Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i BalkhThis book is about a sacred place called Balkh, known to the ancient Greeks as Bactra. Located in the north of today's Afghanistan, along the silk road, Balkh was holy to many. The Prophet Zoroaster is rumoured to have died here, and during late antiquity, Balkh was the home of the Naw Bahār, a famed Buddhist temple and monastery. By the tenth century, Balkh had become a critical centre of Islamic learning and early poetry in the New Persian language that grew after the Islamic conquests and continues to be spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia today. In this book, Arezou Azad provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, which continues to exemplify age-old sanctity in the Persian-speaking world and the eastern lands of Islam generally. Azad focuses on the five centuries from the Islamic conquests in the eighth century to just before the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the crucial period in the emergence of Perso-Islamic historiography and Islamic legal thought. The book traces the development of 'sacred landscape', the notion that a place has a sensory meaning, as distinct from a purely topographical space. This opens up new possibilities for our understanding of Islamisation in the eastern Islamic lands, and specifically the transition from Buddhism to Islam. Azad offers a new look at the medieval local history of Balkh, the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, and analyses its creation of a sacred landscape for Balkh. In doing so, she provides a compelling example of how the sacredness of a place is perpetuated through narratives, irrespective of the dominant religion or religious strand of the time. |
Contents
The Discourse of Landscape Balkh and its History | 1 |
Fada il i Balkh | 22 |
2 The Sacred Sites and the City | 68 |
3 Scholars the Spirits of Sacred Landscape | 111 |
Looking Back Moving Forward | 166 |
List of Balkhs seventy shaykhs | 170 |
Other editions - View all
Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Faḍā"il-i Balkh Arezou Azad Limited preview - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
Abbāsid Abd al-Hayy Abd Allāh Abū al-Layth Abū al-Qāsim Abū Bakr Afghanistan AH․H Ahmad al-Balkhi al-Din al-Hasan al-Husayni al-Ma'mun al-Tabari Alī Arabic Azad Balkh's shaykhs Barmakid biographies Brill Buddhist Bukhara Bulliet C. E. Bosworth Cairo caliph Central Asia conquest early Islamic Fad.āʾil-i Fadā'il-i Balkh faqih FB cites FB's FB’s Flügel genre Ghaznawid Gushtāsp H․anafī Habibi hadith hakim Hanafi Ibrāhīm Iranian Islamic Ja'far Jawāhir Khidrawayh Khurāsān Kitāb M. J. de Goeje madhhab Mahmūd Maktabat manuscript medieval mentioned mosque Mudarris Muhammad Muqātil Muslim mystical Naw Bahār Gate Nawāzil ninth century Nishapur Oxford Persian Plate pre-Islamic Prophet qādi Qarakhānid Radtke religious Richard Bulliet rulers Sa'id sacred landscape Sāmānids Samarqand scholars Shaqiq shrines sources St Petersburg Studies Sufi Sulaymān tabaqāt Tärikh Tārīkh-i Tehran Tepe Theologen und Mystiker Tirmidh translation ulamā Umar Umayyad University Press vols Yahyà Yūsuf zāhid ʿulamāʾ