Étienne de la Vaissière

Étienne de La Vaissière (born 5 November 1969 in Dijon) is a French historian, professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, in Paris. 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 4th-5th centuries. Some of his theories are:
 * a depiction of the network which gave to the image of "Silk Road" its only historical reality during the Early Middle Ages
 * the textual proof that the Huns and the Xiongnu are indeed synonymous
 * a shift of two centuries in the history of Eastern Manichaeism (it arrived in China in the 6th century)
 * a reinterpretation of Abbasid 9th century political history pushing the birth of the mamluk phenomenon to the 860s-870s

Books

 * Histoire des marchands sogdiens, De Boccard, Paris, 2002
 * New edition corrected and expanded, 2004
 * English translation
 * Samarcande et Samarra. Elites d'Asie centrale dans l'empire abbasside, Peeters, Louvain, 2007
 * With Éric Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, 2005
 * 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.
 * Islamisation de l'Asie centrale. Processus locaux d'acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle, Peeters, Louvain, 2008.