Polymaths of Islam: Power and networks of knowledge in Central Asia

This book is a much revised version of a PhD dissertation. The author tackles the task of describing and analyzing the social and intellectual world of Central Asia, in particular Bukhara, during the long nineteenth century. This long century is practically coterminous with the rule of the Manghit dynasty (1753 – 1920); it lasts from the reestablishment of autochthonous rule following the Iranian intermezzo (Nadir Shah ’ s conquest of Transoxiana and Khwarazm in the 1740s) to the end of autocratic rule after the October Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Bukharan People ’ s Soviet Republic. The polymaths quoted in the title are Islamic scholars: ulema, graduates, alumni, and teachers of the famous Bukharan madrassas. Pickett not only considers them scholars, legal experts, qadis, or muftis, but also mystics, poets, healers, experts in occult sciences, astronomers, and astrologers, hence the term “ polymath ” in the book ’ s title. The world of these polymaths was undoubtedly the Persianate (Sunni) sphere, covering — in the nineteenth century — still much of the eastern Islamic world, in particular Central Asia and what is today Afghanistan, parts of the Indian subcontinent, and reaching out into the Turkic-speaking world, the steppes of Eurasia, Tatarstan, southern Siberia, and Xinjiang. These regions formed the catchment area of the Bukharan educational system, with Bukhara and wider Transoxiana at the center, followed by the mountainous regions that today belong to Tajikistan and the northern rim of the Hindu Kush. All other regions had a more marginal position in this world. Pickett shows that these areas were indeed home for the majority of students of the Bukharan madrassas. Students from Shi ʿ i Iran were not on the archival record examined in this study. Polymaths primarily in the profound reevaluation of the Bukharan madrassas and their graduates.