>> Speaker 1: From the Library
of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Joan Weeks: Good afternoon
ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of all my colleagues and
in particularly Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the African and
Middle East Division, I'd like to extend a very
warm welcome to everyone. I'm Joan Weeks, Head of
the Near East Section. I'm Turkish specialist. And as part of our noon
time lecture series of today's program entitled the
enlightenment, "Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from
Arab Conquest to Tamerlane" by Dr. Fred Starr is part of and
sponsored by the Near East Section. Before I call Hirad to
introduce our speaker today, we always like to give you a little
brief overview of the division. It's comprised of three sections. There's the African Section that
covers all of sub-Sahara Africa. There's the Hebraic Section
that covers worldwide Hebraic and literature from all
over, not only just Israel. And then we have our Near
East Section which covers all of northern Africa, the countries,
the Arab countries, all of Turkey, Turkic Central Asia which is today's
focus, Iran, also the Caucasus, the Turkic peoples of China. So you see, it covers a wide area
and we'd like to have you come back and use these collections
for your research. I also want to point out that
we've left flyers in your chairs to evaluate today's program
and we always appreciate that that you fill those
in so we can continue to provide these programs to you. Also, I'd just like to point out that today's program
is being recorded so that if you ask questions, you're just
implicitly giving us permission to tape your questions and answers. So with that, I'd like to call Hirad
Dinavari to the podium and ask him to introduce our speaker. Thank you. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank
you everyone for joining us. I know it's a rainy day and
it's during lunch hour and most of us have busy schedules, the
fact that you're here means a lot. We are very grateful
for having you here. And we have a very
distinguished speaker today and we are showcasing a book which is quite important
work of scholarship. Before I get into the bio, I just want to give you
a little background. We have a lecture series known as the Persian Book Lecture Series
jointly done with the University of Maryland who are our partners. And these have been going on since
the Persian Book Exhibit in 2014. This year is literature and other
focuses also performing arts. And we have been showing different
aspects of Persian language. And this isn't about nation states. You're fairly familiar
with the Iranian aspects of Persian, the Afghan, Indian. We even had discussions on
Ottoman and Persian connections. Central Asia and Persian
is something that needs a little bit more work and in this sense this
book is unique and the speaker today is unique
because it brings the perspective on Central Asian Persian,
Persian used in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and beyond. And in that sense, we are bringing
you a full range of lectures that cover the entirety
of the Persian language, its richness and diversity. Having had said that, I would like to introduce our speaker Dr.
Fred Starr, is the founding Chairman of the Central Asian
Caucasus Institute. He began working in the Turkic
world as an archeologist in Turkey and went and found
the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. Dr. Starr served as a vice president
of Tulane University and president of Oberlin College
and Aspen Institute. He has advised three US presidents
on Russian-Eurasian affairs and co-authored the first
comprehensive strategic assessment of Central Asia, the
Caucasus and Afghanistan for the joint chief of staff. Dr. Starr's recent work has focused on reopening transcontinental
corridors of trade and transport, the New Silk Road, his book "Lost
Enlightenment" published in 2013 which is what we are
essentially making available for you here has been translated into nine languages including
the various dialects of Persian, Tajik Persian and Afghanistan
Dari Persian and, of course, Farsi in Iran. And it has received many
favorable reviews and was praised by President Ashraf Ghani of
Afghanistan as a fantastic book. Dr. Starr also founded the
Greater New Orleans Foundation, the biggest non-governmental
aid, sorry, aid donor following the
Katrina disaster that led to Louisiana's repertoire of
a jazz ensemble of New Orleans which has now toured in Eurasia. Without taking more time,
I'm going to turn this over to our distinguished speaker,
the book is available for purchase at the back and Dr.
Starr will be available to sign the books once
the lecture is over. We're giving it to you for
a very good price of 20, which is much cheaper than
you would normally find it. And feel free to come up
at the end and, you know, have Dr. Starr sign for you. We will give you about
10 to 15 minutes for questions at the very end. Essentially we will be recording
this so by asking questions and being filmed, you're
giving us consent to record you and make your comments
available for everyone to see. Thank you. Dr. Starr, feel free to come up. [ Applause ] >> Fred Starr: Thank
you very much indeed. It's now 11 languages. Added Italian awhile
back and Turkish. I want to draw back 20
years almost to the day, almost exactly 20 years ago, I
was in Dushanbe and the civil war in Tajikistan was nearing its end
but you could still hear shooting. And the city was really kind of
a depressing mess at that time. Everyone was very fearful and
then suddenly in the midst of this rather gloomy civil war
situation, three soldiers marched down the street with a flag and I
looked, that's-- what's that flag? I've never seen it before. It was new. And they said, well-- I caught
up with them and asked them and they said, well
that's our new flag. And I looked at it,
I was very curios. It's first time I've ever seen it. I noticed there is a green on it. And he said, oh yeah, that
refers to the mountains, green or to the green valleys and
so on where everything is growing. And I said, and it's
white, what about that? And they said, well, the
white is the mountains, of course, snowy mountains. And the red, he said well
that's the life of the people. I thought, gee, that's unfortunate
color for the time of the civil war. But there was also on this new flag, there were I think
seven stars and a crown. So I asked, what are the
seven stars refer to? And they didn't know. And I said, well who
designed the flag? They-- oh, we can take you to him. He's just a few blocks away. It turns out it was designed
by a Lithuanian Catholic who had an antique store, an
old book and antique store right in the center of Dushanbe. And so I went in and met
this man very hospitable, very interesting man and he
indeed had designed the flag. So I said, what about the stars? And he said, well he said when I
was a boy, a student in Lithuania, I had to study a work of German
literature, [inaudible] and he said that was about Persian poetry,
a Hafez mainly as you know. And he said, I then got interested
and looked around and it turns out there were other poets. And-- in Persian, but he said once I
was focusing on designing the flag. I asked, who were these other
poets that I learned about? And he got the whole list you
know, Ferdowsi, Rabi'a Balkhi and [inaudible] and many others. And he looked into it. He didn't know anything
about this, and he said that, my goodness they are all from here. And he meant Central Asia and, of
course, Tajikistan particularly but somewhere from like Rabi'a
Balkhi, she's obviously from Balkh. But they were from
the East if you will. And he said, so I decided
to put them all on the flag. And I don't know which
specific poets this reflect-- stars refer to, but it's
a very interesting-- it struck me as very interesting
that these figures whom one thinks of as core figures of
Persian culture and literature and poetry are actually
from something that geographically is
not part of Iran today. Well, that's not quite true
because the eastern edge of Iran as you know, Khorasan, Ferdowsi
was from there for example. But the fact is that
this extraordinary bond of poetic geniuses came from
the Central Asian territory. And this got me thinking,
well, who else is from there? And I-- this 20-- 18 years later
I published a 650-page book which is an answer to that question. Who else is from there and why? Why did that happen, you know,
that these geniuses that showed up from what we now call
Central Asia defined broadly? Well, let me note that I
also knew nothing about this, learned about other
Persianate languages. You know, like Bactriane, like
Sogdiane, Khwarazmian so on which-- I mean, Khawarazmian, we know
from their greatest figure, the great scientist Biruni about
whom I'll say something more later. We know he wrote about this
thousand years ago that this-- an entire literature was
destroyed and Khwarazmian Persian, when the Arabs came
through after the-- in the Muslim conquest
of the region, he says that the entire literature, whole library after
library was obliterated. So, we basically--
everything I'm talking about is a fragment
of what once existed. And all the people I'm about to talk
about why we know about them mainly through a fragment of their
total works, all right. No writer, no scientist,
no mathematician, no theologian, no philosopher,
whoever. Do we have more than maybe 10, 15
at most 20% of what they wrote? The rest is lost. So everything I'm about to
speak about you have to multiply if what we know is
based on that 20%. You have to multiply it by five. And by the way, what is preserved and what isn't preserved
is often quite propitious because we know the names
of some of the hundreds and hundreds of lost works. Now, let me therefore begin by introducing three
quite different figures. The first-- and I'll introduce them
not because they're the biggest fish in the pond, but because they
are representative of the kind of geniuses that this region
produced from roughly the 8th through the 12th centuries AD. And let me start with al-Khwarizmi. He-- you know him. In fact, you used his name
probably in the last couple of weeks in English without
knowing it because you-- someone was telling
you about the algorithm on which some computer
process is based. Well, that is a distortion of his name al-Khwarizmi it's
transliterated into Russian which is not quite
right but al-Khwarizmi. And when he's book was
translated, his book on algebra, the title is Algebra by the way,
when he-- it has a subtitle, a compendious book on calculations
by completion and balancing. When this book, Algebra, was
translated it immediately into Latin, it became
the standard work. And, of course, people wondered
who is this author, al-Khwarizmi? Well, they think-- they didn't
know much anything about him, but they did know he was a very big
figure in the world of mathematics and therefore anyone who was, you
know, this was formal compliment. Anyone who was a great
mathematician, they called in medieval Europe an
al-Khwarizmi and hence algorithm. It's part of our culture. He also, by the way, he had in
his spare time invented linear and quadratic equations, worked
out sine and cosine functions. He also pioneered in the
field of trigonometry. And what he did basically
was to pick up from the Greeks what they had
done in these mathematical fields and pushed it way beyond. Why did he know about the Greeks? Because Syrian Christians
who knew Arabic and knew Greek were translating
these works and they-- but there are a lot of Syrian
Christians out in Central Asia. And so, these works
were known out there. So, he also did a lot
of work in astronomy. He did astronomical tables
that were based on the kind of astronomical tables they were
doing in India at this time. He also, by the way
speaking of India, wrote a book in-- on
Indian numerals. Now, Indian numerals, do
you mean Arabic numerals? No. Indian numerals, because he
wrote that book on Indian numerals, Arabs picked it up and by the
time this numeral system arrived in the west, they knew
only is Arabic numerals. But you could just as well call
them Central Asian numerals. But he was a formidable figure
in other words, al-Khwarizmi. And just to remind you its dates are
7 AD to 850, that's a long time ago to be doing such genius work. Then my second figure is from
what is now Southern Kazakhstan. He-- this is on the great
northern route across east-west. It's pretty much the route that
this new so-called Silk Roads are following. And Farabi, al-Farabi is his
name, lived date 72 to 950. Farabi was born in the biggest
trading city of on that route, actually a suburb above it, Otrar. It's absolutely bleak
and abandoned area today. It used to have some farming but
it was once a great urban center. And this Farabi, we know
him very well in the West because he wrote the book on logic. He took Aristotelian logic. And he-- again thanks to
those translations out. He didn't speak. None of this people
learned or only a couple of them learned ancient Greek. But he took the Arabic translations,
studied them very carefully, they're good translations,
the Syrians did. And not only did he write in
meticulous detail about the field of logic, but he expanded
considerably on what Aristotle had done. It's extraordinary. So, his books too were
eventually translated in the west. And in the West, they
were very serious people, Saint Thomas Aquinas
considered him to be a great, great genius as indeed he was. He also-- He wrote books on what
we would call political science, ethics and so on. And he also was a music-- musician. He played this kind of an instrument and wrote a book on
the theory of music. That was also translated
in the Latin. It was the greatest work
on the theory of music in ancient times in the Renaissance. Now, who was this guy? I'll get to that in a minute. The third of my three
introductory figures is from-- what is now Kyrgyzstan, he
was born in a little village which is right near a big gold mine
on the north side of Issyk-Kul. And he is not called Mahmud of
Barsgan which he should be called because that's where he was of,
but he spent much of his career in Kashgar, the great Turkic
city in Xinjiang in China which by the way is currently being
obliterated as a historic city. They are making a kind
of plastic version and otherwise destroying it--
destroying 2000 years of history and replacing it with high rises. But he is-- and that's Kashgar
where Mahmud of Kashgar hung out, his dates are 1005 to 1102. Now, what did he do? He wrote a Compendium of
the Languages of the Turks. Now, that might sound pretty
dreary to you, but in fact nothing like this had ever been done. Why? He-- this is ethnography. It's linguistics. It is folklore. It is geography. He throws in this Compendium
of the Languages of the Turks. The first maps, the oldest map
that we have of Japan, anywhere. The Japanese don't
have an older map. Interesting question, why did
this guy in Central Asia come up with the map of Japan? His-- what he was up to
was very interesting. He was, and I want to stress
this, he was a Turk himself. He-- a Turk who had been obviously as all Turks had been,
Tungrians if you will. They are the followers of the
traditional nomadic faiths that all the Turkic tribes had,
but in his case, a generation or two before him, they
had converted to Islam. And these Turkic soldiers
from Central Asia, of whom there were a lot, they were
totally responsible for the security of the caliphate and Baghdad. No Turkik-- Turkish soldiers
from Central Asia, no caliphate. And Mahmud went there,
spent some time and said, you know, this is terrible. These people aren't facing reality. Their security is totally dependent
on the people that they don't know and despise, and who are
treated badly in the markets. They think the language Turkish
is only for buying groceries in. You know, so this is all wrong. He said, they're going
to have to learn. It's high time they
learn that language, too. So he writes this Compendium
of the Turkic languages and he tells you how if you learn
one the adjustments that you need to make to learn all the others. And he tells you where this
speech is spoken and what kind of dress they have out there and what they ate for
dinner practically. It's an extraordinary work. Now, I've given you
three random figures. I could give 300. But I hope you sense just from
these three that we're talking about some formidable,
formidable figures. Now, this leads to some very
important but not obvious points. First of all, they all wrote
in Arabic and because of that, people not only in the west but in the Middle East assumed they
were Arabs which none of them is. This is so fundamental an error, a
misreading and it is so widespread that we-- that the entire
phenomenon of these Golden Age of Central Asia has been ignored. Why? Because weren't these guys all
of the Arab renaissance, not quite. Ethnically they were very diverse. Khwarizmi was Persianate. He was of this south ethnicity
among the very diverse like Germanic tribes, you know,
the Germanic states today, Denmark versus Germany
or Bosnia or whatever. Very diverse, he was from one which
we've completely lost track of and we've lost track of their
language, he was a Persian. Then we have Mahmud is obviously
is a Turk and probably so. Although living in an empire, the
Karakhanid Empire of that time, which should complete in
many respects Persianized and learned Arabic
for doing business in. These were sophisticated
people, multilingual, multicultural right from square one. And Farabi, well this is
a very sensitive point. Farabi, well there was
a study, the scholarship and all this is fascinating,
Farabi wrote this big book on music and a scholar went through
the entire book and pulled out every reference to instruments
and to musical forms and it turns out they were overwhelmingly
Persianate. They weren't Turk. So, you know, it's
mildly embarrassing that the National University of
Kazakhstan is named after Farabi but it should be for
several reasons. Kazakhstan is proudly a
multiethnic society and furthermore, Farabi lived in a increasingly
Turkic world himself and was interacting and to go
beyond that, the Turks and Persians of Central Asia, there
were Turks in cities. But large numbers of them more
on the countryside as nomads and shepherds and so on, whereas the
Persianate people originally early had-- were living in the cities. Now, to go in the city, you needed
things to survive, you needed things that you could only
get from the Turks. If you were a Turk, to
survive, you needed things that you could only get
from the urban people. So they knew each other,
they interacted with each other intimately. And both of them contributed
very richly to this Golden Age of Central Asia. So you have for example,
the great astronomer, right? I won't go into-- at
length named Hojandy, he was from Hogent obviously
in-- of northern Tajikistan. Hojandy was not only a Turk but
of a very fancy royal title even, but there he was interacting
with one of the greatest Persianate
astronomers and scientists, and mathematicians Biruni. So this is in ex-- these
are inextricably tied up with each other. So by the time much later you
got someone like Ali-Shir Nava'i. He is totally bilingual, bicultural and bilingual in terms
of his poetry. Now, the further conclusion
about from this-- these observations of these
three guys that I want to note is they're multi-religious. These three, all profess
to be Muslims, although there is some
tradition that says that al-Khwarizmi really
remained as Zoroastrian at heart. Zoroastrianism being
the common religion-- religious foundation of the
region and influencing every one in interesting ways, but it was this
phenomenon that I'm writing about and speaking about of the
Golden Age was multi-religious. You had very pious
Muslims on the one hand. You have guys who just went
through the motions on the other. You have guys who saw the
opportunity to get some money by identifying exactly
the location of Mecca, they used their science to do that. And, you know, that's a good
contract let's go for it. You have people of
every degree of piety. But you also have very
prominent Muslim-- Christian, Christians
among the science and in cultural figures you had. You had Jews and you had
Zoroastrians and they-- this was not a monopoly of anyone
and they were all interacting, they all knew each other and that
was one of the characteristics of the movement as a whole. Well, I didn't mention this
but, al-Khwarizmi cut out and he eventually spent a lot of--
a long part of his life in Baghdad. As did Farabi and then
he went beyond that. And so, it is common to say
these two guys and also Mahmud, he was there for a while, this is
all part of the Arab caliphate. Not quite. It's much more interesting
than that because in the-- because you have, well, Baghdad
itself was founded by Mansur who had checked out this
great Central Asian City of Merv arguably the greatest city
in the entire region for 500 years and it's pretty clear that his
circular plan for Baghdad was taken from Merv, and when they have
the dedication of Baghdad, who was there to bless
the project but a bunch of Jewish astrologers from Merv. So Baghdad had a strong Central
Asian cast from the beginning but what's much more interesting
is that later when after the sons of the famous Harun al-Rashid who
was thought to be a great patron of the arts but I would characterize
as a Jihadist than a philanderer. His two-- his sons ended up because
he stupidly turned the whole empire over to them together. They ended up obviously at war
with each other and one of them, who spent many years in Central
Asia at Merv now Turkmenistan, one of them finally triumphed
and it was he who brought all of these Central Asians to Baghdad,
they basically took it over. The biggest patron of the arts and
culture, four or three generations in Baghdad was not
someone from the Arab world or from traditional Persian
world, it was Central Asian family from Western Afghanistan,
from Balkh, a great city there in western Afghanistan,
the Barmak family. Well, the Barmaks had run a huge
Buddhist monastery outside of Balkh and when this was destroyed
by the Arabs, they said, OK, we'd better cut a deal, and they
did, they converted and they ended up playing their cards very well
and when those Central Asians came from Merv to take over Baghdad,
the Barmak family was among them and they'd-- they prospered. They were richer than Croesus, they
were the ones writing the checks for the poets, for the
philosophers, for the scientists, for the musicians and so forth. So then I want to stress that. That the-- not only were these
people not from the Arab world, even though they used the
Arabic language which was that-- which they by the way
greatly enriched and transformed into
a world language. Persian culture did this
to Arabic but beyond that, they brought something very distinct and gave a strongly
Central Asian cast to the entire caliphate that's never
really been adequately noticed. But let me move on from there. Why did this happen? What was going on? Why did this amazing explosion
of talent, of genius take place? It's worth asking, you know, did
something get into the water? Why did it happen? It doesn't, you know, this
is a sort of thing you asked about 5th century Athens, Periclean
Athens or Renaissance Florence or this is a real question. It demands a serious answer and
I think there is a serious answer and part of it is, that going
back to our friend al-Khwarizmi. Why was he so engaged on
this Indian numeral business? Because they were-- he
lived in Central Asia. They had direct and intimate
trading task with India. And this is where his idea of
astronomical tables came from, which he introduced, and
then others took it up. In other words, they had
that huge tie down to India. They had a tie to China, although
I think in the intellectual's fear, probably more goods went
from Central Asia to China than the other way around. They also have the direct link with
the Middle East and with Europe. They were the only ones in
direct touch with everyone. In other words, what we think
of as an isolated region today, landlocked, and all that, it-- its
significance then was precisely because of its centrality. They were trading with everyone. Now, trade requires skills. You need to-- you need a currency. They develop currencies,
they manage-- successfully managed currencies. A lot of countries
can't do that today. They also weren't managing
insurance and all kinds of-- all the, you know, bills of
lading, all of the stuff. They needed good mathematics
for this. As early as the sixth century, some
Century A.D., a Chinese traveler in Samarkand, then still called
Afrasiyab, Chinese traveler in Samarkand wrote in amazement
about kids in Samarkand that they, you know, these eight-year-olds
all knew mathematics. He said we don't have
anything like this. He was stunned at the level of
education, which was required to maintain trade, to do this--
to do this sophisticated trade. But, beyond that they
weren't just trading, they were also manufacturing. They were-- there's a
big technology society. So, you have things like crucible
steel and technologies like paper. Chinese technically invented it, but the Central Asians reinvented
it using cotton fiber instead of bamboo and mulberry leaves. They became big manufacturers. They were the biggest
manufacturers of cloth in the world. It's an amazing amount of
protection was going on. So they, thinkers whom I'm
writing about were living in very sophisticated society. Their cities were enormous. Merv in the 13th Century was far
the biggest city in the world. And others were right behind them. Cities that we don't even think
of today, Balkh in Afghanistan for example, Iraq was
big at one point. They all were. But beyond that, these were
very sophisticated cities. They had well-heated houses, underfloor thermal heating,
you can't beat that. They had air-conditioning that
was invented on the line between-- on the border between
Afghanistan and Easter Iran. This air-conditioning system worked
by having a deep hole in the ground and then a tower up above which
would suck the cool air up and cooled the whole structure. They lived well in other words. Running water everywhere, very
sophisticated hydraulic systems, which is why al-Khwarizmi
was so focused on his-- on his-- on his Algebra. He needed to come up with simple
systems for measuring how much water to move from this field
to this filed. It came out of life in other words. It didn't-- it's not just because this happened
to be some smart people. So, what I want to say then
is that is this occurred because they were linked
in, they weren't isolated. This was an amazing
achievement all and all. Was this a Muslim Renaissance? In one sense, it certainly was. In other sense is it was a much
broader kind of Renaissance because as I indicated, you
had every kind of faith, and you have every
degree of skepticism. One of the figures that I could pass
on is a great is the greatest mind between classical antiquity
and the Renaissance is Biruni. Biruni is from what is
now Western Uzbekistan, not far from Khwarizmi by the way. Biruni was rather skeptical
guy in his-- in his views. He was-- he said the right things but he never let any religious
dogma stand in the way of the conclusion to reason. It's very interesting
figure that way. On the contrary his close
contemporary and rival was Ibn Sina, Avicenna, the father of medicine. And so, well, Avicenna
was a very pious guy but of a rather descendent kind. He was although not formally
in terms of membership cards, he was closest to the Shia. And among the Shia he was
closest to the Ismailis. And his writings on medicine,
he considered kind of secondary. His real work was in
theology, very interesting. OK. That's Ibn Sina. Well, if you -- Avicenna. Where did Avicenna get his work? Well, one that he-- one of his
great sources was a guy named Razi. And Razi is a-- we would
call him an Iranian today. He's from Rasht which is now in
the suburbs of the ruins of it or in the sub-- eastern
suburbs of Tehran. But Razi, I claim emphatically
for Central Asia for two reasons, his entire education
was in Central Asia and all his students
were Central Asia. But Razi wrote an immense
compendium of medicine, much bigger than Avicenna's. Avi-- you know, Razi was so big,
you couldn't carry it around. And Avicenna distilled it
to the manageable length and that's why it helps account for
the extraordinary popularity that, you know, every med-- western
medical school, that was their text down to the 17th Century,
Avicenna's. But Razi, why do I mention him? And well, because he-- religiously,
he was a skeptics skeptic. I mean, typical Raziism. He was writing about
prophets, P-R-O-P-H-E-T-S. He was writing about prophets and
he said, you know, very strange, each religion seems to
have its own prophet and they don't agree
with each other. Now, what's going on here? Is God sending contradictory
messages? Or is there-- well,
he was a religiously-- to say skeptic is the
mildest that could be setup. And there were others who
were out, not atheist. My point is there was-- this
was a world of rich diversity, extraordinary rich diversity of
thought and just as it was of trade and contact and stimuli coming
from every which direction. So, it does raises the question,
whatever happened to it. You know, was it killed off? Since we have two distinguished
guest from Mongolia here, you know, you got blamed for this
often, but it's not fair because the intellectual burst
had ended century before the Mongol Invasion. Was it economic? Well, yes, it was, because
once the continental trade wane because of high tariffs and
low security, the rich stimuli from every direction declined. That helped. But what really did
it was intellectual. It was-- there was an intellectual
change and that was a kind of war against the intellect. A war against reason, a war
against logic, a war against science that was-- it had a history. It was launched by Abu
Hamid ibn Muhammad Ghazali, G-H-A-Z-A-L-I, mark the name. He was a brilliant man. He also came from the eastern
edge, what is now Iran. This is a region by the way which today is called Khorasan
which refers to sunrise. But traditional Khorasan included
all of what is now Turkmenistan, went all the way big chunk of
western Afghanistan as well, practically the Uzbekistan. He was -- Ghazali was a typical
son of this bigger Khorasan. He launched an attack against
reason, against science, against the intellect in the name of
not of just the faith but of dogma. If-- of-- in the name of textualism. If there-- if it is not in the
Quran, if it's not in the sayings of the prophet, it's not valid. And you can find there answers
to all life's questions. You don't need to go in
this other route of reason, logic, science and so forth. Well, this was one guy
make launching this attack, but he wrote it in a very acerbic
and clever book and he preached it from the-- from nearly, we would
call it university that was founded. It was the first-- it was
a system and that was setup and he buy the caliph in Baghdad
initially and he was the head of this system and lectured and he was very effective
of the lecture, imagine. And, you know, thousand
years ago a guy lecturing 400 to 500 people as he
did almost daily. He created an environment in which
thinking and use of reason, logic, science and so on, the entire
enterprise became suspect. That-- there was no outright ban,
but anyone engaging in those things after Ghazali was telling
he was getting on the edge of very dangerous territory
and people stopped. And it took a long time
before a serious re-battle, rejoinder to Ghazali came
from within the Muslim world. It did come, let it be said. This is very much debated today. These are very live
issues as you can imagine. It couldn't be more live, but they
were live in 1100 AD when this-- when this great flourishing
this effervescence of culture began to wane. Well, let me close with this,
but say one obvious point that has occurred to
every one of you as you're sitting there
and listening. And that is, everything I've talked about has tremendous
resonance today. These are new countries. They are inheritors of
unbelievably rich tradition with which some are acquainted, but
by no means the whole population. Much of this has been
lost or forgotten. They are rediscovering,
reclaiming this history, not inventing a history
but reclaiming it. And the degree to which this happens
in all its richness, complexity, diversity, openness to the world,
the degree to which that succeeds, you could say that's the degree to which this greater Central
Asia region will flourish today. If they close down their
consciousness, their minds, their memories to all these,
there'll just be a bunch of not very large countries and
remote part of the world that fall under the influence,
control and sway of others. So, there's a lot at stake, a
lot in the region realize this. And I think anyone
reports to have an interest in this larger Persianate and Turkic
world, you really have to know about this lost era,
because it is what? Defined this zone of culture
at its most glorious moment. [ Applause ] Now, you do have-- >> Hirad Dinavari:
Thank you very much. Folks, the books are
available but I would like to give you chance
to ask some questions. Anyone? I will take
about four questions? Let me head. Go ahead. Any questions? I'm all ears. No questions. OK. Go ahead, Jill. >> Jill: I'm just wondering kind of
putting things in a content to be of any of these [inaudible]. >> Fred Starr: Oh yes. Very def-- I mean on the-- [ Inaudible Remark ] The question is, did--
did these stars and I assume you meant not just
the poets, but in general these, did they leave a legacy in terms
of schools following and so forth? Yes, they did, because this
was a highly literate culture. When Avicenna, Ibn Sina was a
kid, he used to go to book stalls in Samarkand and Bukhara and he describes what he
bought there and the prices. They were cheap and available. And then later, he-- as a
young guy who'd read any-- every book going on
medicine, the leader of-- the prince of the Samanids
got ill, and everyone-- all the orthodox doctors failed and so they called this young
teenager and, can you do anything? He cured the guy. The result was, that he-- the king
asked him, "What would you like? Name it." And he said, "I'd
like access to your library." And he describes his library
which is phenomenal, you know, rooms devoted to each
subject and so on. In other words, the book which you-- to which this institution is
dedicated became the vehicle for a memory for schools, for
successors not just there, but vary from China,
India, all the way-- all the way to the west of Europe. So, it was the written word. And by the way, there, we think
of, you know, of talking a lot about the influences
of big culture zones, China particularly India and so on. The Central Asians defined
during this crucial millennium, the cultural and intellectual
life of many of the great powers around them. So, yes, they all had
followers and people knew. Today you can go to India and
there they have what they call Greek medicine. It's a whole, whole school
of medicine with hospitals and training schools and so on. What is it? It's the followers of Avicenna. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you. Go ahead, Dr. Rose
[assumed spelling]. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Fred Starr: Yeah. [ Inaudible Remark ] Let me-- it's a very important point that the Ghazali's
contributions writing about faith. They were sufficient. Thomas Aquinas revered
Ghazali's writings on faith. And throughout the Christian
world, throughout the Jewish world, not to mention the Muslim world, his writings on faith
are rightly respected and regarded very highly today. However, that's an older Ghazali. Ghazali that I'm talking about
was the young full of himself, just 10-yeared professor,
if you will, who gave the great popular
lecture who really thrived on giving the intellectual
champs of his day a little hell. And eventually, what happened
to him is that the caliph who had supported him falls and
he loses his support system. And lacking in supports, he's
literally out of the job. He ends up then putting on a
Soviet wool overcoat and hiking off to the Middle East where he
spent the rest of his life. Now, at that phase of
his life, you know, after he'd done all this damage,
is when he wrote about faith. And it is those writings to which
you refer ended as those writings which weren't his very,
very high noble name in all three religions of the book. [ Inaudible Remark ] Yeah. He lost his patronage but
he is very blunt about it himself. He had what we would call
a nervous breakdown, right? It's totally clear. I mean he describes all of the
sentence you give him, Danny, any psychiatrist and medical person,
you say, I had a nervous breakdown. I did that by the way. I gave it to-- >> Hirad Dinavari: Nick and
then the young lady over there. Yeah. OK. All right, I have
two questions, but-- go ahead. >> Fred Starr: And one there. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Hirad Dinavari: We can't hear you
Nick, could you-- we can't hear you. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Fred Starr: Well,
state it more broadly, to what extent does should
history inform policy. >> Nick: Rick. >> Fred Starr: And it's
an important question. You know that he is in response if you don't know history
or bound to repeat it. And I think that's more or less
true, but in this case, you know, if you approach not a country by the
whole group of countries as somehow, you know, newly independent states
as the state departments' term was. Well, you know that's that
happens to be clinically true. It misses about nine tenths
of what you should be getting. I don't think the policies
of any external countries. I have been designed and executed
with any depth of knowledge of the people they're dealing with. The Russians by the
way and Soviet times, I have to say there were wonderful
scholars working in the USSR, a high percentage of
them being Jewish. People who probably
found in this the world of scholarship sort of safe island. They did absolutely great research,
not on the philosophical level but in getting the text figuring
out what happen, the archaeology. I respect these people very highly
that tradition is unfortunately, I wouldn't say vanish but
gravely weakened today. >> Hirad Dinavari: I have two
questions, you young lady up there, you and this gentleman here. And then we need to go for the books
and you could ask him questions as you're getting your book. And then he can sign it
and answer your question. Go ahead. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Fred Starr: I think
your-- that's-- the question if you didn't
hear was what are the-- what's the evidence for your claim that this history is
being rediscovered? It's a good question. And it is asked by someone
who spent time in Balkh and that Northern Afghanistan. Here I would say this that every new
country creates or finds a history. You know, Uzbekistan for
example seized on Tamerlane, not my idea of a great
humanitarian, but he did do some-- patronize some very
serious cultural activity. It must be sad. And his successors really did. The Kargas focused on manas. This was president [inaudible]
discovery, a body of oral poetry that it come down to them
and much debated as to which historical origins, but
this became the defining text for this new country. And this is more or less
what happens everywhere. But what happened in
the second wave, they focus on themselves
in a very narrow sense. I am Uzbek, I am Tajik, I'm not
Uzbek, I'm a Turkmen, I'm not Tajik. I'm [inaudible], I'm not--
everyone was defining himself against a neighbor. This is a sort-- this is running
the flag up of certain identity. And so, that has been successful. None of these countries
has collapse, disappeared. They are functioning states
and various degrees of success and wealth, but that's--
they are there. And as they enter a new
generation, you have everywhere, people saying why what
are-- where is it? From Azerbaijan. [ Inaudible Remark ] Oh you're way out in the corner. But you-- you put this so
well in an event last evening. Why don't you just repeat it? >> That's why he's
sitting back there. [ Laughter ] [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Fred Starr: His argument
was that separately, these countries have
a very difficult time. They don't have the resources
just-- sure, size, they-- but together it's one plus one
plus one plus one equals eight and this is being discovered
everywhere. We have in the room today
Roosevelt fellows there. They're guest in our Central
Asia Caucasus Institute from all over the region. And you can see in the
last decade a steady growth of the interest in our neighbor. As you become more comfortable in
yourself, you're going to survive as a state, you can
start looking around, and at that the leadership level. Let me just report
to you since you ask for concrete examples
perfectly closes that I can count the
ball is this story. I'll give you two. One is the-- that the president
of Uzbekistan is Karimov, a couple of years ago
held a conference that was on exactly what I was
talking about today. It was held in Samarkand. He had hundreds of people
there from 40 countries. They were learned scholars,
political people, you name it, a whole
diplomatic core. Fifteen years before that,
he or any other leader of the region would have
been talking about the guy from his country as ours. In other words, he
would have referred to our Bin-Sina or our Biruni. At this conference, everyone who is
referring to our in the big sense and they don't-- they were
all going out of their way to say, our common heritage. Second example, if you go to
downtown, Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, you know, this is--
this is a complex society, Turkmenistan and-- and it's not
well known what they're doing today. But there is a park right downtown. And the president, Berdimuhamedow
took two city blocks, combined them, tore down all the buildings and then
built a beautiful-- brought in-- built a beautiful marble
water course down the middle. Then they planted beautiful
trees on each side, very big, it must have been very
expensive moving such big tree. And then between the trees and the
watercourse on both sides where all, everyone that I've mentioned
today, plus a lot of others, and they're all four
meter high statues and I was there and
I was shown this. And after seeing it,
I have an opportunity to speak with the president. I said this is-- this is wonderful. And then-- and rather
impolite question, I said, you do realize these
aren't all Turkmen. And he looked at me an smiled,
of course, we know that. But they are our common heritage. That phrase you will
hear everywhere. That's why, Ashraf Ghani is on it. That's why the former head of
the governor of the national bank of Kazakhstan has been busy
arranging the translation of this book into Kazakh. This is why everywhere,
they're looking for who we are. Now, we in a big sense. So they're living, they're
beginning, just the beginning, they're beginning to live
what you just referred to. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Hirad Dinavari: OK. Really we don't have that much time,
we have to do the book signing. I ask that the last
question be asked in person, but I also want to thank Dr. Starr. This was a fantastic talk. Thank you very much. And I would just say that
essentially shared culture and shared heritage is really what
brings all these together, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and this whole
region, you see a synthesis and this book captures
that high grade and that synthesis
beautiful, I think. Thank you every one. Books are right back there. Thank you Dr. Starr. >> Speaker 1: This has been
a presentation of the Library of Congress, visit us at loc.gov.
