Congratulations to Dr. James Pickett whose Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia (Cornell University Press) was awarded the 2021 Albert Hourani Book Award Honorable Mention by the Middle East Studies Association.
The Middle East Studies Association awarded Dr. Pickett with an honorable mention, describing his books as "a remarkable study of Central Asian Islamic scholarship in the nineteenth century, after the region’s entrance into Russia’s sphere of influence but before the radical dislocations caused by Soviet rule. The book draws on Russian-language secondary scholarship and primary sources in various languages, including many obscure ones; almost every page yields new revelations. Pickett elevates Central Asia of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to its rightful place as a significant part of the Persianate world of the time (besides Iran and India)."
