Lost Enlightenment

S. Frederick Starr is founding chairman of the Central AsiaCaucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, which is affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.

In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds - remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise.

List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Dramatis Personae xxi Chronology xxxi Chapter 1 The Center of the World 1 Chapter 2 Worldly Urbanists, Ancient Land 28 Chapter 3 A Cauldron of Skills, Ideas, and Faiths 62 Chapter 4 How Arabs Conquered Central Asia and Central Asia Then Set the Stage to Conquer Baghdad 101 Chapter 5 East Wind over Baghdad 126 Chapter 6 Wandering Scholars 156 Chapter 7 Khurasan: Central Asia's Rising Star 194 Chapter 8 A Flowering of Central Asia: The Samanid Dynasty 225 Chapter 9 A Moment in the Desert: Gurganj under the Mamuns 267 Chapter 10 Turks Take the Stage: Mahmud of Kashgar and Yusuf of Balasagun 303 Chapter 11 Culture under a Turkic Marauder: Mahmud's Ghazni 332 Chapter 12 Tremors under the Dome of Seljuk Rule 381 Chapter 13 The Mongol Century 436 Chapter 14 Tamerlane and His Successors 478 Chapter 15 Retrospective: The Sand and the Oyster 515 Notes 541 Index 611