Executive Editor:
Prof.
Oded Borowski, Emory University
Prof.
Roxani Margariti, Emory University
Dr.
Jennifer Yusin, Emory University
Publisher:
AUDIENCE: The primary audience will be users of high school,
college and public libraries in the English-speaking world. Because of the scope and unique
perspective of this work, it will also be useful to professionals interested in
the region, since it will provide up-to-date summaries of our current state of
knowledge and debates about issues of importance.
SCOPE AND
PURPOSE: The scope of the Encyclopedia
of the Middle East and South Asia is the geographic region from the East Mediterranean,
including North Africa to and including the sub-continent of South Asia. It will span the time periods from our
earliest historical knowledge to the present, and include information on the
art, culture, history, politics,social structure, and religions of the area. It will combine specific terms referring
to events and peoples with broader, conceptual terms aimed at providing an overview
of important issues and concepts.
Historical
and Cultural Cohesiveness of the Middle East and South Asia
From the beginnings
of the history of the world, three riverine areas have been regarded as the
major initiators of civilization: the area around the confluence of the Tigris
and Euphrates, the Indus valley area, and the area of the lower Nile. The last area, while part of northwest
Africa, has from its earliest proto-historical period been part of the culture
sphere of The Middle East and South Asia, both receiving and giving impetus to
the two other civilizations. Trade
in commodities and ideas haslinked these areas together from before the time
of
written historical records.
In the historical
ancient world, trade between the western most part of this area, the Eastern
Mediterranean, and India flourished, both overland through the upper areas of
Persia and by sea through the exploitation of the seasonally shifting
monsoons. With the military
conquests of Alexander of Macedon, and later the intellectual conquests of
Hellenistic civilization, the Middle East and South Asia sharedin an emerging
set of questions and debates about science and the world, while, at the same
time, developing distinctive cultures and theologies.
The cultures of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, originating in the Middle East, become direct
heirs of the views that had developed as a result of a knowledge
of the wider world. The multiple
cultures and populations were viewed as deriving from a single creation and,
hence, related. In India, the
Hindu traditions negotiated multivariate perspectives by embracing the
diversity of the subcontinent's population. Each religion had local roots, yet each was able to reach
widely into the world on the strength of religious belief and commerce.
By the time of the
rise of Islam, traders would go normally overland from Constantinople to the
mouth of the Ganges, traversing past the Caspian sea and the headwaters of the
Oxus, down, across the Indus and over to the Ganges. Others would go by water from Alexandria to the southern tip
of Arabia, over the Indian Ocean and then around India to the sea of Bengal. To find the locations of settlements of
Jews and Christians in India and Buddhists in Anatolia, one merely has to
follow the trade routes. The great
Jewish sage, Maimonides, received some of his financial support to write his
great works from his brother, who made his fortune plying the Indian Ocean
trade. And some early European
explorers of the East found backing for their expeditions by claiming to search
for Prester John, the legendary character arising from the very real Christian
missionary successes in south Asia and farther east. It is little wonder that Islam developed its historical and
cultural center in the lands of The Middle East and South Asia, from there to
spread around the world.
The modern
interconnectedness of the area can be viewed, in part, as an outgrowth of its
past interconnections and mutual negotiations, and in part as a result of European,
and especially British,
colonialism. British holdings in
India relied heavily on control of the "Middle East" or "Near
East," as the Eurocentric and colonial terminology described the region. The result has been a further shared
cultural experience, which are sharply marked by post-colonial reactions.
The
Convergences of the Middle East and South Asia as a Subject of Intellectual Inquiry
Students of the
Middle East, of India, of Islamic civilizations, and of the history of the
three monotheistic religions have found it necessary to expand their views to
include
all of The Middle East and South Asia.
To cite just a few examples, the three great Muslim empires, the
Ottoman, the Persian, and the Mughal, all were based on the various versions
of Islam,
the various dialects of Persian, and a shared tradition of art,
dress, philosophy, and law. To
understand the later years of the Ottoman empire, one has to look at issues of
pan-Turanism, the desire to include all the Turkic peoples of the Middle East
and South Asia and beyond, and the Khilafat movement, which intellectually,
religiously and to an extent politically, tied Anatolia to India. Folklore is another shared area that
helps us understand the connectedness of
the Middle East and South Asia. Stories, customs, and cultural themes span the region,
appearing little changed from one locale to another. This sphere of inquiry is institutionalized in the Middle
East and South Asia Folklore Bulletin published by The Division of Comparative Studies in the
Humanities at Ohio State University.
On a more practical basis, during the Iran-Iraq war and the Gulf
conflict, some argued that our policies would have been better informed had we
been able to take a view that looked beyond the parochialism which separated
some parts of the Middle East from other parts and all of those from South
Asia.
COMPETING WORKS: There is no competing encyclopedia or similar reference work
that competes with the proposed Encyclopedia of the Middle East and South
Asia. The more general encyclopedias
of
world history, the encyclopedias of the Middle East and the Encyclopaedia
of
Islam, published
by E. J. Brill, all contain some materials about the region, but are not
accessible, one-stop sources of information about a region that is
increasingly in the news. The
United States House of Representatives has a subcommittee on the Middle East
and South Asia, recognizing the connectedness and importance of the area, but,
to date, no comprehensive work has appeared in English that provides easy
reference to the full range of topics encompassed in this encyclopedia.
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modified 18 June 2007