Enduring the Test of Time: Understanding Ancient Silk Roads Cities Through 'Urban Cosmopolitanism'

本研究采用民族志方法研究丝绸之路城市的历史持久性及其生活方式，因为它们见证了许多帝国的兴衰，并将其与当今面对气候变化的城市可持续性问题进行对话。我的博士论文重新审视了中亚最古老、居住时间最长的城市撒马尔罕和布哈拉是如何受到布尔什维克革命的影响的，以及这些城市的文化精英是如何与苏联谈判的。当苏联开始迫害资产阶级知识分子并将保守派城市降格为理想的社会主义城市时（Kassymbekova 2016），该项目突出了古代萨马尔罕第-布哈拉城市生活和精英如何通过从1920年开始迁移到杜尚别这个拥有3000名居民的村庄，在苏联的议程和迫害中幸存下来。在那里，这些流离失所的城市居民与苏联的意识形态合作，建立了一个可以容纳他们在社会主义制度下延续了几个世纪的生活方式的城市。杜尚别迅速成长为新成立的塔吉克苏维埃社会主义共和国的首都，也是唯一没有城市历史的苏联首都。我将这两个城市的人们和生活方式的流动性概念化为“城市世界主义”的一种形式：跨越丝绸之路领土的地方和城市主义的流动性，使城市的独特、地方特征可访问、可移动和可转移，超出了其物理限制（Gould 2015; Zutshi 2015）。这是建立在这样一种认识的基础上，即城市对伊斯兰、突厥和波斯世界人民的社会和空间地理的影响远远超过了国家，这一概念在过去的一百年里才被引入（Eickelman & Piscatori 1990）。这种流动性、适应性和形状变化是丝绸之路的人和地方的强烈特征（Marsden 2017），也是我所说的城市世界主义。我的两篇期刊文章将讨论丝绸之路地区的社会历史和城市世界主义的具体迭代。两个月的实地考察将使我有机会就这一点进一步采访家庭，从他们和当地学者那里获得对我的城市世界主义概念的反馈，并提供视听记录证据。我还将把我的发现扩展到城市耐力和寿命的另一个方面：可持续性。虽然当今世界各地的城市规模和数量都在增长，但它们也面临着气候变化带来的破败危险：海平面上升和气温上升已经导致大城市遭受洪水、干旱和饮用水污染。在这一过程中，基础设施和文化遗址遭到破坏：例如，威尼斯正在努力抢救在最近的历史性洪水中受损的艺术品和书籍。随着投资和政策的实施，以发展具有弹性和适应性的城市，以适应当今不断变化的环境，本项目将在城市面临政治动荡和气候变化的威胁之间寻求共同的语言、模式和理念。面对布尔什维克革命，布哈拉人和撒马尔罕人移民到杜尚别，这与最近许多城市到城市的大规模移民相当：叙利亚城市居民逃到土耳其城市，德黑兰人在1979年伊斯兰革命中逃到洛杉矶，喀布尔人在苏联-阿富汗战争期间逃到白沙瓦。与此同时，气候危机正在影响丝绸之路沿线的城市。在最近一次对布哈拉的访问中，我看到了这座古城因气温上升、冰川融化和污染而迅速退化的实物证据。撒马尔罕和布哈拉都是联合国教科文组织的世界遗产地，如今它们正面临威胁——与100年前苏联红军入侵它们时所面临的威胁不同。然而，这两件事已经并继续在物质和社会上威胁着这些城市的持久性：布哈拉和撒马尔罕今天经历了山洪暴发，摧毁了它们的石头基础和非物质遗产。

This research takes an ethnographic approach to the historical endurance of Silk Roads cities and their ways of life as they have witnessed the rise and fall of many empires, and brings this into dialogue with present-day concerns for urban sustainability in the face of climate change.The project builds on my PhD which re-examined how Central Asia's oldest and longest-inhabited cities, Samarqand and Bukhara, were impacted by the Bolshevik Revolution and how these cities' cultural elites negotiated Soviet agendas. While the Soviet Union set out to persecute bourgeois intellectuals and demote old-guard cities for ideal socialist ones (Kassymbekova 2016), this project highlights how ancient Samarqandi-Bukharan city life and elites survived Soviet agendas and persecution by migrating, from1920 on, to Dushanbe, a village of 3,000 inhabitants. Once there, these displaced urbanites collaborated with Soviet ideology to build a city that could house their centuries-old ways of life under socialism. Dushanbe quickly grew into the capital city of the newly-formed Tajik SSR and the only Soviet capital with no prior urban history. I conceptualise this mobility of people and ways of life from the two cities as a form of 'urban cosmopolitanism': a fluidity of place and urbanism across Silk Roads territories that makes a city's distinct, local characteristics accessible, mobile and transposable beyond its physical confines (Gould 2015; Zutshi 2015). This builds on the recognition that cities have informed the social and spatial geographies of people across the Islamic, Turkic and Persian worlds much more than nations, a concept only introduced in the past hundred years (Eickelman & Piscatori 1990). This mobility, adaptability and shape-shifting is strongly characteristic of the people and places of the Silk Roads (Marsden 2017) and what I term urban cosmopolitanism.My two journal articles will address specific iterations of this social history and urban cosmopolitanism across Silk Roads territories. The two months of fieldwork will give me a chance to further interview families about this, get feedback from them and local scholars on my conceptualisation of urban cosmopolitanism, and audio-visually record evidence of it. I will also extend my findings into another aspect of urban endurance and longevity: sustainability. While cities grow in size and number around the world today, they are also in danger of dilapidation from climate change: rising sea levels and temperatures are already leading to major cities flooding, experiencing droughts and facing contamination of drinking water. In that process infrastructure and cultural sites are damaged: Venice, for instance, is struggling to rescue damaged artworks and books in recent historic floods. As investments and policies are implemented to develop resilient, adaptable cities to today's changing environment, this project will seek out common language, patterns and ideas between the threat cities face by political upheaval and by climate change.Bukharan and Samarqandi migration to Dushanbe in the face of the Bolshevik Revolution is comparable to many recent urban-to-urban en masse migrations: Syrians urbanites fleeing to Turkish cities, Tehranis fleeing the 1979 Islamic Revolution to Los Angeles, Kabulis fleeing during the Soviet-Afghan War to Peshawar. Meanwhile, the climate crisis is affecting cities across the Silk Roads. On a recent visit to Bukhara, I was shown the physical evidence of rapid degradation this ancient city is experiencing due to rising temperatures, melting glaciers and pollution. Samarqand and Bukhara, both UNESCO Heritage Sites, are today under threat- a different threat to that they faced when the Red Army invaded them a hundred years ago. Both events, however, have and continue to threaten the endurance of these cities, materially and socially: Bukhara and Samarqand today experience flash flooding, destroying their stone foundations and their intangible heritage.