Barakatullo B Ashurov
My research is best categorized as cultural history, with an interdisciplinary focus between history and culture broadly conceived, including languages and religions of Central Asia with emphasis on ancient Sogdiana in its Iranian and Chinese geopolitical settings. By way of methodology, I use historiography and philological analysis to study material and textual source-evidence in order to put narratives together on various aspects of Sogdian ‘civilization’ in its immediate and extended cultural and political contexts. In addition, I have great interest in exploring the continuity of the ancient sociocultural and historical trends into the modern period. And this aspect of my research is reflected in my work in the sphere of ethnographic and documentary linguistics focusing on endangered Indo-Iranian languages of Tajikistan.
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In this talk I will seek to explore the Sogdian religious life in example of material evidence pertinent to Buddhism. I will seek to explore the topic through the notion of ‘space’ to focus on relational dimensions, like interconfessional, interethnic and intercultural.
1. Syriac-speaking Churches represented by the Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox (Jacobite) and Syriac-speaking Greek Orthodox (Melkites). These Christian denominations were present in Central Asia at different historical timelines spanning from the 3rd to the 13th centuries.
2. Latin-speaking Catholic (Western rite) churches. The missionary outreach of the Latin-speaking Church in Central Asia begun in late decades of the 12th and early 13th centuries. The primary missionary groups were those of Dominican and Franciscan Orders.
3. Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodoxy came to Central Asia as a result of expansionist rule of the Tsarist Russia in late decades of the 19th century. The Russian orthodox parishes initially were set up primarily at the central cities occupied by Russian military garrisons. However, at later periods with an increase of Russian emigrants the number of parishes grew and expanded accordingly.
4. Protestant Christian groups represented by Mennonites and Anabaptists came to Central Asia contemporaneous with Russian Orthodox communities. These Christian groups were primarily those fleeing the compulsory military recruitment law in the Russian Empire, which was not imposed in Central Asia or the Russian Turkestan of that time, due to the political and demographic reasons.
5. The arrival of small communities of the Lutheran and Catholics in Central Asia is also connected with the Russian conquest. These Christian communities mainly came from Russia and Europe as part of the economic-political development projects of the Russian empire. There were individual mission workers as well.
6. The so called ‘Evangelical Baptist’ communities in Central Asia appeared in Central Asia in last decades on 1920s. These were forced exiled individuals as well families of 4-5 people, under the Stalin’s regime. The first Evangelicals and Baptist Christians congregations in Central Asia were registered in 1940s.
7. The contemporary spectrum of Christianities in the region is represented by vast and diverse Protestant traditions of medieval and modern era origins, as well as sectarian groups such as Latter Day Saints and New Age. Majority of these groups has spread into Central Asian landmass after the collapse the USSR in 1990.
The focus of this talk is to present a short analysis of a group of Sogdian coins depicting the sign of the cross in their wider historical context, namely the development of this sign in Byzantine and Persian (Sassanid) coinage and spread of Christianity in Persia and Central Asia. The Sogdian coins under discussion here represent those from Bukhara oasis as well as Panjikent and Osrušana.