The Social Network: The Local Experience of Empire(s) Across Ancient Afghanistan

IF 0.3 0 ASIAN STUDIES
Afghanistan Pub Date : 2023-10-01 DOI:10.3366/afg.2023.0111
Marco Ferrario
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article offers a comparative analysis of two corpora, the Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan and the Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria, to show how empires that attempted to rule over the territory of present-day Afghanistan (and beyond through Northeastern Central Asia), relied upon particular strategies of control and exploitation of people and natural resources. In particular, it highlights the crucial role of inter-aristocratic ties within the imperial administrative apparatus, which in turn offered local elites a valuable resource to exploit within the arena of local politics, sometimes even to the detriment of the empire itself. Against this backdrop, a dialectical relationship emerges between central and regional authorities. Understanding the social mechanisms of such a dialectic is crucial to make better sense of the reasons for the expansion, consolidation, and fall of empires, ancient and modern, in this region of Eurasia. Building on recent scholarship on both the Late Antique and the wider Early Medieval Iranicate world, this article seeks to show how a diachronically broad-ranging and boldly comparative methodology can substantially enrich our understanding of Eastern Iran and Central Asia under the Achaemenids, despite the challenging evidentiary record at hand.
社交网络:古阿富汗帝国的地方经验
本文对来自阿富汗北部的大夏文献和来自古大夏的阿拉姆文献这两个语料进行了比较分析,以展示那些试图统治今天阿富汗领土(以及中亚东北部以外的地区)的帝国是如何依靠特定的控制和开发人力和自然资源的策略的。特别是,它强调了帝国行政机构内部贵族间关系的关键作用,这反过来又为地方精英提供了在地方政治舞台上利用的宝贵资源,有时甚至会损害帝国本身。在这种背景下,中央与地方之间的辩证关系出现了。理解这种辩证法的社会机制对于更好地理解欧亚大陆古代和现代帝国的扩张、巩固和衰落的原因至关重要。本文以古代晚期和中世纪早期伊朗世界的最新学术研究为基础,试图展示一种历时广泛、大胆的比较方法如何能够极大地丰富我们对阿契美尼德统治下的伊朗东部和中亚的理解,尽管现有的证据记录具有挑战性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Afghanistan
Afghanistan ASIAN STUDIES-
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
0.00%
发文量
16
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