Language, Society, and Religion in the World of Turks

Larry Clark has been a major figure in the study of Turkic languages, Uygur history, and Uygur Manichaeism for the last 40 years. His scholarship engages a wide array of specialist expertise as it tackles the difficulties of orthography and fragmented texts, the complexities of historical linguistics and cultural references, as well as the subtleties of religious expression. His complete corpus of Old Turkic Manichaean Texts (Brepols 2014, 2018, and 2020) is a three-volume set of linguistic and historical detective work that solves a number of longstanding problems and sheds new light on Manichaean community life in medieval Central Asia during the second half of the 8th century to the first half of the 11th century. 

The occasion of Larry Clark’s Festschrift draws contributions from many of the current leadings scholars in these areas, including former pupils and colleagues. Their essays provide a multi-faceted perspective on late ancient, medieval, and modern Central Eurasia—its languages, as well as its civil and religious institutions, ranging from the Siberian steppe to the Aegean, and from the Han Dynasty’s northern rivals to the Uygurs, Mongols, and Ottomans.