Book Details

First Sentence

"The process of Islamization in Central Asia, and in Inner Asia in general, has never been thoroughly examined with serious attention to even the already available written sources; it has become commonplace for historians to speak rather vaguely about the process as if it were a virtual physical phenomenon of penetration or osmosis, or something akin to the "spread" of a contagion or the "propagation" of an organism, and as if the eminently human and social undertaking of adopting Islam, even if only nominally, or of transmitting the pattern of beliefs, words, and behavior distinctive to Islam were somehow outside the scope of legitimate historical inquiry."