Étienne de la Vaissière

Étienne de La Vaissière is a French historian, professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, in Paris.^[1] He is teaching economic and social history of early medieval Central Asia, before and after the arrival of Islam. He is a specialist of the Sogdian culture, its traders and nobility, and also of the nomadic invasions of the IVth-Vth c. Some of his results are:

a depiction of the network which gave to the image of "Silk Road" its only historical reality during the Early Middle Ages^[2]
the textual proof that the Huns and the Xiongnu are indeed synonymous
a shift of 2 centuries in the history of Eastern Manichaeism (it arrived in China in the VI c.)
a reinterpretation of Abbassid IXth c. political history pushing the birth of the mamluk phenomenon to the 860's-870's

[edit] Books

Histoire des marchands sogdiens, De Boccard, Paris, 2002
- New edition corrected and expanded, 2004 ^[3]
- English translation Sogdian traders : a history, Handbook of Uralic studies v.10, Leiden, 2005, ISBN 978-90-04-14252-7, http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=10&pid=22150
Samarcande et Samarra. Elites d'Asie centrale dans l'empire abbasside, Peeters, Louvain, 2007 ^[4]
With Éric Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, 2005 ^[5]
With Matteo Compareti, Royal Nawruz in Samarkand, supplement of the Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 2006
With M. Ghose "Ephtalites", in Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2007.[1]
Islamisation de l'Asie centrale. Processus locaux d'acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle, Peeters, Louvain, 2008. ^[6]