Lecture
Turkic Patronage in Central Asia: Patterns and Challenges
- Ron Sela
- Date
- Thursday 20 March 2025
- Time
- Explanation
- The lecture will be followed by drinks kindly offered by Oosters Genootschap.
- Address
-
University Library
Witte Singel 27
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- Vossiuszaal
Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian history at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 14 until 25 March 2025. Ron Sela will deliver one guest lecture at Leiden University.
Lecture abstract
The emergence of Turco-Muslim states in Central Eurasia also heralded a new era in patronage. For centuries thereafter, Turks fueled cultural, artistic, religious, economic, and political projects throughout the region. Notably, Turkic rulers, military commanders, and high officials served as the most influential catalysts for literary production in the premodern, Islamic Persianate world. In fact, their push and sponsorship for literary production in the Persian language far outweighed their push for comparable production in Turkic. How should we understand this phenomenon? In this talk, we introduce the merits and limitations of ‘Turkicness’ for the question of patronage, especially in the literary sphere in Central Asia.
About Ron Sela
Prof. Ron Sela teaches Central Asian history at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, where he also serves as Director of the Islamic Studies Program and as Director of the Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Among his publications: The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane: Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Muslim Religious Authority in Central Eurasia (Brill, 2023; co-edited with Paolo Sartori and Devin DeWeese).