In 1983, the 1,200th anniversary of the death of Abu Abd Allah Mohammad ibn Musa al-Khwarazmi was celebrated in recognition of his profound impact on the history of human civilization.

Among his best-known achievements were major developments in the fields of arithmetic and algebra. Through his works the Indian decimal system was eventually transmitted to Europe. And the name “algebra” itself comes from the title of one of his books, Al-Jabr wa'l -muqābalah.

Besides his unparalleled contributions in the field of mathematics, al-Khwarazmi's life and works provide us with a broader insight into the aspects of the formation and progress of human civilization. The history of human civilization is marked by migratory processes, by the movements of peoples and ideas from region to region. For historical reasons, centers of civilization arose, flourished, and declined in various parts of the world; but although those centers themselves disappeared, their achievements did not. Instead, these contributions to human knowledge were adopted and developed in new centers under new conditions.

A major impetus was given to scholarly research in Tajikistan first with the founding of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924 and then in 1929 with the creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. This is particularly true in the field of oriental studies, but before we survey the modern state of the field in the Republic, it is worth casting a glance back over the previous centuries during which scholarship evolved.

The traditions of Tajik orientalism are rooted in the long, rich sociopolitical history of the peoples of Central Asia. The formation and development of Tajik orientalism in all its manifold aspects -- historical, geographical, philosophical, socio-economic, ethnic, and linguistic -- went hand in hand with the formation of a Tajik state system, and with the spread of the Farsi-Dari (Tajik) language throughout the regions of Mawarannahr and Khurasan as the main component of the national culture of the Tajik people.

The fifteenth century was the golden age of miniature painting. This is strikingly illustrated by the survival both of written sources describing the development of the art and of the miniatures themselves.

Various Soviet Scholars including A. A. Semenov, G. A. Pugachenkova, V. G. Dolinskaya, O. I. Galerkina, N. V. Diakonova, O. F. Akimushkin, and A. A. Ivanov, as well as the present writer, have all worked on the problem of the development of the Central Asian miniature. Thanks to their studies, the outline of the Samarqand miniature, something unknown not long ago, has gradually begun to emerge. The issue of the Samarqand miniature has not yet been fully resolved and many problems still remain. These include the difficulties of access to the miniatures themselves which are kept in various libraries, museums, and private collections around the world and the fact that the vast majority have not been published.

The representation of human beings in medieval chronicles in general and in Persian chronicles in particular is governed by a code of conventions. An individual historical figure is usually depicted according to his rank and to the role attributed to him by a historiographer. Although chronicles narrate actual events and depict real persons and therefore cannot technically be defined as fiction, nevertheless it is possible to distinguish the categorization of the images of historical figures which substantially departs from what must have actually been the case. The evolution of the image of the ideal monarch is of particular interest here. Authors of the earliest chronicles usually single out one or more ruler as an ideal manager of the general welfare. As a rule, historiographers were influenced in their choice of the ideal type by political considerations and tended to define a representative or the representatives of a ruling dynasty as the ideal.

From the 12th to the 14th centuries three major Sufi orders took shape in Central Asia: the Yasavīyah, derived from Khoja Ahmad Yasavī of the town known later as Turkistan; the Kubravīyah, founded by Najm al-Dīn Kubrā in Khwarazm; and the Naqshbandīyah, named after Bahā’ al-Dīn Naqshband of Bukhārā. Of the three, the Yasavīyah remained an almost exclusively Central Asian ṭarīqah with particular appeal to the Turkic population, while the Naqshbandīyah became a truly international order active throughout the Islamic world, rising to phenomenal power and prestige within Central Asia and spreading far beyond its confines, most dynamically to India and the Ottoman lands. The Kubravīyah, however, found its greatest development outside Central Asia, and indeed, by the end of the 16th century, was almost entirely displaced in its native region by the increasingly dominant Naqshbandīyah.

The word “Sufi” is believed by some to be derived from the word “suf,” denoting a kind of woolen garment worn by ascetics. The wearing of this garment symbolizes the Sufi's renunciation of material, worldly concerns and his complete absorption in God. Throughout the history of the Sufi orders, this symbol of the humble woolen cloak has often stood in contrast with the actual economic status attained by many Sufi shaykhs. In her book Mystical Dimensions of Islam, A. Schimmel drew attention to this contrast:

The great nomad conqueror Timur set out to conquer the whole of the former Mongol Empire and almost succeeded. Although the dynasty he founded lasted a relatively short time, he became a legendary figure within the Turco-Mongolian tradition of the Middle East and Central Asia, the subject of an elaborate myth connecting the Timurid dynasty with that of Chinggis Khan.

The dynastic claims formulated by Timur's successors remained alive and relevant to those within the tradition up to the nineteenth century. Timur's myth assumed its final form well after his death, but it had its origins in Timur's own formulation of his legitimacy and his personality as a ruler.

Timur's achievements as the founder of a dynasty and a myth are the more impressive because he operated under severe restraints within both the traditions to which he belonged, the Turco-Mongolian and the Islamic.

The disintegration of the Timurid empire after the death of its founder, Timur, in 807/1405 followed the normal pattern for Central Asian nomadic empires based on a military tribal elite. The charismatic Timur had exercised a tight hold on the government of his realm, mainly as a result of the highly personal nature of his rule and the flexibility which the absence of a formal administrative apparatus afforded him. But, after his death, the traditional Turko-Mongol concept that territory was held collectively by the patriarchal, agnatic clan and that all lineal male descendants shared the right to claim political sovereignty over it, reasserted itself.

This corporate claim to sovereignty created a free-for-all situation in which individual members of the princely Timurid clan clamored to assert their claims to rule in the steadily shrinking territory under Timurid control, frequently resorting to the time-honored steppe tradition of guerilla struggle (qazāqliq) .