The title under review is an annotated bibliography to assist researchers on Central Asia in navigating the course of recent research and topics on this area. It draws considerably on a collection of reviews that have appeared in Abstracta Iranica (including those translated from French) and published between 1985 and 2000.
The annotations offer information concerning the contribution of each publication reviewed to the field. Going beyond a publication’s general description to characterize a work’s strengths and weaknesses makes the content informative, insightful, and incisive. The inclusion of more than 1,500 reviews is a significant advantage for researchers who have time constraints.
To help a reader utilize this rich repository efficiently, the references are classified into broad subjects (that in turn have subcategories) incorporating bibliographies, geography, history (both modern and contemporary), sciences, art and technique, modern languages and literature, sociology and economics, and political science. The study of religion is further classified into Sunni and Shiite Islam, which notably covers the Twelvers and the Ismailis. Particularly fascinating are some of the rare and lesser-known works cited, such as those on the Pamirs, their contemporary languages and archaic dialects, and on the Jews of Bukhara to mention just two. The contents and value of collections of conference proceedings cited in this volume offer readers information on sources not easily accessible elsewhere.
The volume cites references to works in English, French, German, Hebrew, Persian, Russian, Tajik, Uzbek, and a few other languages, underlining both the multilanguage and multidisciplinary dimensions of the included research and providing a vast panoramic view of intellectual pursuits in Central Asian and Eurasian studies to date. As a researcher familiar with other bibliographies on the region, this reviewer was impressed by the diversity and range of studies identified in the volume, including some from sources that were otherwise at risk of becoming obscure or being overlooked. For this accomplishment, the editors, Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao, merit the appreciation of present and future beneficiaries of the compilation.
This repository of references provides a “who’s who” in scholarship on this region through its offerings on both regional dimensions and historical perspectives. Another notable feature is that the work is the result of contributions from 62 reviewers at 22 institutions in Central Asia, France, Germany, India, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The fact that Japan’s Toyo Bunko [Oriental] Library and Research Institute has published the collaborative work carried out by the annual journal of critical bibliography on Iranian studies published by the French Research Institute, Iran, highlights the collaborative richness that this initiative brings to researchers and to Central Asian studies. The bibliography also combines diverse scholarly traditions and presents them in an organized, structured, easy-to-follow manner, which in itself is a template worth the attention of present students and future scholars alike. The simplicity of use in fact makes the technical dimensions easily accessible for those who might otherwise be overwhelmed by the volume of information on a given subject area. All of these qualities make this work appealing to both specialists and novices.
Gathering such useful information from hundreds of pages in volumes spanning fifteen years is a laudable service and major tool for researchers, bibliographers, and librarians. It is hoped that this initiative will contribute considerably toward the advancement of a better understanding of contemporary scholarship on Central Asia.
With today’s ubiquity of multimedia tools, this initiative can be expanded as an ongoing collaborative bibliography that would allow interested contributors to update the comprehensive collection on a more regular basis. Making these resources available online (preferably in a searchable format) and also issuing them on compact disks will encourage the addition of further value to this useful collection. It is hoped that institutions that have collaborated on and benefited from this work will seriously consider ways to make the repository even more valuable as a tool for future scholarship on Central Asia. In making this edited volume possible, the largest Asian Studies Center in the region and one of the five largest in the world has made a substantial contribution to the expansion and deepening of knowledge about Central Asia. The next step forward could be to explore the idea of compiling a bibliography of dissertations – particularly on Central Asia but also on Russia – that have been deposited with academies of sciences of the post-Soviet republics. Perhaps, in future, scholars of Turkic languages will consider collecting all works related to Central Asia in one place.