Polymaths of Islam : : Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia / / James Pickett.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Pickett, James,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2020]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (320 p.) :; 2 b&w halftones, 4 maps, 1 chart

Polymaths of Islam analyzes the social and intellectual power of religious leaders who created a shared culture that integrated Central Asia, Iran, and India from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth.James Pickett demonstrates that Islamic scholars were simultaneously mystics and administrators, judges and occultists, physicians and poets. This integrated understanding of the world of Islamic scholarship unlocks a different way of thinking about transregional exchange networks. Pickett reveals a Persian-language cultural sphere that transcended state boundaries and integrated a spectacularly vibrant Eurasia that is invisible from published sources alone.Through a high-cultural complex that he terms the "Persian cosmopolis" or "Persianate sphere," Pickett argues, an intersection of diverse disciplines shaped geographical trajectories across and between political states. In Polymaths of Islam the author paints a comprehensive, colorful, and often contradictory portrait of mosque and state in the age of empire.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Technical Note -- Introduction: Islamic Scholars and the Central Asian Backdrop -- 1. Defamiliarizing the Familiar: Conceptualizing Religion and Culture in Turko-Persia -- 2. Centering Bukhara: The Reconstruction and Mythologization of an Abode of Knowledge -- 3. Bukhara Center: Islamic Scholars as a Network of Human Exchange -- 4. Patricians of Bukhara: Turkic Nobility, Persianate Pedagogy, and Islamic Society -- 5. High Persianate Intellectuals: The Many, Many Guises of the Ulama -- 6. Between Sharia and the Beloved: Culture and Contradiction in Persianate Sunnism -- 7. Opportunity from Upheaval: Scholarly Dynasties between Nadir Shah and the Bolshevik Revolution -- 8. The Sovereign and the Sage: The Precarious, Paradoxical Relationship between the Ulama and Temporal Power -- Conclusion: United in Eclecticism -- Epilogue: Efflorescence before the Eclipse -- Bibliography -- Index