Nomads aNd oasis Cities: CeNtral asia from the 9 th to the 13 th CeNtury

uring the three to four centuries after the decline and demise of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) in the early 9 th century, the steppe nomads launched a series of imperial ventures. Several Turkish groups, having adopted Buddhism or Islam in Central Asia, invaded India and the Byzantine Empire. At the eastern fringe of Eurasia, the Khitans, Tanguts, and Jurchen — mentioned in Chinese historiography respectively as Liao Dynasty (907–1125), Xixia Dynasty (ca. 1032–1227), and Jin Dynasty (1115–1234) — succeeded in building regional kingdoms and even empires. Then, during the 13 th century, the Mongols, the supreme empire builders, conquered much of the Eurasian land mass. All the rulers from the steppe, forests, and borderlands between the ecological zones came from a cultural tradition shaped by mobile life and the worship of their god from the heavens by performing animal sacrifices. In the process of occupying the lands of settled empires and territories of other nomads, they invariably patronised the cultures and especially religious practices of the conquered peoples and became followers of world religions. The rulers from the steppe had to merge their spiritual universe based on nomadic and/ or pastoral life with those of their subjects who were agriculturalists. In this process, both sides helped to create a Tantric form of Buddhism compromising vegetarianism of early Buddhism with the blood-letting rituals of pastoral societies. They also transformed aspects of Islamic practice and artistic expression in ways that incorporated Central Asia traditions. Most often, these transitions took place in the oasis settlements, the principal zones of contact between the communities migrating between mountainous terrain, forests, and steppe and the settled sown. East of the Pamir Plateau, this was one of the historical periods when cities and tribes there were independent of the authority of any of the neighboring cultures and acted according to their local interests following the shifting political alignments. The dynamics of the encounters between nomadic and sedentary political structures and cultures brought a new life to the oases, regions peripheral to the Chinese empires and people