CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Godány, Zsuzsanna |
|---|---|
| Title | The Image of Tibet in Medieval Muslim Sources |
| Summary | The Himalayan region was always regarded as the end of the world where weird peoples practicing inhuman customs lived and where the miraculous could happen, for example, tribes eating human flesh or amazons. Moreover, these lands were also populated by monsters and other supernatural creatures and were the home of precious and exotic commodities.Tibet which is located in the most inaccessible part of the Himalaya first appeared in Muslim sources in the ninth century. These sources contain short references and anecdotes of the country and its people. By studying Muslim works ranging in date from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, this thesis will focus on the general image of Tibet created by Muslim sources and examine whether the perceptionof the country changed between the ninth and the first half of the thirteenth century.I will also attempt to determine if this image fits into the category of the Other that is common to all societies, was known the Greeks, and appeared in later civilizations.I will argue that Tibetʼs geographical isolation and remote position, which resulted in the lack of direct observations on the country, facilitated the development of a miraculous image and the portrayal of the country as a fabulous land in Muslim literature. |
| Supervisor | Csirkes, Ferenc |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/godany_zsuzsanna.pdf |
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