TURAN BEYOND THE AMU DARYA: AVESTAN TŪIRYA- AND THE PERSISTENCE OF A LATER GEOGRAPHICAL MODEL IN CENTRAL ASIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47526/3007-6366.6535Keywords:
Turan, tūirya-, Avesta, Avestan geography, Central Asia, historiography, historical memory, Iran, ethnogenesis, territorialization of the pastAbstract
This article examines the persistence of the idea of ancient Turan as a geographically defined space in Central Asia north of the Amu Darya and its association with the Avestan ethnonym tūirya-. It analyzes works by scholars from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan from the late twentieth to the first quarter of the twenty-first century, in which Turan is retrospectively projected back into the Avestan period and linked to an opposition between sedentary airya- and nomadic tūirya-. These interpretations are compared with the evidence of the Avesta, scholarship on Avestan geography, and studies of the formation of later Iranian historical tradition. The article argues that the Avesta provides no direct basis for locating tūirya- beyond the Amu Darya or for defining them as an exclusively nomadic and non-Zoroastrian group. The geographical model of Iran and Turan developed gradually and reflects the reworking of earlier material in Late Antique and medieval traditions. Particular attention is paid to the reasons for the persistence of the trans-Amu model in modern Central Asian historiography. These include historiographical inertia, the territorialization of the past, competition over historical heritage, the semantic flexibility of the concept of Turan, and the disciplinary gap between regional historical scholarship and specialized Iranian studies. This model requires further reconsideration.
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