The World Historical Gazetteer (WHG) has published the Historical Gazetteer of Central Asia, a new resource composed of ten datasets. Because "Central Asia" has long had shifting and contested boundaries, the dataset publication illustrates how various primary and secondary sources have defined the region over time. It also includes a scholarly essay written by the WHG team in collaboration with Dr. James Pickett.
The project was completed with support from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) and managed by Jesse Obert, the World History Center Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital History, who also guided work by two undergraduate students who received training in spatial history methods, Louise Matthews and Lia Sheahan.
The WHG team added 363 new places to the WHG index to reflect Central Asia’s evolving geography, along with ten new datasets, which are listed below. Browse all WHG datasets here!
- Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire: Archaeology, Mobility, and Culture Contact (183 places) Places from Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire by William Honeychurch of archeological and historical significance for Bronze Age Eurasian Steppe peoples.
- Zimonyi Volga Bulgars (26 places) Places mentioned in István Zimonyi's book The Origins of the Volga Bulgars.
- David Christian's Inner Asia (1 place) Digitized from Christian, David. “Inner Eurasia as a Unit of World History.”
- UN Central Asia (5 places) The five countries that qualify as "Central Asian," according to data produced by the the United Nations Geospatial.
- Eurasia UNESCO World Heritage Sites (23 places) These sites span 6 countries of Northern and Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, and China.
- Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (18 places) the eighteen countries that make up the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, an agency within the US Department of State
- Ancient Greek Place Names for Central Asia (3 places) This dataset includes three regions in Central Asia that are defined by Ancient Greek primary sources.
- Map of Post-Soviet States (15 places) This dataset visualizes the countries that emerged after the end of the Soviet Union.
- Fadlan Journey (71 places) These are the places named in Ahmad Ibn Fadlan's 10th-century travel logs. He was a part of an embassy from the Abbasid Caliphate to the king of the Volga Bulgars.
- The Journey of Faxian to India (18 places) This dataset lists the places in the travel log of a 4th century CE Chinese Monk