Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia by Rafis Abazov | 9781403975416 | Get Textbooks | New Textbooks | Used Textbooks

From the Silk Road to the Great Game, Central Asia has long been a region of great strategic, political, and economic importance. Currently the home of large oil reserves, Islamic terrorists, and new democracies, Central Asia is of growing visibility to Americans. In this atlas, Rafis Abazov provides 50 two-color maps, each accompanied by a facing page of explanatory text, that graphically illuminate the region's history tracing back to the 8th-7th centuries B.C. From the spread of Islam to the invasion of the Mongols, the area has been at the crossroads of some of the world's most important developments, all succinctly explained in this book. Students will regard it as a useful reference, and general readers will value it for its clarity and wealth of information.

		Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia by Rafis Abazov ISBN-10: 9781403975416 ISBN-10: 1-4039-7541-8 ISBN-13: 9781403975416 ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-7541-6 Hardcover 2008-01-15 Palgrave Macmillan Find Lowest Price
Editorials

Product Description From the Silk Road to the Great Game, Central Asia has long been a region of great strategic, political, and economic importance. Currently the home of large oil reserves, Islamic terrorists, and new democracies, Central Asia is of growing visibility to Americans. In this atlas, Rafis Abazov provides 50 two-color maps, each accompanied by a facing page of explanatory text, that graphically illuminate the region's history tracing back to the 8th-7th centuries B.C. From the spread of Islam to the invasion of the Mongols, the area has been at the crossroads of some of the world's most important developments, all succinctly explained in this book. Students will regard it as a useful reference, and general readers will value it for its clarity and wealth of information.
Reviews

Great concept, duff execution This atlas, still the only one of its kind for a reasonable price, shares much of its format with the late lamented Colin McEvedy's fixed base map with facing text. That's where the problems start. Inexplicably, the maps themselves cover only about 2/3 the page - just a little more than the area of the light band on the cover - with the rest being white space. Moreover, the map legend is inside this area. But that's not all. The map extends practically all the way to Moscow and inner Siberia to the north. The western shore of the Caspian is included. Yet to the south the map stops just into Khorasan, including about half Afghanistan. Half Taklamakan is in. Because literally nothing happens in the northern third and western tenth of the map until the 19th century - and the focus is not on it even then except as 'the place Russians come from' - the action is squeezed into an area of about 13 x 8 cm. Not surprisingly, this really tells in the lack of detail and a feeling you are looking at a wedding picture with the photographer's elbow jogged. Either the central area should have been greatly enlarged, or the map should have been extended out to, say, Dunhuang, Seistan and northern India, since that's where the settled empires were, where Central Asians sought wealth and power, and wherefrom new cultural trends entered the area. The text itself is serviceable but, early on, too concerned with events well outside the map area, like Roman-Persian frontier wars.
Must Have Resource for Central Asia Studies I've always been a big proponent of the idea that if you want to get to know a region of the world in good order and with a solid understanding, you need to know the history and geography in full context with each other. In that light, and in my current zeal to better understand the nations of Central Asia (the "Stans), I picked up the "Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia (Historical Atlas)", by Rafis Abasov. Wow, this book delivered. It laid out the full history of the region along with a map of each successive era. With this book I developed a good knowledge of the constant affects of the power moving through and influencing the region - the Greeks, the Mongols, the British, and the Russian - and so on. It also gave good context of each of the nations as they exist today, along with population and economic descriptions. This is a good resource to have in your library if you are at all interested in the region. It also gave me the impetus to purchase other Palgrave Historical Atlases
Very difficult to find similar literature in Central Asian history I would recommend to buy this atlas because (1) here you can find a lot of information about the history and current development of each Central Asian country starting from ancient period, (2) information was obtained from different alternative sources and consolidated together, (3) graphic materials such as historical and geographical maps help to get a quick idea about the region, (4) it is very difficult to find the book on Central Asian history as balanced as this one. The fact is that it is very difficult to find objective information regarding the history of Central Asia. Since Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan got their independence from the USSR, each country started rewriting its history trying to magnify its own position as well as distorting or concealing some facts that might show the country in a negative manner. Central Asian scientists primarily focus on the history of their own countries, and still cannot get to consensus and create united historical textbook. I think the atlas would be better if it has more colored pictures.
A mediocre attempt but useful since there isnt much choice I bought this book because a brilliant atlas on Central Asia by Yuri Bregel was not available. Besides it was 10 times more expensive. This book is a lame attempt by Rafis to illustrate the history of central asian landscape. The choice of colors is so pathetic even a high school art student can do better. The little factoids (I haven't checked for veracity) on the left hand side is useful and informative alongside the maps on the right side. The publishers did not do a good job and should have hired a competent illustrator who could use all the colors at his disposal to come up with some brilliant and more descriptive maps from the ancient scythian era to the modern times. The ancient scythian and early hunnic and turkic eras have not been given their fair share of coverage and the atlas is biased towards later turkic, czarist, soviet and modern era. Perhaps due to authors' personal bias in favor of his own heritage etc. But since there is no other atlas apart from this one and the one by Bregel on Central Asia and the 6 stans, it wasnt a total waste of money. I have therefore assigned it 3 stars.
Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia The publication is very useful for every one who studies Central Asian history andCulture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics (Culture and Customs of Asia) internaitonal relations.