The Warehouse of Bamiyan

Reviews / Votes

A pioneering work. Never before has the social history of rural places in the Iran-Afghanistan region been written in such granular detail. Nor could it have been: new sources, documents from administrative practice, allow for a new level of precision. A first step into a fascinating new field of investigation. -- Juergen Paul, University of Hamburg The remarkable discovery of the Bamiyan Papers sheds proper light on pre-Mongol Persianate society and the economy for the first time. This is a crucial book for all those interested in medieval Asian history. -- Chris Wickham, Chichele Professor of Medieval History emeritus The Warehouse of Bamiyan encourages us to rethink the history of the Persianate world from the ground up, highlighting a period when Khurasan was a melting pot of cultural exchanges shaping Islam (11th to 13th centuries). The authors demonstrate remarkable originality and skill through their transcription, translation, and analysis of newly discovered Persian documents from Afghanistan, making this an engaging and essential read. It is highly recommended for those interested in Persianate, Afghan, Islamic, or economic history. -- Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Elahe? Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies The Warehouse of Bamiyan ... opens an entirely new chapter in the economic, social and linguistic history of Khurasan in the heyday of the Mediaeval age. It is a first and ... elaborate attempt at analyzing the Persian part of the "Bamiyan Papers". ... The features of rural economy and local tax system, in a region remote from the great urban centres which had monopolized the attention of chroniclers and, consequently, of modern historiography, are elucidated with a degree of precision unequalled in any part of the Iranian world of that time. Far from enduring stereotypes, we discover a society where rural communities manage to build strategies to circumvent tax oppression, where women sometimes manage farms, and where ongoing religious diversity can be suspected, at least in the case of the Jews whose great impact in the pre-Islamic period is more and more documented by a variety of sources ... For us archaeologists, this area of the central Hindukush had long been associated with the now lost Buddhas of Bamiyan and the fossilized landscape of mountain castles. It now returns to real life. -- Frantz Genet, College de France, Paris