A rise and fall of a Chaghadaid community: demographic growth and crisis in ‘late-medieval’ Semirech'ye (Zhetysu), <i>circa</i> 1248–1345
Journal: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
Year: 2022

Abstract This article analyses long-term population dynamics—growth, decline, sex- and age-composition—in Chaghadaid-era Central Asia in the context of the ‘Late-medieval Crisis’. It is based on a unique dataset of 630 epitaphs from two East Syriac (‘Nestorian') graveyards in the Semirech'ye region (Northwest Tian Shan, North Kyrgyzstan), boosted by archaeological and osteological evidence from the same graveyards. This epigraphic corpus is truly unique in the sense that this is the only survivi