Central Asian cultures, arts, and architecture / Ardi Kia.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book invites readers on a journey through time, to explore the multifaceted history of Central Asia. Through transcontinental passages such as the Silk Road, the book provides links among the major civilizations of China, India, Persia, and the Mediterranean, which in turn influences the characteristics of the region and beyond. For over seven thousand years, Central Asian residents have left a record of distinguished cultural artifacts. Like creators and innovators of any age or period, they sought to respond as creatively as possible to the necessities of their societies as a whole, and those of their individual patrons. In doing so they have given us a timeless source through which we can detect the dynamic stages of their creativity throughout history, as well as the breadth of our own rich cultural and artistic heritage.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This slim volume, in which the space devoted to endnotes at times exceeds the actual narrative, resulting in a mere 69 pages of text, covers the cultures, arts, and architecture of all of Central Asia from prehistoric times to the onset of the early modern period. The inevitable result--superficiality--is exacerbated by a very capacious understanding of the term "Central Asia," which here includes all of Iran without any discussion about contours and criteria. Each chapter covers a sprawling, often vaguely titled theme or topic in a few pages--prehistory, mass migration, the Satrapy of Parthia, Sogdia, and Samanid's (sic) Golden Age--14 in all. These are discussed haphazardly and with scant attention to historical sequence or context. The senenth-century Arab conquest of greater Iran, for instance, is covered in two pages, which also include some vague remarks about the vast topic of Sufism (Islamic mysticism). A lack of reference to the many seminal studies that have been published in the last few decades becomes particularly glaring in the section on the pivotal Mongol period, which receives another two pages. The target audience of this book, in sum, remains unclear. Summing Up: Not recommended. --Rudi P. Matthee, University of Delaware