The Islamicate East series

The Invisible East programme launches its series of volumes published with Edinburgh University Press.

The new book series, titled The Islamicate East: New Approaches to Texts and History, is edited by Dr Arezou Azad and Prof Hugh Kennedy. The series, published by EUP, focusses on the study of the medieval eastern Islamicate lands through close readings of texts.

The vast and diverse medieval region stretching from Iran to Xinjian (China) – called the ‘Islamicate East’ in modern scholarship and known in the medieval period as Khurāsān and Mā warāʾ al-nahr (Transoxania) – was extraordinarily influential upon neighbouring societies. The Islamicate East: New Approaches to Texts and History is the first series to cover the region, with a close focus on text readings, transcriptions, translations and annotations.

Covering the territories of modern-day Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia, western China and northern India/Pakistan from the 8th to 15th centuries, the series will provide an intellectual home for new approaches in history and text analysis across a wide genre of texts written in multiple languages. Publishing documents including letters, contracts, internal State communications and poetry, it will bring into view aspects of medieval life that are ignored in the historical narratives. These include the daily concerns of peasants, landlords, women and children, judges and others living largely outside of court and imperial circles. Bridging both regional divides and disciplines, the series will aid in the understanding of this important medieval region’s complex history and create a fuller picture of a connected region where histories were intertwined.

If you are interested in writing for the series and for more information, please visit this link.