The conference will cover travel costs to and from Bloomington, Indiana
(including accommodation in Bloomington for the duration of the conference),
and publication of the papers will be undertaken by the Research Institute
for Inner Asian Studies.

Scholars working on relevant fields are invited to submit a preliminary
proposal (up to 300 words) and a CV to Christopher Atwood
([email protected]) or Ron Sela ([email protected]) by March 15, 2004.
Unfortunately, limitations in funding may mean that not all interested
scholars can be invited; participants will be selected with an eye to
covering the main type of texts, achieving a balanced diversity of
disciplinary approaches, and attaining the highest possible level of
scholarly distinction.

The language of the Conference is English.

Please note that funding for the conference is still pending.

The conference prospectus:

Legends of Sovereignty, Poems of Valor: A Workshop on Heroic Apocrypha in
the Turkic and Mongolian Chinggisid and Timurid Traditions

Organized by Christopher Atwood and Ron Sela

In recent decades, the field of Inner Asian history has made great strides
in the recovery and study of the relatively more reliable sources on the
great conquerors of the steppe, especially Chinggis Khan and Timur. The
Secret History of the Mongols, the "Veritable Records" materials preserved
in Rashid al-Din and the Shengwu qinzheng lu, or the Zafarnama on Timur,
have been mined as sources for history and their weaknesses and strengths as
sources noted.

Yet the great bodies of sixteenth-nineteenth century apocrypha on Chinggis
Khan, Timur, Babur and other figures of the steppe's "heroic age" have as a
result been set aside as historically unreliable and not yet received due
attention as historical and literary monuments reflecting the religious,
literary, and political issues in post-Chinggisid, post-Timurid Turco-
Mongolian societies. Yet such heroic apocrypha formed one of the major
genres of literature in Central Asia and Mongolia up through the nineteenth
century and powerfully influenced historical writing in surrounding cultures
both Islamic and Buddhist: Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran, Mughal India, Tibet
under the Dalai Lamas, and the Manchu Qing empire.

Examples for such apocrypha in the Turkic-Persian tradition include quasi-
biographies such as the Kunuz al-a'zam (in Persian) or the Dastan-i Amir
Timur (in Chaghatay), the various renditions of the Timur-nama (under the
titles Tarikh-i Timuri, Tarikh-i sahibqiran, etc.), Timur's false
autobiographies in India, sayings attributed to Timur, the Chinggis-nama
traditions, the nineteenth-century Majma' al-tavarikh, and related works.
Related materials include the epic legends of Edigu and Toqtamish among the
Nogays and other steppe Turkic peoples. In the Mongolian tradition we find
the Cinggis Qaghan-u altan tobci, which was later incorporated into
Lubsang-Danzin's Altan tobci, Saghang Sechen's Erdeni-yin tobci, and other
chronicles, tales of the three hundred Tayichi'ud or of Chinggis Khan's two
steeds, biligs (wise sayings) ascribed to Chinggis Khan, the Chaghan teuke,
a sixteenth-century Buddhist-Chinggisid utopia ascribed to Qubilai Khan, and
the Oyun tulkigur ("Turquoise Key"), a collection of aphorisms ascribed to
Chinggis Khan. Related to these works are the apocryphal material on the
early Oirat vs. Mongol wars, with their themes of conflict between marriage
and blood, the pro- and anti-Qasarid traditions, the Eight White Yurts of
Chinggis Khan, and so on.

The aim of the workshop is to begin the study of these apocryphal literary
genres not as more or less defective sources on the "real" Chinggis or the
"real" Timur but as vital reflections of the social and intellectual
cross-currents in post-Chinggis Inner Asia, where non-Chinggisid forces,
such as the Oirats, Nogays, and oasis Central Asia's tribal dynasties were
challenging Chinggisid dynasties such as the Crimean Giray family, the
Ashtarkhanids and the Dayan Khanids. Religious studies, historical context,
anthropological insights, and comparative literature all have a role to play
in the fruitful study of these materials. In addition we hope the workshop
will break down the academic barriers that divide the study of the Turko-
Islamic world and the Mongolo-Buddhist world. Participants, by being
introduced to material from both sides of the divide between the two great
Inner Asian and Altaic worlds, will break down the barriers erected by
sectarian polemic, and the Russian and Qing dynasty conquests. Constantly
rewritten, these apocryphal tales and poems are part of the legacy of Inner
Asia that planted the seeds for future developments in the region.

In an effort to bridge the gap between the hitherto unconnected worlds of
Central Asian and Mongolian literary-intellectual history, the organizers
hope to address the issues raised by these apocrypha in interdisciplinary
fashion.

Questions that might be addressed include (but are not limited to) the
following:

I.
How many distinct traditions of legendary materials on Timur and Chinggis
Khan can be identified? What was their original prosodic and narrative form?
How do the poetic forms relate to prestigious non-Altaic (Arab, Persian,
Tibetan) poetic genres? When were differing strands of these traditions cut
and pasted into the extant works? And how did these legendary materials
interact with the older historical sources, such as the Secret History of
the Mongols, Rashid al-Din, the Zafarnama, and so on. Did legendary material
replace the older historical sources? Were they read side by side? Or were
they read by different communities within their respective societies? Here
literary and source critical approaches will be vital.

II.
What is the original context of these legendary materials? Who was their
original audience and what was their original didactic purpose (if any)? Who
sponsored Chinggisid and Timurid apocrypha? To whom were they dedicated?
What is the connection between patrons and writers, and how much of the
content is a compromise between them? What was their connection to religious
circles, cults, and communities such as the cult of Chinggis Khan, Buddhist
monks, Sufi lineages, and bearers of the 'Alid charisma? How do they
illustrate integration and/or conflict of lineage and marital loyalty? What
literary and ideological links exist between these apocryphal writings and
Sufi hagiographies, the genre of Kisas al-anbiya (stories of the Prophets),
and Tibetan Buddhist rewritings of "priest-patron" interactions? What
characteristic forms of prophecy, dream sequences, symbols, miraculous
contests, and attributes are at play here? Here social-historical,
anthropological, and religious approaches will shed light.

III.
How does post-Chinggis apocrypha address the problems associated with the
break-down of the Chinggisid consensus and the rise of commoner (qarachu)
dynasties: the Barulas Timurids, the Nogay (Manghit) in the Pontic steppe,
the tribal dynasties of Central Asia (the Manghits in Bukhara, the Mings in
Qoqand, and the the Qongrats in Khorezm), the Oirats, and the Qasarid and
Belguteid princes of the eastern Inner Mongolian Three Guards, etc. Is their
common material between Turkic and Mongolian materials? Is there a common
ethic in the didactic material? If the traditions are independent, what do
they tell us about differing Turkic and Mongolian appropriations of the
Chinggisid legacy? If they have common tropes, can this fact help us break
down the post-sixteenth century literary and religious barriers that
separated the cultural life of Islamic and Buddhist Inner Asia? How does the
writing of apocryphal tales change in the eighteenth century? To what degree
did this apocryphal literature motivate or reflect resistance to Manchu and
Russian imperialism from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries (examples
might include Saghang Sechen's treatment of the Manchu conquest or the
Ghazavat-namas in Xinjiang in the late 18th and 19th century)? How is this
apocryphal literature received in Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran, Mughal
India, dGe-lugs-pa Tibet, and the Manchu empire? Here analysis of historical
events and political ideologies will be particularly welcome.

The organizers envision a workshop of about 15 invited scholars presenting
papers, of whom about half are expected to be from outside the United
States. The workshop will need to fund their air-fare and lodgings in
Bloomington. Other scholars from Indiana University and area schools will be
invited to participate as discussants. Participants will receive before the
workshop both the papers being presented as well as translations of
representative apocryphal literature (some already published and others
specially prepared for the workshop), and bibliographies. The workshop is
projected to last two days and is tentatively projected for October, 2005.
Publication of finished papers will be undertaken and financed by the
Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Top