Exploring Terra Incognita: a reading on the pre-history of Central Asian Studies

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’.