Islam and Tibet – Interactions along the Musk Routes

Anna Akasoy is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, UK; Charles Burnett is Professor of the History of Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and is a Fellow of the British Academy, UK; Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim is a Wellcome Trust University Award holder at the History Department, Goldsmiths, University of London.

• Contents: Preface; Islam and Tibet: cultural interactions - an introduction, Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim; Tibet in Islamic geography and cartography: a survey of Arabic and Persian sources, Anna Akasoy; The Bactrian background of the Barmakids, Kevin van Bladel; Iran to Tibet, Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani; Greek and Islamic medicines' historical contact with Tibet: a reassessment in view of recently available but relatively early sources on Tibetan medical eclecticism, Dan Martin; Tibetan musk and medieval Arab perfumery, Anya King; The Sarvastivadin Buddhist scholastic method in medieval Islam and Tibet, Christopher I. Beckwith; Notes on the religions in the Mongol empire, Peter Zieme; Tibetans, Mongols and the fusion of Eurasian cultures, Paul D. Buell; Three rock-cut cave sites in Iran and their Ilkhanid Buddhist aspects reconsidered, Arezou Azad; The Muslim Queens of the Himalayas: princess exchanges in Baltistan and Ladakh, Georgios T. Halkias; The discovery of the Muslims of Tibet by the first Portuguese missionaries, Marc Gaborieau; So close to Samarkand, Lhasa: Sufi hagiographies, founder myths and sacred space in Himalayan Islam, Alexandre Papas; Between legend and history: about the 'conversion' to Islam of two prominent Lamaists in the 17th-18th centuries, Thierry Zarcone; Ritual theory across the Buddhist-Muslim divide in late imperial China, Johan Elverskog; Trader, middleman or spy? The dilemmas of a Kashmiri Muslim in early 19th-century Tibet, John Bray; Do all the Muslims of Tibet belong to the Hui nationality?, Diana Altner; Greater Ladakh and the mobilization of tradition in the contemporary Baltistan movement, Jan Magnusson; Index of proper names.

'... the diversity of scholarly approaches - anthropological, historical, philological and archaeological, together with the variety of the cultural interactions surveyed - combine to give a good overall perspective regarding the central pertinent fields of study. The reader thus receives a well-rounded view of the relations between Islam and Tibet... This intriguing collection of articles covers rich and fresh materials for the study of a relatively neglected aspect of world history, and is thus a valuable contribution to the study of Islam and its place in Asia.' Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam