intended to provide valuable academic assessments and share them with the wider world community, thus disseminating findings about the regional and global policies being pursued in the Black Sea region today.
The Encyclopedia of Cremation is the first major reference resource focused on cremation. Spanning many world cultures it documents regional histories, ideological movements and leading individuals that fostered cremation whilst also presenting cremation as a universal practice. Tracing ancient and classical cremation sites, historical and contemporary cremation processes and procedures of both scientific and legal kind, the encyclopedia also includes sections on specific cremation rituals, architecture, art and text. Features in the volume include: a general introduction and editorial introductions to sub-sections by Douglas Davies, an international specialist in death studies; appendices of world cremation statistics and a chronology of cremation; cross-referencing pathways through the entries via the index; individual entry bibliographies; and illustrations. This major international reference work is also an essential source book for students on the growing number of death-studies courses and wider studies in religion, anthropology or sociology.
In The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality, Denise Aigle presents the Mongol empire as a moment of contact between political ideologies, religions, cultures and languages, and, in terms of reciprocal representations, between the Far East, the Muslim East, and the Latin West. The first part is devoted to “The memoria of the Mongols in historical and literary sources” in which she examines how the Mongol rulers were perceived by the peoples with whom they were in contact. In “Shamanism and Islam” she studies the perception of shamanism by Muslim authors and their attempts to integrate Genghis Khan and his successors into an Islamic framework. The last sections deal with geopolitical questions involving the Ilkhans, the Mamluks, and the Latin West. Genghis Khan’s successors claimed the protection of “Eternal Heaven” to justify their conquests even after their Islamization.
Taking as its starting point the ethnogenesis of this ethnic group during the Mongol period (13th century), this volume traces their history through Islam, the Ottoman and the Russian Empires (15th and 17th century). The author discusses how Islam, Russian colonial policies and indigenous national movements shaped the collective identity of this victimized ethnic group. Part two deals with the role of forced migration during the Russian colonial period, Soviet nation-building policies and ethnic cleansing in shaping this people's modern national identity. This work therefore also has wider applications for those dealing with the construction of diasporic identities. Taking a comparative approach, it traces the formation of Crimean Tatar diasporas in the Ottoman Balkans, Republican Turkey, and Soviet Central Asia (from 1944). A theme which emerges through the work is the gradual construction of the Crimea as a national homeland by its indigenous Tatar population. It ends with a discussion of the post-Soviet repatriation of the Crimean Tatars to their Russified homeland and the social and identity problems involved.
The Turkic Peoples in World History is a thorough and rare introduction to the Turkic world and its role in world history, providing a concise history of the Turkic peoples as well as a critical discussion of their identities and origins. The "Turks" stepped on to the stage of history by establishing the Türk Qaghanate, the first trans-Eurasian empire in history, in 552 CE. In the following millennium, they went on to create empires that had a profound impact on world history such as the Uyghur, Khazar, and Ottoman empires. They also participated in building the Mongol empire, and these Turko-Mongol empires are credited with shaping the destinies of pre-modern China, the Middle East, and Europe. By treating the history of the Turkic peoples as a process of amalgamation and integration, rather than simply categorizing the Turkic peoples chronologically or geographically, this book offers new insights into Turkic history. This volume is a comprehensive guide for students and scholars in the fields of world history, Central Asian history, and Middle Eastern studies who are seeking to understand the historical roles of Turkic peoples and their origins.