Étienne de la Vaissière
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Étienne de La Vaissière is a French historian, assistant professor at the Ecole pratique des hautes études, in Paris. He is teaching economic and social history of early medieval Central Asia, before and after the arrival of Islam. He is a specialist of the Sogdian culture, its traders and nobility, and also of the Nomadic invasions of the IVth-Vth c. Some of his results are:
- a depiction of the network which gave to the image of "Silk Road" its only historical reality during the Early Middle Ages
- the textual proof that the Huns and the Xiongnu are indeed linked
- a shift of 2 centuries in the history of Eastern Manichaeism (it arrived in China in the VI c.)
- a reinterpretation of Abbassid IXth c. political history pushing the birth of the mamluk phenomenon to the 860's-870's
[edit] Books
- Histoire des marchands sogdiens, De Boccard, Paris, 2002
- Samarcande et Samarra. Elites d'Asie centrale dans l'empire abbasside, Peeters, Louvain, 2007 [3]
- With Éric Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, 2005 [4]
- With Matteo Compareti, Royal Nawruz in Samarkand, supplement of the Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 2006
- With M. Ghose "Ephtalites", in Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2007.[5]
