The Warehouse of Bamiyan
Economic Life in Medieval Afghanistan
Arezou Azad
Contributions by Pejman Firoozbakhsh
Uncovers the untold history of rural life in medieval Bamiyan
- Provides a new, bottom-up history of eastern Khurasan
- Reveals the operations of a medieval warehouse, offering insights into the daily lives and interactions of local communities with the state
- Based on newly discovered documents from Bamiyan, with a focus on scholarly methods for reading historical records ‘against the grain’
- Highlights eastern Khurasan’s significance in the Islamicate world, offering a fresh perspective on the diverse and often overlooked roles of agricultural societies in medieval history
- Offers insights into the development of early New Persian as a legal and administrative language
Bamiyan, in present-day Afghanistan, is famous for its giant Buddhas, but what was life like for its rural inhabitants 500 years after the Muslim conquest? The Warehouse of Bamiyan uncovers the untold history of the region’s warehouse, revealing the lives of farmers, landholders, the taxes they paid, and their role in the economy. Based on newly discovered documents studied since the late 2010s, Arezou Azad details the reconstruction of the archive and the scholarly methods used behind the scenes to read medieval documents ‘against the grain.’ The book offers a fresh perspective on the medieval eastern Islamicate lands through the lens of medieval Bamiyan, highlighting the significance of agricultural societies and shedding light on the diverse roles of rural communities often overlooked in royal narratives.
List of Illustrations
Note on the Invisible East Collection
Maps
Preface
Technical Notes
Dramatis Personae
Introduction: The Invisibility of People of the Medieval Islamicate East
1. Method, Aims and Sources
2. Assumption and Paradigms About Rural Administration and Land Management
3. The Warehouse
4. Landholding Patterns in Bamiyan
5. The Documentary and Archival Context
Conclusion: Uncovering Life Beyond the Palace Walls
Appendix: The Documents
Acknowledgements
Timeline of Ghurid Rulers, ca. 392-612/1000-1215
Timeline of Khwārazmshāhī Rulers During Ghurid Suzerainty, up to 628/1231
Glossary of Terms Used in the Bamiyan Papers
Bibliography
Subject Index
A pioneering work. Never before has the social history of rural places in the Iran-Afghanistan region been written in such granular detail. Nor could it have been: new sources, documents from administrative practice, allow for a new level of precision. A first step into a fascinating new field of investigation.
The remarkable discovery of the Bamiyan Papers sheds proper light on pre-Mongol Persianate society and the economy for the first time. This is a crucial book for all those interested in medieval Asian history.
The Warehouse of Bamiyan encourages us to rethink the history of the Persianate world from the ground up, highlighting a period when Khurasan was a melting pot of cultural exchanges shaping Islam (11th to 13th centuries). The authors demonstrate remarkable originality and skill through their transcription, translation, and analysis of newly discovered Persian documents from Afghanistan, making this an engaging and essential read. It is highly recommended for those interested in Persianate, Afghan, Islamic, or economic history.
The Warehouse of Bamiyan … opens an entirely new chapter in the economic, social and linguistic history of Khurasan in the heyday of the Mediaeval age. It is a first and … elaborate attempt at analyzing the Persian part of the "Bamiyan Papers". … The features of rural economy and local tax system, in a region remote from the great urban centres which had monopolized the attention of chroniclers and, consequently, of modern historiography, are elucidated with a degree of precision unequalled in any part of the Iranian world of that time. Far from enduring stereotypes, we discover a society where rural communities manage to build strategies to circumvent tax oppression, where women sometimes manage farms, and where ongoing religious diversity can be suspected, at least in the case of the Jews whose great impact in the pre-Islamic period is more and more documented by a variety of sources … For us archaeologists, this area of the central Hindukush had long been associated with the now lost Buddhas of Bamiyan and the fossilized landscape of mountain castles. It now returns to real life.
