Polymaths of Islam

James Pickett is Assistant Professor of Eurasian History at the University of Pittsburgh.

• Introduction: Islamic Scholars and the Central Asian Backdrop1. Defamiliarizing the Familiar: Conceptualizing Religion and Culture in Turko-Persia2. Centering Bukhara: The Reconstruction and Mythologization of an Abode of Knowledge3. Bukhara Center: Islamic Scholars as a Network of Human Exchange4. Patricians of Bukhara: Turkic Nobility, Persianate Pedagogy, and Islamic Society5. High Persianate Intellectuals: The Many, Many Guises of the Ulama6. Between Sharia and the Beloved: Culture and Contradiction in Persianate Sunnism7. Opportunity from Upheaval: Scholarly Dynasties between Nadir Shah and the Bolshevik Revolution8. The Sovereign and the Sage: The Precarious, Paradoxical Relationship between the Ulama and Temporal PowerConclusion: United in EclecticismEpilogue: Efflorescence before the Eclipse

Anyone interested in the implications of the Russian absorption of a cosmopolitan civilization undergoing significant structural change in its political, intellectual, and social life should keep a copy of Polymaths of Islam by their bedside. This work sets the agenda for the study of Central Asia's intellectual and social history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and will remain the reference text on the subject for a long time.(Russian Review) [The book is] a masterwork of scholarship. Pickett's book is a tour de force of history and cultural sensitivity.(New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences) Pickett provides an important foundation for a future study of the gradations of prestige among less elite Islamic scholars, and their interactions with more popular religious figures.(Canadian-American Slavic Studies) James Pickett's Polymaths of Islam is another great contribution in line with recent works of scholars on the history of Bukhara and its role in Eurasian history. The book is a great contribution to Central Asian history and will serve the needs of a diverse readership.(Ab Imperio)