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McDonald, Graeme

This thesis explores the agentive effects of the built environment in the formation and renegotiation of collective memory from the perspective of three historical consciousnesses in medieval Bukhara. Tarikh-i Bukhara, or The History of Bukhara, is a local history of the medieval city written and reworked in three phases. Originally penned in 943/4, then translated into Persian with emendations in 1128/9 and further emended in 1178/9, Tarikh-i Bukhara contains three layers of historical narrative produced within three distinct historical contexts. Within these layers, the built environment emerges as a hylonoetic force deeply implicated in the aggregation and renegotiation of collective memory and the evolution of group identity. Walls, citadels, mosques, and bricks afford Tarikh-i Bukhara the opportunity for creative retellings of an entangled history of nomads, divine favour, legendary heroes, and the rise and fall of dynasties in order to create for the present a sense of historical continuity through a series of sociocultural changes, and to materialize this history in everyday life for its readers.

Text

University of British Columbia. HIST_V 449

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0448873

Arts, Faculty of; History, Department of

Undergraduate

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