Description: "While genealogical sources have received attention in scholarship on the Arab world, it remains mostly unstudied in Persianate societies. The chapters in this book offer reflections on theoretical and methodological issues concerning the study of genealogical documentation, combined with case studies based on previously unpublished, unstudied source materials. The topics explored span the full breadth of the Persianate world, from Anatolia to the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia to the Gujarat region of India, utilizing sources dating from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. The book demonstrates the value of genealogical documentation as historical sources for scholars and students of Islamic history and the Persianate ecumene and beyond"-- Provided by publisher.
Brief description: Jo-Ann Gross is Professor Emerita of Middle Eastern and Central Eurasian History at The College of New Jersey, USA. Her book publications include Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries, co-edited with Devin DeWeese (2018); The Letters of Khwaja 'Ubayd Allah Ahrar and his Associates, co-authored with Asom Urunbaev (2002), and the edited volume Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change (1992).
Review Quotes:
"While ancestry and lineage were fundamental preoccupations of Persianate societies, generating a mass of documentation in many different genres, such sources have rarely been analyzed in a systematic way that places nasab at the center of discussion. This agenda-setting volume finally does so, combining fascinating case studies from Hunza, Badakhshan, Bukhara, Fergana, Balochistan, the Gulf, and Qandahar." --Nile Green, Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History, UCLA
"Through insightful empirical studies spanning diverse milieus-from the towering heights of the Pamirs to the blue waters of the Persian Gulf, this volume highlights the rich potential of genealogical materials for advancing historical studies of the Persianate world and beyond. A must-read for scholars engaging with Persianate and Islamicate genealogical literature." --Kazuo Morimoto, Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan "Jo-Ann Gross and Daniel Beben have made a major contribution to Persianate historiography by bringing together scholarship on the role genealogy has played in embedding the past in the present while claiming for it a timeless validity. The studies in this volume provide a comprehensive view across the Persianate world-from the Persian Gulf in the west to Central Asia in the north and northern India in the east-of how genealogy was wielded and manipulated to create social capital." --R.D. McChesney, author of An Afghan Prince in Victorian England: Race, Class and Gender in an Afghan-Anglo Imperial Encounter