Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (15th - Early 20th Centuries)

The present volume maps out new lines of inquiry into the social history of Central Eurasia from the early modern to the early Soviet period. Contributions to the volume focus on the region inhabited by Qazaq communities, at the centre of which we find the steppes of present-day Kazakhstan as well as areas now comprising parts of Xinjiang, Siberia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The papers here assembled offer new insights on transnational forms of imperial governance, networks of Islamic learning and the politics of local elites which shaped the social and cultural history of a vast geographical area at the heart of Eurasia. The volume thus attempts to connect the social and the religious space inhabited by the Qazaqs to the historical context of successive competing states ruling over Central Eurasia, and to the wider Islamic cultural sphere.