City of Balkh

Arezou Azad holds the Chair in the Art and Heritage of Afghanistan at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientale in Paris and is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and Director of the Invisible East programme. She is the author of Sacred Landscape of Medieval Afghanistan (OUP, 2013) and The Warehouse of Bamiyan (EUP, 2025).Edmund Herzig is Soudavar Professor of Persian Studies at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow in Iranian Studies at Wadham College, Oxford. A specialist in the history of Iran, he is co-editor (with Sarah Stewart) of The Age of the Seljuqs and (with Willem Floor) of Iran and the World in the Safavid Age.Robert Hoyland is Professor of the Late Antique and Early Islamic History of the Middle East at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, having formerly taught at the universities of Oxford and St Andrews.Philippe Marquis is Director of DAFA (La Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan). Paul Wordsworth is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford.

• List of FiguresList of General MapsList of ContributorsNote on TextList of Abbreviations1. Arezou Azad, Edmund Herzig, Robert Hoyland, Philippe Marquis and Paul Wordsworth IntroductionA. Between the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya: Balkh in its Geographical Context2. Paul Wordsworth, Connecting the Early Islamic City: Balkh in Geographical Networks3. Philippe Marquis (with P. Barthélémy, J. Bendezu-Sarmiento, E. de la Vaissière, N. Engel, N. Rasouli, and Y. Ubelmann), The City of Balkh in the Context of the Oasis4. Munira A. Salahetdinova, Towards a Historical Toponymy of the Balkh Region (translated by A. Qurboniev)B. Becoming Islamic: Balkh Before, During, and After the Arab-Islamic Conquest5. Etienne de la Vaissière, From Bactra to Balkh via Naw Bahar6. Tasha Vorderstrasse, Imagining Balkh: The Chinese Perception of Central Asia during the Tang Dynasty7. Robert Hoyland, Balkh in the Umayyad PeriodC. Shrines, Palaces, and Gardens: Landscapes of Balkh from the Caliphate to the Ghaznavids8. Arezou Azad, How a City is Made Holy9. Hugh Kennedy, Balkh as a Capital of the Ghaznavid Sultanate during the Reign of Sultan Mas?ud (1030-41 CE)10. Domenico Ingenito, Sultan Mahmud’s New Garden in Balkh: An Exercise in Literary Archaeology for the Study of Ghaznavid Ephemeral ArchitectureD. Archaeological Evidence for the Development of Balkh in the Early Islamic Period11. Rachel Mairs, Alfred Foucher and the DAFA Excavations at Balkh (1924-25)12. Chahryar Adle, The Mosque Haji Piyada/Nuh Gunbadan, Balkh (Afghanistan): A Masterpiece of Fadl al-Barmaki Constructed in 178-9/794-5? (translated by Kathleen Hughes)13. Pierre Siméon and Nader Rasouli, Study of the Mediaeval and Modern Islamic Ceramics from Excavations in Balkh (ninth-eighteenth centuries CE)14. Stefan Heidemann, The Settlement Pattern of Tepe Zargaran in Balkh: Coin Finds in Relation to Local HistoryAppendix 1: Drawings of ceramics from BalkhAppendix 2: Photographs of ceramics from BalkhAppendix 3: Fabrics of ceramics from BalkhAppendix 4: Catalogue and photographs of the coins of Balkh

Ancient and medieval Balkh in Afghanistan was one of the greatest cities of Central Asia. Capital of the ancient kingdom of Bactria, Balkh developed into probably the most important cultural, intellectual and religious centre of the early Islamic east that has attracted the attention of scholars since the nineteenth century. However, until now there has been no single volume that has brought this scholarship together. Drawing on the past century and more of scholarship, as well as new fieldwork undertaken in the early 2000s, this is the first single volume devoted to the historical, cultural, archaeological and geographical background of Balkh. Written by an impressive team of international scholars from different disciplines, this book will be the standard reference work on the city for many years to come and a vital contribution to the study of Central Asian studies as a whole.