Amazon.com description: Product Description: Sadr-i Ziya's diary lends valuable perspective to numerous studies narrowly focused upon the modern Reformists (Jadids) of his area. It also reveals the endless occupational and mortal uncertainties tormenting a Central Asian Islamic judge practising his profession within an aged political and economical system deteriorating during the last decades, circa 1880-1920, of the state of Bukhara. By supplying a Bukharan intellectual's personal history, Sadr-i Ziya, author, poet and calligrapher, also reveals himself as an admirable human being who enjoys life but endures the repeated, scalding experience of losing beloved children, their mothers and other family members, in an era when medicine an prayer scarcely deterred the multitude of prevailing inflictions. Notwithstanding this strong focus upon his personal life, Sadr-i Ziya provides a view of the central role played by the omnipresent religious hierarchy in his homeland.