Afghanistan Studies is where Near Eastern Studies, Central Asian Studies, and South Asian Studies overlap. The journal, therefore, does not focus solely on geographic Afghanistan, but publishes articles that straddle these three subject areas where the pre-modern histories and cultures of Afghanistan connect.
The journal aims to focus the interests of scholars and students on the region’s rich past through articles from a wide range of fields in the humanities. Afghanistan has been aptly described as ‘the places in between’, and its histories and cultures reflect a geographical mass stretching from the shores of the Caspian to China and India. It thus has an exceptionally rich architectural and art-historical legacy. In the past, it has been the centre of several major cultures/empires - the Graeco-Bactrian, Kushan, Gandharan, Ghaznavid, Timurid - as well as a major component of many others: the Bronze Age of both Central Asia and Indo-Iran, Achaemenid, Mauryan, Scythian, Parthian, Sasanian, Hun, Hindu, Abbasid, Seljuk. In more recent times, it has been the focus of great power rivalry: British, Russian, Soviet, US. It thus forms a microcosm of much of the history and civilisation of Western, Central and South Asia for the past four thousand years or so. This journal reflects these diverse and complex cultural and historical mixes, and showcases Afghanistan’s exceptional cultural diversity.
