Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane

List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Dramatis Personae xxi Chronology xxxi Chapter 1 The Center of the World 1 Chapter 2 Worldly Urbanists, Ancient Land 28 Chapter 3 A Cauldron of Skills, Ideas, and Faiths 62 Chapter 4 How Arabs Conquered Central Asia and Central Asia Then Set the Stage to Conquer Baghdad 101 Chapter 5 East Wind over Baghdad 126 Chapter 6 Wandering Scholars 156 Chapter 7 Khurasan: Central Asia's Rising Star 194 Chapter 8 A Flowering of Central Asia: The Samanid Dynasty 225 Chapter 9 A Moment in the Desert: Gurganj under the Mamuns 267 Chapter 10 Turks Take the Stage: Mahmud of Kashgar and Yusuf of Balasagun 303 Chapter 11 Culture under a Turkic Marauder: Mahmud's Ghazni 332 Chapter 12 Tremors under the Dome of Seljuk Rule 381 Chapter 13 The Mongol Century 436 Chapter 14 Tamerlane and His Successors 478 Chapter 15 Retrospective: The Sand and the Oyster 515 Notes 541 Index 611