In the volume, 11 articles are published that are based on lectures held at the 43rd annual meeting of the PIAC. The conference was held in memory of the two pioneers of Altaic studies, Willy Bang-Kaup and Charles de Harlez de Deulin, to whom two of the enclosed articles are dedicated.

Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Turkvölker was founded in 1980 by the Hungarian Turkologist György Hazai. The series deals with all aspects of Turkic language, culture and history, and has a broad temporal and regional scope. It welcomes manuscripts on Central, Northern, Western and Eastern Asia as well as parts of Europe, and allows for a wide time span from the first mention in the 6th century to modernity and present.

Altaic Studies deal with a group of languages (and respective cultures) that show obvious similarities: Turkic, Mongol and Manchu-Tungus. Whether they are really related or whether they just influenced each other remains a matter of scholarly discussion. The Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) was established in 1957 as a working group to further research on this issue. Annual meetings have since been taking place in different countries, and the respective proceedings offer a wealth of information on the Altaic languages and cultures. The 2016 meeting took place at Ardahan, Turkey, a new and modern university close to the borders of Georgia and Armenia; it covered a wide range of subjects of which a peer-reviewed selection is published in the present volume. The papers deal with an Old Turkic inscription, the Bâbur-nâma (memoirs of Bâbur), Crimean history, Uighur calligraphy, the modern role of the Kazakh language, the ancestor cult in Turkic traditions, administrative and state concepts in the 18th century Chinese imperial pentaglot dictionary (which includes Turki), an appreciation of Denis Sinor (1916-2011), celebrated Altaist and for many years secretary general of the PIAC, the publishing projects of the outstanding Lamaist scholar and politician Lalitavajra (Rol-pa'i rdo-rje) and several poetic travelogues in Mongolia. The editors are members of the PIAC: Barbara Kellner-Heinkele is Prof. emer. of Turkic Studies (Free University of Berlin) and secretary general of the PIAC, Oliver Corff is an independent scholar of Chinese Studies, Hartmut Walravens is retired from his positions at the Berlin State Library and as Director of the worldwide ISBN system.

This volume is a tribute to Professor Vovin’s research and a summary of the latest developments in his fields of expertise.

Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Turkvölker was founded in 1980 by the Hungarian Turkologist György Hazai. The series deals with all aspects of Turkic language, culture and history, and has a broad temporal and regional scope. It welcomes manuscripts on Central, Northern, Western and Eastern Asia as well as parts of Europe, and allows for a wide time span from the first mention in the 6th century to modernity and present.

Today, most Uyghurs are Muslims. For centuries, however, Uyghurs were Buddhists. By around 1000 CE, they, like many of their neighbors, had decisively turned toward the Dharma, and a golden age of Uyghur Buddhism flourished under the Mongol empire. Dwelling along the Silk Road in what is now northwestern China, they stood at the center of Buddhist Eurasia, linking far-flung regions and traditions. But as Muslim power grew, Uyghur Buddhists converted to Islam, rewriting their past and erasing their Buddhist history. This book presents the first comprehensive history of Buddhism among the Uyghurs from the ninth to the seventeenth century. Johan Elverskog traces how the Uyghurs forged their distinctive tradition, considering a variety of social, political, cultural, and religious contexts. He argues that the religious history of the Uyghurs challenges conventional narratives of the meeting of Buddhism and Islam, showing that conversion took place gradually and was driven by factors such as geopolitics, climate change, and technological innovation. Elverskog also provides a nuanced understanding of lived Buddhism, focusing on ritual practices and materiality as well as the religion’s entanglements with economics, politics, and violence. A groundbreaking history of Uyghur Buddhism, this book makes a compelling case for the importance of the Uyghurs in shaping the course of both Buddhist and Asian history.