Past vs. History

To borrow the words of my professor "Past is everything that has happened. History is what we choose to write about the past." The two keywords are "choose" and "write". History as discipline may have had its beginnings with Herodotus, but human written records precede the Greek historian, who lived in the 400s BC, by a good millennium, or two, or even three. Herodotus did not write about everything. He chose what to write about: a place, time period, a battle or two, his own experiences, but not everything. It's impossible to write about everything that happened.

Anything that took place before our earliest written records is considered pre-history, which is the realm of archeology. When it comes to studying Central Asian history, there are many gaps in written records, and archeology fills those gaps to some degree. But I am neither an archeologist, nor will I write anything comprehensive from the earliest times that ever happened in Central Asia. The main reason for this blog is to record the things I learn, so I can always comeback when I forget them. I forget a lot these days. Maybe I will write a book one day, but I have come to realize that over ambitious endeavors rarely see the light of day.

I am a student of history, which means I only know so much. At home, everyone comes to me with history questions, outside, I go to everyone with questions of my own. It all began with a video game, my interest in history, that is. Not satisfied with the game, I picked up a book. It was Yan's Chingiskhan; a very good trilogy, which took the reader back into the times of the Mongol domination of the world in 13th Century. Yan wrote during the Soviets, so in addition to Chingizkhan being a novel, it is also very "one sided." Nonetheless, I learned a lot from this book, and afterward my appetite grew for history.

Before I start blogging (omg, did I just write that?), a short paragraph about myself would be a good introduction. My name is Jahongir and I was born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. I grew up in a diverse city, among the Russians and Jews; my mother's good friend was Korean; I lived only ten minutes from a "German town" and there were a lot of Uzbeks in my neighborhood. Religion did not play any part in my early childhood. On my 10th birthday, Soviet Union collapsed, but I did not know it then. All of a sudden, there was a need for identification, and I became a Muslim boy. I learned how to recite verses from the holy book by heart; when my "teacher" opened a page, I read it clearly and loudly, without knowing what it was that I read. To this day, I doubt the mullo who instructed us knew the meaning of the verses himself. My maternal great grandmother's name was Gulchehra Baqoeva, she was born in Bukhara to Jewish parents. My paternal grandfather was born in Qoqand, he was Uzbek, as is evident for his name, Meliquzi. Both my maternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother were of Tajik descend. If I were into mathematics, I would say I am 50% Tajik, 25% Jewish and 25% Uzbek, but whoever identifies themselves in numbers?

On July 21, 1997, I arrived to New York City with my mother and younger brother. We settled in Brooklyn, and have been living here ever since. Brooklyn is a great place, and a second favorite place of my study area. After 10 years of going back and forth, I finally graduated from Brooklyn College in 2009 with BA in history. I am back in school for my master's and who knows how long that will take to complete. In the meantime, this blog will be a repository of things I learn.

Whoever reads this, you are welcome to ask me questions about the things I write or correct me when you believe I am wrong. I never liked saying goodbye or knew how to end things gracefully, so until next post.....