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В поисках вымышленного царства
Книга "В поисках вымышленного царства" — одна из самых известных работ выдающегося ученого. В ней увлекательно и подробно рассказывается о жизни народов Центральной Азии в IX–XIII веках, а также исследуется эпоха Киевской Руси и период образования Московского государства. Автор размышляет над вопросом: могло ли царство пресвитера Иоанна существовать на самом деле, или христианское государство, возглавляемое царем-священником, только красивая легенда-мечта?
480 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1970
2 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Lev Gumilev
61 books33 followersLev Nikolayevich Gumilev (Лев Гумилев) was a Soviet and Russian historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism. According to geographer Mark Bassin, Lev Gumilev, whose books have now sold millions of copies, can be compared in terms of influence to Herodotus, Karl Marx, Oswald Spengler or Albert Einstein.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 22, 2011
This is a crazy book too, of which I am very fond, for its originality - major originality.
I found it chaotic to read the first time, but not the second.
He has a few weird theories. I disagree madly with one or two. For me, though, he has three pages on Mongol religion that are beyond price - absolutely unique. For you - God knows what you might find in this flight of adventurous scholarship.
What's it about? Ah... Christianity on the steppe, might be the main topic - an investigation into the little-known fact that most of the steppe was Christian, on the eve of Chinggis Khan's conquests. Great stuff in here, and so worth a go.
I found it chaotic to read the first time, but not the second.
He has a few weird theories. I disagree madly with one or two. For me, though, he has three pages on Mongol religion that are beyond price - absolutely unique. For you - God knows what you might find in this flight of adventurous scholarship.
What's it about? Ah... Christianity on the steppe, might be the main topic - an investigation into the little-known fact that most of the steppe was Christian, on the eve of Chinggis Khan's conquests. Great stuff in here, and so worth a go.
June 1, 2022
We from the West believe that history stopped perhaps in Moscow, picking up again maybe in Beijing but probably more realistically in Tokyo. The expanse between, a wasteland. Stories of Siberian gulags and the endless windswept steppes. Then came Genghis Khan, but from where? Out of nowhere? An apparition of the Gobi desert, a Jinn conjured to torment civilized Europe?
The “Church of the East”, called sometimes erroneously the Nestorian Church due to having adopted the theology of Nestorius Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th Century (who believed in a loose association between the divinity and humanity of Jesus) was for a season the largest Christian Church. Composed of Mongol or Turkic nomadic tribesmen, the church had deacons and elders and traditions and sanctuaries built around the ancient places like Samarkand or Qoms long before the days of Islam.
Lev Gumilev’s extraordinary book “Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom” uses the story of Prester John as a backdrop to tell a detailed history of the Eurasian steppes from the 800s to the 1300s. The rise and fall of the Mongol empire. Gumilev argues that Prester John was likely Yelu Dashi, a tribal nomadic king the last of the Liao Dynasty whose court was Nestorian. But the book is about much more than that. It is about how Chinggiskhan emerged harnessing the rage of the “People of the Long Will”, outcasts living in the forests of the steppes expelled from the strict hierarchical tribal culture and stitched them into a coherent fighting force unleashing them against first the Chinese and then the Europeans and finally to the Holy Lands. The Mongols, nobody really knows who they were, coming from some valley lost in the Altai Mountains like the deep desert Tuaregs from the High Atlas Mountains, tall and fair and blue-eyed but not European.
The story of a Christian king far east beyond Armenia who would come to the aid of the crusaders to rescue them from Saladin and the marauding Muslim armies; conveniently repeated until it became folklore.
We often think that there was no church beside Rome and its offshoots. It’s hard to imagine that at the beginning the crucible of the Christian faith existed in the caravanserai of the Silk Road, taken there by Thomas and Thaddeus of Edessa and protected by an order of ancient Nestorian priests for 600 years. There is so much about Eurasia that we don’t know – and Gumilev is extraordinary in the way of great historians who have a panoramic view of events and how they tie together and pulls it all into a book that, while not easy to read, does allow us to follow the threads of so great a tale.
The “Church of the East”, called sometimes erroneously the Nestorian Church due to having adopted the theology of Nestorius Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th Century (who believed in a loose association between the divinity and humanity of Jesus) was for a season the largest Christian Church. Composed of Mongol or Turkic nomadic tribesmen, the church had deacons and elders and traditions and sanctuaries built around the ancient places like Samarkand or Qoms long before the days of Islam.
Lev Gumilev’s extraordinary book “Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom” uses the story of Prester John as a backdrop to tell a detailed history of the Eurasian steppes from the 800s to the 1300s. The rise and fall of the Mongol empire. Gumilev argues that Prester John was likely Yelu Dashi, a tribal nomadic king the last of the Liao Dynasty whose court was Nestorian. But the book is about much more than that. It is about how Chinggiskhan emerged harnessing the rage of the “People of the Long Will”, outcasts living in the forests of the steppes expelled from the strict hierarchical tribal culture and stitched them into a coherent fighting force unleashing them against first the Chinese and then the Europeans and finally to the Holy Lands. The Mongols, nobody really knows who they were, coming from some valley lost in the Altai Mountains like the deep desert Tuaregs from the High Atlas Mountains, tall and fair and blue-eyed but not European.
The story of a Christian king far east beyond Armenia who would come to the aid of the crusaders to rescue them from Saladin and the marauding Muslim armies; conveniently repeated until it became folklore.
We often think that there was no church beside Rome and its offshoots. It’s hard to imagine that at the beginning the crucible of the Christian faith existed in the caravanserai of the Silk Road, taken there by Thomas and Thaddeus of Edessa and protected by an order of ancient Nestorian priests for 600 years. There is so much about Eurasia that we don’t know – and Gumilev is extraordinary in the way of great historians who have a panoramic view of events and how they tie together and pulls it all into a book that, while not easy to read, does allow us to follow the threads of so great a tale.
November 4, 2013
This is a hard book to assess. On the one hand, the author is incredibly well-versed and combines that spectacular quality for careful scholarship with bold imaginativeness that is rare among professional historians. On the other hand, there is an excessively speculative element that compromises the work's impact. Ostensibly a history of Nestorian Christianity in the Eurasian steppe, the work's main bombshell, which the author credits to the methods of "Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown and Agatha Christie" revolves around the on-again/off-again relationship between the young Genghis Khan (Temujin) and his best friend, Jamukha. The author's theory has a veneer of plausibility, and he critiques what is inconsistently referred to as the "Hidden Chronicles" and the "Secret History" and tries to find a way to reconcile the discrepencies between this manuscript and the sources of Rashid al-Din. In doing so, he arrives at a conclusion, which cannot be handidly dismissed that completely overturns how we understand the internecine struggle that gave rise to the Mongol Empire.
However, the author's radical idea, which I won't reveal but which I found marginally plausible, should be greeted with considerable skepticism. No doubt some of this is a casualty or translating a scholarly book written in the USSR in the 1970s, with most references to Soviet authors whose works were never translated into English and largely ignored since. Thus, for a reader today, it is essentially impossible for all but a handful of scholars to follow up on the author's references and form their own opinions about the secondary sources on which must of the text relies. Unfortunately, I think the interesting ideas the author of this book puts out should be considered as at best hypotheses that should be considered, and which someone should at least attempt to discredit (perhaps this has been done so already?)
Finally, another goodreads reviewer characterized the book as "chaotic" and I agree. Although ostensibly written for the non-specialist, there is a lot that the author seems to assume on behalf of the reader. Starting with the table and map at the end of the book help, but this is a book that is much richer if one is familiar at least with the gist of the primary sources, including the Secret History of the Mongols and the Lay of Igor.
However, the author's radical idea, which I won't reveal but which I found marginally plausible, should be greeted with considerable skepticism. No doubt some of this is a casualty or translating a scholarly book written in the USSR in the 1970s, with most references to Soviet authors whose works were never translated into English and largely ignored since. Thus, for a reader today, it is essentially impossible for all but a handful of scholars to follow up on the author's references and form their own opinions about the secondary sources on which must of the text relies. Unfortunately, I think the interesting ideas the author of this book puts out should be considered as at best hypotheses that should be considered, and which someone should at least attempt to discredit (perhaps this has been done so already?)
Finally, another goodreads reviewer characterized the book as "chaotic" and I agree. Although ostensibly written for the non-specialist, there is a lot that the author seems to assume on behalf of the reader. Starting with the table and map at the end of the book help, but this is a book that is much richer if one is familiar at least with the gist of the primary sources, including the Secret History of the Mongols and the Lay of Igor.
December 8, 2023
Şu an Türkçede "Muhayyel Hükümdarlığın İzinde" adıyla yayınlanıyor. kitap bütün Gumilëv çalışmaların bir özeti gibi. Hunlar'dan sonraki bilgilerim temize çekildi. Kitap sayesinde esasli bir kronoloji yaptim ve bozkir halklari hakkinda kafamda daha az soru isareti var artik. Huzur icinde yat Gumilëv...
June 14, 2021
Last two months i been read and read. first 2 weeks it was totally chaotic, and getting better to read and produce many questions all over the book. google and google to find the maps and details.
been still reading.
been still reading.
December 25, 2017
A great investigation.
Also, a great exploration of just how twisted the "sources" can be.
Also, a great exploration of just how twisted the "sources" can be.
August 2, 2018
Fascinating.
July 10, 2018
Легенда о пресвитере Иоанне стала для Гумилева связующим звеном повествования об длительной истории взаимодействия Китая и народов Степи, о становлении и крушении империи Чингизидов, о распространении несторианства в Азии и роли несторианских общин в 11-14 веках и даже оригинальной интерпретации "Слова о полку Игореве", которой Лев Николаевич посвящает целую главу.
При этом сам автор основной целью книги заявляет не раскрытие заявленного в заглавии сюжета, а знакомство читателя с методологией своей работы.
Можно долго спорить о "научности" этой методологии и "научной ценности" работ Гумилева, но в качестве захватывающего чтения их достоинства не оспоримы.
При этом сам автор основной целью книги заявляет не раскрытие заявленного в заглавии сюжета, а знакомство читателя с методологией своей работы.
Можно долго спорить о "научности" этой методологии и "научной ценности" работ Гумилева, но в качестве захватывающего чтения их достоинства не оспоримы.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews