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What is beyond the river? Power, authority, and social order in Transoxania, 18th-19th centuries

The publication under review is a groundbreaking contribution to the study of the social history of early modern Central Asia. Andreas Wilde’s What is Beyond the River? undertakes an examination of the dynamics of power relations in the territory of Transoxiana (Ma wara al-nahr) from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, covering the era of the decline and fall of the Chinggisid Tuqay-Timurid dynasty, the rise of the Manghit dynasty of Bukhara, and the later history of Bukhara as a protectorate under Russian colonial suzerainty. Building on pioneering studies of the social history of Iran and Central Asia in earlier periods by scholars including Roy Mottahedeh (2001) and Jürgen Paul (1996), as well as Anke von Kügelgen’s (2002) study of early Manghit historiography, Wilde’s study seeks to decentre the court as the primary object of analysis and instead to examine matters of power and authority within a broader constellation of actors and institutions in Central Asian society. Wilde grounds his study in the self-devised conceptual framework of ‘social order’, which he defines as