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An 8th-century Tang dynasty Chinese clay figurine of a Sogdian man wearing a distinctive cap and face veil, possibly a Zoroastrian priest engaging in a ritual at a fire temple, since face veils were used to avoid contaminating the holy fire with breath or saliva.<br/><br/> Alternatively, from the posture, the figurine may represent a Sogdian camel rider on the Silk Road covering his mouth and nose against the sandstorms of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang.
Sri Dalada Maligawa or The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is located in the royal palace complex and houses the Relic of the tooth of Buddha. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country.<br/><br/> Kandy is Sri Lanka's second biggest city with a population of around 170,000 and is the cultural centre of the whole island. For about two centuries (until 1815) it was the capital of Sri Lanka.
Edward Bangs Drew (1843 - 1924) joined the Chinese Maritime Customs Service in 1864 after earning his BA degree from Harvard. In 1868, Drew was appointed a Commissioner of the Service, a position he held for decades.<br/><br/> During that time he collected photographs that document clothing, customs, and daily life in 19th century China, and of Drew's life and career, including family and social gatherings, public appearances, and events and ceremonies.
The Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of central Asia. It is presently restricted in the wild to remote regions of the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang.<br/><br/> There are a small number of wild Bactrian camels still roaming the Mangystau Province of South West Kazakhstan. It is one of the two surviving species of camel. The Bactrian camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped Dromedary camel.<br/><br/> Camels were widely used in the Silk Road trade across the deserts of Central Asia.
Japanese woodblock print showing an American man smoking a cigarette while on horseback.<br/><br/> Utagawa Yoshitora was a designer of <i>ukiyo-e</i> Japanese woodblock prints and an illustrator of books and newspapers who was active from about 1850 to about 1880. He was born in Edo (modern Tokyo), but neither his date of birth nor date of death is known. He was the oldest pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi who excelled in prints of warriors, kabuki actors, beautiful women, and foreigners (<i>Yokohama-e</i>).
Osrushana, also known as Istarawshan, Sudujshana, Usrushana, or Ustrushana, was a former Iranian region in Transoxiana. Osrushana lay to the south of the great, southernmost bend of the Syr Darya and extended roughly from Samarkand to Khujand.<br/><br/> The capital city of Osrushana was Banjikat.
Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.<br/><br/> Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.<br/><br/> Dracula has been assigned to many literary genres including vampire literature, horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, he defined its modern form, and the novel has spawned numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations.
The Bagh Caves are a group of nine rock-cut monuments, situated among the southern slopes of the Vindhya Range in Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh. They are believed to have been established by a Buddhist monk named Dataka sometime in the 4th to 6th century CE.<br/><br/> The caves are famed for the equisite paintings found in some of the caves. The paintings on the walls and ceilings of the viharas of Bagh were executed in tempera.
The kingdom of Champa (Campadesa or nagara Campa) Chăm Pa in Vietnamese, 占城 Chiêm Thành in Hán Việt and Zhàn chéng in Chinese records) was an Indianized kingdom that controlled much of southern and central Vietnam from approximately the 7th century through to 1832.<br/><br/> Champa reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries. Then began a gradual decline under pressure from Đại Việt, the Vietnamese polity centered in the region of modern Hanoi. In 1471, Viet troops sacked the northern Cham capital of Vijaya, and in 1697 the southern principality of Panduranga became a vassal of the Vietnamese emperor.<br/><br/> In 1832, the Vietnamese emperor Minh Mạng annexed the remaining Cham territories. Mỹ Sơn, a former religious center, and Hội An, one of Champa's main port cities, are now UNESCO World Heritage sites.
This bas-relief was excavated in northern Syria at the site of Tell Halaf, the capital of a small independent city-state known as Guzana, which was conquered by the Assyrians in the late 9th century BC.<br/><br/> More than two hundred such stone reliefs (styled orthostats) decorated the façade of a temple-palace built in the 10th century BCE by a local ruler named Kapara. He reused the blocks from one or more pre-existing structures and carved an inscription in cuneiform on each one statings, 'Palace of Kapara, son of Hadianu'. The blocks were placed so that limestone ones painted red alternated with others of black basalt.<br/><br/> In this image, a rider sits atop the hump of a dromedary camel, driving it on with a staff. Crossed leather or cloth bands fasten the saddle to the animal. The image represents an Arab caravan trader. The domestication of dromedaries shortly before the beginning of the first millenium BCE made the caravan trade possible. This relief from Tell Halaf may be the earliest representation of such a dromedary rider.
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama (Persian: شاهنامه Šāhnāmeh, 'The Book of Kings') is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Iran and related Perso-Iranian cultures. Consisting of some 60,000 verses, the Shahnameh tells the mythical and to some extent the historical past of Greater Iran from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century.<br/><br/> The work is of central importance in Persian culture, regarded as a literary masterpiece, and definitive of ethno-national cultural identity of Iran. It is also important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of the religion with the death of the last Zoroastrian ruler of Persia during the Muslim conquest.
The Afrasiab painting is a rare example of Sogdian art. It was discovered in 1965 when the local authorities decided on the construction of a road through the middle of Afrāsiāb mound, the old site of pre-Mongol Samarkand. It is now preserved in a special museum on the Afrāsiāb mound. It is the main painting we have of ancient Sogdian art.<br/><br/> The painting dates back to the middle of the 7th century CE. On the four walls of the room of a private house, three or four different countries neighbouring Central Asia are depicted. On the northern wall China (a Chinese festival, with the Empress on a boat, and the Emperor hunting), on the Southern Wall Samarkand (the Iranian world: a religious funerary procession in honor of the ancestors during the Nowruz festival), on the eastern wall India (as the land of the astrologers and of the pygmies, but the painting is much destroyed there).<br/><br/> The topic on the main wall, the western wall facing the entrance is debated between specialists. Turkish soldiers are escorting ambassadors coming from various countries of the world (Korea, China, Iranian principalities, etc). There are three main hypotheses. The leading expert on Sogdian painting, the excavator of Panjikent, B. Marshak points out that Sogdian painting, gods are always depicted on the top of the main wall. However, as the Turks are guiding the embassies but are not themselves ambassadors, it has been suggested also that the Turkish Qaghan, then lord of inner and central Asia, might be depicted there.<br/><br/> A Chinese text states that the 'Four Lords of the World', here China, India, Iran and Turan, are depicted on the walls of palaces near Samarkand precisely during this period, and this would perfectly fit the four walls of this room. The last hypothesis makes use of an inscription mentioning the king of Samarkand to propose the idea that the ambassadors are presenting their gifts to him.
The Tacuinum (sometimes Taccuinum) Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on health and wellbeing, based on the Taqwim al‑sihha تقويم الصحة ('Maintenance of Health'), an eleventh-century Arab medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad.<br/><br/> Ibn Butlân was a Christian physician born in Baghdad and who died in 1068. He sets forth the six elements necessary to maintain daily health: food and drink, air and the environment, activity and rest, sleep and wakefulness, secretions and excretions of humours, changes or states of mind (happiness, anger, shame, etc). According to Ibn Butlân, illnesses are the result of changes in the balance of some of these elements, therefore he recommended a life in harmony with nature in order to maintain or recover one’s health.<br/><br/> Ibn Butlân also teaches us to enjoy each season of the year, the consequences of each type of climate, wind and snow. He points out the importance of spiritual wellbeing and mentions, for example, the benefits of listening to music, dancing or having a pleasant conversation.<br/><br/> Aimed at a cultured lay audience, the text exists in several variant Latin versions, the manuscripts of which are characteristically profusely illustrated. The short paragraphs of the treatise were freely translated into Latin in mid-thirteenth-century Palermo or Naples, continuing an Italo-Norman tradition as one of the prime sites for peaceable inter-cultural contact between the Islamic and European worlds.<br/><br/> Four handsomely illustrated complete late fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Taccuinum, all produced in Lombardy, survive, in Vienna, Paris, Liège and Rome, as well as scattered illustrations from others, as well as fifteenth-century codices.
The Tacuinum (sometimes Taccuinum) Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on health and wellbeing, based on the Taqwim al‑sihha تقويم الصحة ('Maintenance of Health'), an eleventh-century Arab medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad.<br/><br/> Ibn Butlân was a Christian physician born in Baghdad and who died in 1068. He sets forth the six elements necessary to maintain daily health: food and drink, air and the environment, activity and rest, sleep and wakefulness, secretions and excretions of humours, changes or states of mind (happiness, anger, shame, etc). According to Ibn Butlân, illnesses are the result of changes in the balance of some of these elements, therefore he recommended a life in harmony with nature in order to maintain or recover one’s health.<br/><br/> Ibn Butlân also teaches us to enjoy each season of the year, the consequences of each type of climate, wind and snow. He points out the importance of spiritual wellbeing and mentions, for example, the benefits of listening to music, dancing or having a pleasant conversation.<br/><br/> Aimed at a cultured lay audience, the text exists in several variant Latin versions, the manuscripts of which are characteristically profusely illustrated. The short paragraphs of the treatise were freely translated into Latin in mid-thirteenth-century Palermo or Naples, continuing an Italo-Norman tradition as one of the prime sites for peaceable inter-cultural contact between the Islamic and European worlds.<br/><br/> Four handsomely illustrated complete late fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Taccuinum, all produced in Lombardy, survive, in Vienna, Paris, Liège and Rome, as well as scattered illustrations from others, as well as fifteenth-century codices.
The Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of central Asia. It is presently restricted in the wild to remote regions of the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang.<br/><br/> There are a small number of wild Bactrian camels still roaming the Mangystau Province of South West Kazakhstan. It is one of the two surviving species of camel. The Bactrian camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped Dromedary camel.<br/><br/> Camels were widely used in the Silk Road trade across the deserts of Central Asia.
The Second Indochina War, known in America as the Vietnam War, was a Cold War era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the U.S. and other anti-communist nations. The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and part of their wider strategy of containment.<br/><br/> The North Vietnamese government viewed the war as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. U.S. military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive.<br/><br/> U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the US-Vietnam War.
Two small settlements of Kirghiz (Kyrgyz or Kirgiz) nomads lie by the side of Lake Karakul high up in the Pamir Mountains. Visitors can stay overnight in one of their mobile homes or yurts – Kirghiz men will approach travellers as they arrive at the lake and offer to arrange this accommodation. The Kyrgyz form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. There are more than 145,000 Kyrgyz in China.<br/><br/> The Zhongba Gonglu or Karakoram Highway is an engineering marvel that was opened in 1986 and remains the highest paved road in the world. It connects China and Pakistan across the Karakoram mountain range, through the Khunjerab Pass, at an altitude of 4,693 m/15,397 ft.
The Afrasiab painting is a rare example of Sogdian art. It was discovered in 1965 when the local authorities decided on the construction of a road through the middle of Afrāsiāb mound, the old site of pre-Mongol Samarkand. It is now preserved in a special museum on the Afrāsiāb mound. It is the main painting we have of ancient Sogdian art.<br/><br/> The painting dates back to the middle of the 7th century CE. On the four walls of the room of a private house, three or four different countries neighbouring Central Asia are depicted. On the northern wall China (a Chinese festival, with the Empress on a boat, and the Emperor hunting), on the Southern Wall Samarkand (the Iranian world: a religious funerary procession in honor of the ancestors during the Nowruz festival), on the eastern wall India (as the land of the astrologers and of the pygmies, but the painting is much destroyed there).<br/><br/> The topic on the main wall, the western wall facing the entrance is debated between specialists. Turkish soldiers are escorting ambassadors coming from various countries of the world (Korea, China, Iranian principalities, etc). There are three main hypotheses. The leading expert on Sogdian painting, the excavator of Panjikent, B. Marshak points out that Sogdian painting, gods are always depicted on the top of the main wall. However, as the Turks are guiding the embassies but are not themselves ambassadors, it has been suggested also that the Turkish Qaghan, then lord of inner and central Asia, might be depicted there.<br/><br/> A Chinese text states that the 'Four Lords of the World', here China, India, Iran and Turan, are depicted on the walls of palaces near Samarkand precisely during this period, and this would perfectly fit the four walls of this room. The last hypothesis makes use of an inscription mentioning the king of Samarkand to propose the idea that the ambassadors are presenting their gifts to him.
Siyah Kalem or 'Black Pen' is the name given to the 15th century school of painting attributed to Mehmed Siyah Kalem. Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian Turkic origin, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. The paintings appear in the 'Conqueror’s Albums', so named because two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror are present in one of them.<br/><br/> The albums are made up of miniatures taken from manuscripts of the 14th, 15th, and early 16th centuries, and one series of paintings is inscribed 'work of Master Muḥammad Siyah Kalem'. Something of the style and techniques of Chinese paintings is apparent in these, and an acquaintance with Buddhist art, particularly in the depictions of grotesque demonic figures.<br/><br/> It seems likely that certain paintings contained in the 'Conqueror's Albums' are of Chinese origin and may have been used as stylistic guides for painters in the Siyah Kalem tradition.
Tavik Frantisek Simon (1877–1942), was a Czech painter, etcher, and woodcut artist. Although based mainly in Europe, his extensive travels took him to Morocco, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, and Japan, images of all of which appear in his artistic work. He died in Prague in 1942. Largely ignored during the Communist era in Czechoslovakia, his work has received greater attention in recent years.
The renowned female samurai, Tomoe-gozen in the 11th Century. Her husband or love was the Genji General Kiso Yoshinaka.<br/><br/> According to the 'The Tale of Heike', Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swords-woman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot.<br/><br/> She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka sent her out as his first captain, equipped with strong armor, an oversized sword, and a mighty bow, and she performed more deeds of valor than any of his other warriors.
Edwin Lord Weeks (1849 – 1903), American artist and Orientalist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1849. He was a pupil of Léon Bonnat and of Jean-Léon Gérôme, at Paris. He made many voyages to the East, and was distinguished as a painter of oriental scenes.<br/><br> Weeks' parents were affluent spice and tea merchants from Newton, a suburb of Boston and as such they were able to accept, probably encourage, and certainly finance their son's youthful interest in painting and travelling.<br/><br> As a young man Edwin Lord Weeks visited the Florida Keys to draw and also travelled to Surinam in South America. His earliest known paintings date from 1867 when Edwin Lord Weeks was eighteen years old. In 1895 he wrote and illustrated a book of travels, From the Black Sea through Persia and India.
The Kitab al-Bulhan, or Book of Wonders, is a 14th and 15th century Arabic manuscript with sections on astronomy, astrology and divination.
Ancient Panjekent was a small but flourishing town of the Soghdians in pre-Islamic Central Asia. It was known as Panchekanth, meaning 'five towns'.<br/><br/> The ethnic and territorial name Soghd/Soghdian or Sughd/Sughdian is mentioned in history as early as the Iranian Achaemenid Dynasty (6th century BCE). The Achaemenids founded several city-states, as well as cities along the ancient Silk Road and in the Zarafshan valley.<br/><br/> The town grew in the 5th century CE and many professionals such as established businessmen and landowners made their livelihoods in Panjakent. In 722 CE, Arabian forces besieged and annexed the town. The last ruler of the town, Divashtich, fled into upper Zarafshan but he was captured and sentenced to death.<br/><br/> For around 50 years, ancient Panjakent was ruled by new administrators but towards the end of the 8th century the town on the upper terraces was depopulated and relocated. Many ancient ruins of the old city, particularly the city architecture and works of art remain today.
The Naxi or Nakhi are an ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China. The Naxi are thought to have come originally from Tibet and, until recently, maintained overland trading links with Lhasa and India.<br/><br/> The Naxi form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The Naxi are traditionally followers of the Dongba religion. Through both Han Chinese and Tibetan cultural influences, they adopted Tibetan Buddhism and, to a lesser extent, Taoism, in the 10th century.
The Tang Dynasty (Chinese: 唐朝; pinyin: Táng Cháo; June 18, 618 – June 1, 907) was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li (李) family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire. The dynasty was interrupted briefly by the Second Zhou Dynasty (October 8, 690 – March 3, 705) when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, becoming the first and only Chinese empress regnant, ruling in her own right.<br/><br/> The Tang Dynasty, with its capital at Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), which at the time was the most populous city in the world, is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization—equal to, or surpassing that of, the earlier Han Dynasty—a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Its territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivalled that of the Han Dynasty. In two censuses of the 7th and 8th centuries, the Tang records estimated the population by number of registered households at about 50 million people.
The Kitab al-Bulhan is an Arabic manuscript of divinatory works, dating principally from the late 14th century A.D., containing astrological, astronomical and geomantic texts compiled by Abd al-Hasan Al-Isfahani, containing more than 80 illustrations.
The Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of central Asia. It is presently restricted in the wild to remote regions of the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang, China. The Bactrian camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped Dromedary camel.
Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan, generally shortened to Wat Mahathat, or ‘Temple of the Great Chedi’ is the most revered and important temple in Nakhon Si Thammarat and indeed in southern Thailand. It is considered to have been built at the time of the founding of the town, and is said to contain a tooth relic of the Lord Buddha.<br/><br/> Southern Thai lore records that the founders of the temple were Prince Thanakuman and his Queen Hemchala, who brought Buddha relics to Hat Sai Kaeo and built a small pagoda to mark the location. Subsequently, in the 13th century, King Si Thamma Sokharat founded the city of Nakhon Si Thammarat and built a new temple around the great chedi.
The Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) is a large even-toed ungulate native to the steppes of central Asia. It is presently restricted in the wild to remote regions of the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang.<br/><br/> There are a small number of wild Bactrian camels still roaming the Mangystau Province of South West Kazakhstan. It is one of the two surviving species of camel. The Bactrian camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the single-humped Dromedary camel.<br/><br/> Camels were widely used in the Silk Road trade across the deserts of Central Asia.