Book Review: Dagiev Dagikhudo. Central Asian Ismailis. An Annotated Bibliography of Russian, Tajik and Other Sources. London: I. B. Tauris, 2022. 278 р.

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2023-3/370-375

Abstract

In the book review of Dagikhudo Dagiev's “Central Asian Ismailis. An annotated bibliography of Russian, Tajik and other sources”, the reviewer expresses his high appreciation with the regard to this academic work in general. The reviewer briefly analyses all three chapters of the book, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the monograph. Despite the fact that the Ismaili community of Central Asia has a thousand-year history, there are still few studies conducted in this area. This is especially true for the published works in English. In this regard, the reviewed work is particularly valuable as it introduces English-speaking readers to the history of the Ismailis of Central Asia and provides a historiography of this issue. The author has compiled an impressive bibliographic list (the third chapter is entirely dedicated to the bibliography) of works on the history and doctrine of the Ismailis, nevertheless, it has not covered all published works on this issue. However, the abstracts of more than 700 works in Tajik, Russian and English are a decent resource for researchers who work in this area.