Acknowledgments

In: Qarakhanid Roads to China
Author:
Dilnoza Duturaeva
Search for other papers by Dilnoza Duturaeva in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Open Access

Acknowledgments

The long gestation of this work has allowed me to accumulate many debts of gratitude. This book originated from the first chapter of my PhD dissertation at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. I am deeply grateful to my advisor and friend Elyor Karimov for the foundations of knowledge in Central Asian history he generously revealed and for providing me with innumerable recommendations and other assistance through the years. The directors of the Institute, Dilorom Alimova and Ravshan Abdullaev supported this project from the very beginning and tolerated my frequent absences from the institution, enabling me to conduct research abroad. I am thankful for their generosity and patience.

My dissertation research involved a very productive and joyful year at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany and a highly intensive term at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US. It offered me the unique opportunity to work with Jürgen Paul and David Morgan, who considerately volunteered their time to teach me the nuances of primary sources concerning the medieval history of Central Asia and Iran, and supported my numerous grant applications over the years. I am tremendously grateful for their mentorship and guiding me on the right path. My ustad for Persian Nader Purnaqcheband, and colleagues Paolo Sartori, Francesca Petricca, Christina Turzer, and Philipp Reichmuth made my sojourn in Halle a happy and pleasant experience. Uli Schamiloglu and Jeremi Suri helped me to engage in interdisciplinary circles in Madison.

The initial outlines of this book first appeared when a Gerda Henkel Fellowship allowed me to spend a year at the School of History at Nanjing University in China. I am grateful to Liu Yingsheng, Hua Tao and Yang Xiaochun for discussions and seminars, where I presented rough materials of my work that later became parts of Chapter 2. My sojourn in Nanjing was combined with intensive Chinese language studies, generously supported by the Confucius Institute Headquarters.

Most of the research was done during my 3-year postdoctoral studies at the Department of Sinology at Bonn University supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Ralph Kauz, Li Wen and Christian Schwermann magnanimously offered their time to teach me various aspects of Classical Chinese language and literature. I am deeply grateful to Ralph Kauz, who read initial drafts of the several chapters and provided thoughtful comments and suggestions. I am thankful to Li Wen for her generous help in interpreting diplomatic language of Song documents that were used in this book. I also owe thanks to Stefani Jürries, Stefan Georg, and Cui Peiling for making my stay in Bonn a thrilling collegial experience.

I owe special thanks to Farhad Maksudov, the director of the National Center of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan for introducing me the new archaeological data on the Qarakhanids and organizing a short expedition to the Qarakhanid highland towns in Tashbulaq and Tughanbulaq.

Much of the writing was done at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris within the framework of the project supported by the German Research Foundation. Étienne de la Vaissière read the entire manuscript and challenged me with his criticism, which deepened my knowledge in economic and migration history of Eurasia and helped to strengthen my arguments discussed in Chapter 6. I am deeply indebted to him for his support and belief in my scholarship. I also want to thank Marc Aymes, Marc Toutant, Alexandre Papas, and Vincent Fourniau at the Centre of Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies for their warm welcome and for providing arenas to present and discuss a part of this book.

In addition to talks I offered at the institutions mentioned above, parts of this research were presented at the following scholarship gatherings: the Asian and African Studies Conference in Saint Petersburg, the European Society for Central Asian Studies Conference in Budapest, Cambridge and Zurich, the Central Eurasian Studies Society Conference in Bloomington, the German Congress of Oriental Studies in Marburg, Summer School at the Institute of Iranian studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society Conference, the Iran and Central Asia Symposium at the University of Notre Dame in London, the China and Central Asia Conference at the School of Chinese Classics at Renmin University of China, the Visiting Program for Young Sinologists at the Institute for Western Frontier Region of China at Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an, the Bilimkent Seminar at the Abu Rayhan Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, the Migration and Identity History Symposium at the Institute of History of the Romanian Academy in Iasi, and the Qarakhanid Webinar at Washington University in St. Louis. I am thankful to audiences of these academic events for providing useful remarks and feedback on earlier versions of the chapters.

This book also benefited from the following individuals, who read and commented on various parts of the book: Chen Chunxiao, Chen Zhu, Yang Shaoyun, Maddalena Barenghi, Nurlan Kenzheakhmet, Stephen G. Haw, and my tongxue in Xi’an, Nikolai Rudenko. I am thankful for their time and efforts.

I am grateful for material support from a number of sources. I would like to thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for dissertation research in Halle and for their generous Scientific Literature Programme that allows me to purchase books relevant to my research every year, the Confucius Institute Headquarters (HANBAN) for Chinese language studies in Nanjing, the Gerda Henkel Foundation for the research stay in Nanjing and the open access publication grant for this book, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for postdoctoral studies in Bonn and the return fellowship in Tashkent, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the research stay in Paris and for the publishing aid within the project DU 1953/1-1.

A great number of libraries and museums helped me in my research and allowed me to use their resources. I extend special thanks to the team of the East Asian Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin for their committed work in providing the CrossAsia virtual library. Without access to the excellent online databases and resources, especially while when physical libraries were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, this book would not be completed yet. I am grateful to the Jambyl Region History Museum for allowing me to reproduce the image of a female Qarakhanid figure that appears on the cover of this book. I also owe thanks to Yu Yusen, who helped me to obtain the image of a huren figurine from the Jiangxi Provincial Museum, which also kindly allowed its reproduction. Special thanks are due to Saida Iliasova, who generously shared the image of a Qarakhanid siren.

My long historical journey along the Eurasian steppe and cities with the Qarakhanids led me to the Steppe Sisters Network, whose members had a crucial impact in my writing on female mobility and visibility in the Qarakhanid world in Chapter 3. I am grateful to Alicia Ventresca Miller, Ashleigh Haruda, Ainash Childebayeva and Kristen Hopper for our intellectual exchanges and dreams of the future of women in academia.

Some of my previous work represents initial attempts to formulate different aspects of the Qarakhanid diplomacy and trade in the East. However, along the long path to production, my ideas and arguments developed and changed somewhat over time and I present my work in its entirety for the first time in this book. I am grateful to the editors and publishers for allowing me to reproduce and adapt passages from the following articles: “From Turkistan to Tibet: The Qarakhanid Khaganate and the Tsongkha Kingdom,” in The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia from the Pre-Islamic to the Islamic Period, ed. by Deborah Tor and Minoru Inaba (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2022); “The Amber Road to China: Trade and Migration of Culture in Pre-Modern Eurasia,” in Migration and Identity in Eurasia from the Ancient Times to the Middle Ages, ed. by Victor Cojocaru and Annamária-Izabella Pázsint (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Mega, 2021); “Qarakhanid Envoys to Song China,” Journal of Asian History 52, 2 (2018); “Cengtan and Fulin: The Saljuqs in Chinese Sources,” Crossroads: Studies on the History of Exchange Relations in the East Asian World 15 (2017); “Between the Silk and Fur Roads: the Qarakhanid Diplomacy and Trade,” Orientierungen: Zeitschrift zur Kultur Asiens 28 (2016).

I extend special thanks to Paolo Sartori for introducing my book proposal to Brill Publishers, and to David Brophy and Sören Stark for their positive reception, and also to Patricia Radder, whose editorial assistance and support were crucial along the way of preparation for publication. Thank you for believing in this book and your efforts to get it published. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their insightful feedback. Special thanks are due to Evelyn Thompson for careful copyediting and proofreading of the manuscript. I am solely responsible for any remaining errors.

My deepest gratitude belongs to my family, especially to my parents Shukur Akbarov and Saida Akbarova for their endless love, support, and encouragement in all my pursuits and projects. It is to them I dedicate this book.

Paris

16 July 2021

  • Collapse
  • Expand