The History and Culture of Iran and Central Asia by D. G. Tor & Minoru Inaba

Author:D. G. Tor & Minoru Inaba
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2022-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

The Islamization of Balkh, one of the greatest cities of antiquity in the east, was a gradual process of acculturation and adaptation, and narratives such as its local history Faḍāʾil-i Balkh played an important role in consolidating the political, religious, and cultural changes that came with it. Books like FB were not only read in quiet, but out loud to scholars and educated non-scholarly audiences for the purposes of tying together people’s place-focused identities with Islamic history. Where places like Balkh had an ancient history that was fundamentally different from that of the Prophet’s birthplace in Arabia—where languages, ecologies, and topographies were so fundamentally different—compromises were sought. Islam became a bit less Arab-focused, and Balkh became a little more Islamic. If we return to the question posed at the beginning of this article—What is Islamization? Is it about converting to the faith of Islam, or joining a Muslim culture?—then the local history of Balkh emerges as a testament to both. It describes individual conversions of key, exemplary people who serve as models of religiosity, piety, and knowledge for the lay population, but this local history is also a pronouncement to the wider world that anyone can join the Muslim culture of Balkh. In the latter sense, Islamization emerges as a socio-political and cultural process that supersedes faith and religion.

NOTES

1. The first Persian edition can be found in Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 1971. The present author has co-authored a first-time English translation, including detailed information on authorship and transmission in a substantive introduction: see Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 2021.

2. Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 1971, 40–41, 52–53.

3. For more on Faḍāʾil-i Balkh’s treatment of scholarly ties, see editor’s introduction in Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 2021, esp. 27–28.

4. Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 2021, 24, 54.

5. Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 1971, 4; Faḍāʾil-i Balkh 2021, 38: The English text reads: “Where is that great man now to see where those colourful cock pheasants that used to soar on the wings of their desire have gone? And where are the lions of the age, who in the tranquillity of their own abode used to break the feeble creatures? The kings with their dignity and justice, the ‘ulamā’ [P-2a] of sound advice, the good-natured sages, and the pious ones of pure morals: where have they all gone? All of them have been brought low from their high seats of felicity and power to beneath the level of debasement.”

6. Peacock 2017, 1–4.

7. Levtzion 1979; Bulliet 1979; DeWeese 1994.

8. DeWeese 1994, 22–23.

9. Papaconstantinou 2016, xv–xxiv.

10. Italicized clauses appear in Arabic in the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh. Letters or words in square brackets, [], have been added by the author for the sake of clarification and readability of the English translation. Numbers in square brackets refer to the folio number in the oldest Persian manuscript of FB, and letters “a” and “b” to the recto and verso sides. The letter “P” is short for “Persan-115,” the catalogue identifier of the Bibliothèque nationale de France for the oldest of the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh manscripts.

11. One such initiative was launched at the University of Oxford through the Invisible East program, https://invisibleeast.

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