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Exploring Terra Incognita: a reading on the pre-history of the Central Asian Studies
By Cengiz Sürücü
Abstract
In his “The Cambridge History of Inner Asia”, Denis Sinor, the dean of the Eurasian Studies in the English-speaking world, draws a thick, impenetrable boundary between the peoples of Central Eurasia and the “civilized world.” His notion of Inner Asia reflects more of a temporal and cultural distinctiveness than an analytically constructed geographical area. He invokes a veiled nevertheless omnipresent image of the Orient in his readers’ mind. That image is a shadowy, mysterious menace, a timeless and spaceless danger coming out of the mere existence of the Oriental. The ‘barbarian’ has always been envious of the peace, prosperity and tranquility of the ‘civilized’. The ultimate mission of history and of the historian is to uncover the eternal, incessant conflict between these two worlds; to awaken the ‘civilized world’ to the imminent threat posed by the ‘Oriental.’ Beyond the boundary of civilization lives a permanent danger, an outer darkness, an enigma threatening the very existence of the ‘civilized man’; ‘The foremost duty of the Civilized is the banishment of the Barbarian beyond the borders of the oikoumene, the prevention of further intrusions.’
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