gems, history of gemology, Arabic mineralogy, spinel, Badakhshan

This interesting book by Wolfgang-Ekkehard Scharlipp, a lecturer at the Oriental Seminar in Freiburg, is the first comprehensive account of the earliest general and cultural history of the Turkic tribes which, united in a tribal confederation or steppe state of the “Heavenly Turks” (Göktürks), are first mentioned in historical sources (Chinese annals from 552) under the name T’u-küe. After a brief introduction outlining basic information on Turkic peoples following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the geographical terms Turkestan and Turan, the book proceeds to a chapter on Turkish prehistory, dealing with the Scythians and the Huns (Xiongnu). It emphasizes the historical significance of a unified Eurasian space in which successive steppe cultures of various nomadic peoples developed, and argues that the earliest Turkic steppe states—the First and Second Khaganates—can be seen as inheritors of the social, economic, political, and cultural structures of earlier steppe empires. Scharlipp repeatedly stresses that neither the Scythians nor the Huns were “Turks,” contrary to claims sometimes made by Turkish scholars; the Scythians are generally recognized as an Indo-European people, while the term “Huns” is understood not as an ethnic designation but as a political one, encompassing ethnically diverse groups, including some Turkic tribes.