Diversions (1)

Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not reading/studying Mir 'Ali Sir all the time - just most of it ... but that's by the by. By way of distraction, and in order to hone my reading and translating skills vis à vis Chaghatay Turkic, I've been working through some materials available online at Harvard University's Islamic Heritage Project.

One is Janāb-i Ba-davlatnī hikāyātlārī ('Tales of the Blessed Lord'), an account of Ya'qub Beg's rule, written by Aḥmad Qulī Andījānī in 1322 AH/AD 1904-05. As manuscripts go, it's fairly easy to read and comprehend; indeed, as literary stylings go, it's pretty banal. Moreover it was one of the works consulted by Hodong Kim for his - as we like to say in these parts - 'seminal' study of Ya'qub Beg and related revolts against Qing rule in Xinjiang during the 1860s and 1870s, Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877 (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Available through the same avenue of research is a collection of 13 Central Asian documents from the 16th-19th centuries, in Persian or Chaghatay. Most of them appear to originate from Samarqand, Kashgar or Yarkend ... and, because the world is arranged this way, they are the subject of a study by - Hodong Kim, published as a chapter in a collection of conference proceedings, entitled Studies on Xinjiang Historical Sources in 17-20th Centuries, edited by James Millward, Shinmen Yasushi and Sugawara Jun, under the auspices of the Toyo Bunko. Hodong Kim's chapter ('Eastern Turki Royal Decrees of the 17th century in the Jarring Collection') compares the Harvard copies with those held, as the chapter title indicates, in the collection of the noted Swedish orientalist, Gunnar Jarring.