The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca ed. by Nile Green (review)

The Persianate World sets out to fill a gap in both Persian studies and linguistic history: exploring the geographic frontiers of the Persianwriting world. As Nile Green notes in the book’s introduction, the concepts of the “Persianate world” or “Persian zone” as a geographical space in which Persian language, literature, and culture enjoyed hegemony was articulated over fifty years ago by Marshall G. S. Hodgson in The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in World Civilization (3 vols) (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1974). However, while the concept of a Persianate cultural-linguistic community continues to enjoy currency in Middle Eastern and Inner Asian/Eurasian history, the Persianate community has not gained the same level of prominence in the study of World History as the Latin, Greek koine, Arabic, Sanskrit, or Classical Chinese cultural-linguistic communities. Scholars and laypeople outside the field of Persian studies still tend to associate the Persian language primarily with modern Iran and, sometimes, with Islam in general. The Persianate World’s fourteen contributors, an international collective of junior and senior scholars specializing in Ottoman, Russian, Central Asian, South Asia, and/or East Asian history, set out to address these issues by documenting “Persographic” culture (the production and consumption of texts in the Persian language) on the